DIVINE CONSORTSHIP. — This is a theological expression, derived from Sacred Scripture (II Pt. 1:4), meaning that mysterious divine participation to which Grace (v.).
In the cited verse of II Pt. we read: “Through which (the glory and power of God) he has granted us precious and magnificent goods promised, so that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature... θείας κοινωνοί φάσεως.” The term κοινωνός (κοινωνός), used by St. Peter also in the First Letter (5:1), is found likewise in St. John (Io. 1:3) and in St. Paul (I Cor. 1:9; Phil. 3:10), with the meaning of communion, divine participation, which is connected with the idea of adoptive sonship (v. SOPRANNATURALE, ORDINE) by virtue of a regeneration of man reborn from God; an idea not unknown to St. Peter (I Pt. 1:3 and 23), and frequent in the other two Apostles (Io. 1:12-13; I Io. 3:1; Rom. 8:14-15; Gal. 4:4 ff.; Eph. 1:5 ff.). The term κοινωνός and its related meaning are therefore proper to the evangelical milieu. St. Peter emphasizes the object of the participation, which is the divine nature (θείας φάσεως, used by Plato and other classical authors as equivalent to “true Divinity”). The Vulgate translates κοινωνός as consortes, whence the term c.
Ancient and recent exegesis of the difficult passage of St. Peter leads to this interpretation: the Christian enlightened by faith receives precious gifts from God (Grace and infused virtues), by which he enters into participation in the very life of God, initially on this earth and fully in heaven.
This text serves as the basis for the development of the theology of Grace among the Fathers and the scholastics. It is especially the Eastern Fathers who, meditating on the words of St. Peter in the light of the thought of St. John and St. Paul, arrive at the concept of θεοπολείας, or the divinization of man, which sums up the whole economy of Redemption and Grace. The theological development matures in two phases, one Trinitarian and the other Christological. In the first, divinization is connected with the action of the Son and the Holy Spirit, who, being of the same divine nature as the Father, make the Christian God’s adoptive son and therefore a partaker of his nature (Athanasius and Basil). In the Christological phase, divinization is presented as a reproduction of the apostolic union of the Word, in which the union of the divine and the human is ineffably accomplished (Cyril of Alexandria). St. Augustine echoes the text of St. Peter in Sermo XIII, but the Pelagian controversy forces him to develop rather the dynamic concept of Grace in the sense of supernatural activity under the influence of God.
The scholastics, especially St. Thomas, instead return to the fruitful conception of the Greek Fathers and, with the aid of the Aristotelian theory of habits, reconnect divi-
nization with sanctifying Grace as an entitative habit infused by God, which confers upon the soul a deiform mode of being. St. Thomas explains the c. d. through quamdam regenerationem sive recreationem, which is accomplished through the infusion of Grace into the essence of the soul (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 110, a. 4), whereby man becomes like God.
The Church’s magisterium has confirmed this traditional doctrine. Among the propositions of Baius condemned by Pius V is the 42nd, which denies sanctifying Grace “ qua adoptatur homo in filium Dei et secundum interiorem hominem renoatur ac divinae naturae consors efficitur ” (Denz-U, 1042). Leo XIII, in the encyclical Divinum illud (AAS, 29 [1897], p. 644), recalls the concept of man “ regenerati et creaturae novae et consorti divinae naturae et filii Dei et deificis ”. Finally, Pius XII, in the encyclical Mystici Corporis (AAS, 35 [1943], p. 214), teaches that the Word became incarnate in order to make men consortes... divinae naturae in this life through Grace, and in the next through the beatific vision.
Modern theologians investigate deeply the nature of this c. d., seeking on the one hand to avoid the concept of a formal divine participation in the pantheistic sense (as claimed by the pseudo-mystics: Molinos, the Quietists), and on the other hand the concept of a participation reduced to mere imitation in the moral order (as the semi-rationalists would have it).
Following a middle way, one may say that Grace impresses upon the soul a supernatural image of God, whereby man acquires a mode of being similar to the divine and a tendency to act—that is, to think and will—in the divine manner. It is therefore a dynamic image or, as another theologian (De la Taille) acutely suggests, an actualization of the soul by the divine nature similar to that which occurs in Christ’s human nature by virtue of the hypostatic union and in the souls of the blessed, which through the light of glory are elevated to the direct intuition of the divine essence (v. GIUSTIFICAZIONE; INABITAZIONE DI DIO NELL'UOMO).