DIVINE CONSORTIUM. - This is a theological expression, derived from Sacred Scripture (2 Pt. 1:4), which signifies that mysterious divine participation to which man is elevated by means of sanctifying Grace (v.).
In the cited verse of 2 Pt. we read: "Through these (glory and power of God) he has granted us the precious and magnificent promised goods, so that, through these, you may become partakers of the divine nature... θείας κοινωνοί φύσεως." The term κοινωνός (κοινωνός) used by St. Peter also in the First Letter (5:1), is likewise found in St. John (Jn. 1:3) and in St. Paul (1 Cor. 1:9; Phil. 3:10); with the meaning of communion, divine participation, which is linked to the idea of adoptive filiation (v. ADOPTION, SUPERNATURAL) by virtue of a regeneration of man reborn from God; an idea not unknown to St. Peter (1 Pt. 1:3 and 23), frequent in the other two Apostles (Jn. 1:12-13; 1 Jn. 3:1; Rom. 8:14-15; Gal. 4:4 ff.; Eph. 1:5 ff.). The term κοινωνός and its related meaning thus belong to the evangelical climate. St. Peter emphasizes the object of the participation, which is the divine nature (θείας φύσεως, used by Plato and other classical authors as equivalent to "true Divinity"). The Vulgate translates κοινωνός as consortes, whence the term c.
The ancient and recent exegesis of the difficult passage of St. Peter leads to this interpretation: the Christian enlightened by faith receives from God precious gifts (Grace and infused virtues), by which he enters into participation in the very life of God, initially on this earth, 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 θεοποίησις or divinization of man, which sums up the entire economy of the Redemption and of Grace. The theological development matures in two phases, one Trinitarian and the other Christological. In the first, divinization is connected to the action of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, who, being of the same divine nature as the Father, make the Christian an adoptive son of God and therefore a partaker of his nature (Athanasius and Basil). In the Christological phase, divinization is presented as a reproduction of the hypostatic 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, return instead to the fruitful conception of the Greek Fathers and, with the help of the Aristotelian theory of habits, reconnect divinization with sanctifying Grace as an entitative habit infused by God, which confers on the soul a deiform mode of being. St. Thomas explains the so-called [divine consortium] through a quamdam regenerationem sive recreationem, which is accomplished with the infusion of Grace into the essence of the soul (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 110, a. 4), whereby man becomes like God.
The magisterium of the Church 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 renovatur 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 consortis divinae naturae et filii Dei et deifici ". Finally Pius XII in the encyclical Mystici Corporis (AAS, 35 [1943], p. 214) teaches that the Word became incarnate to make men consortes... divinae naturae in this life through Grace, in the next through the beatific vision.
Modern theologians investigate in depth the nature of this divine consortium, seeking to avoid on the one hand the concept of a formal divine participation in a pantheistic sense (as the pseudo-mystics claim: 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).
Holding a middle way, one may say that Grace imprints on the soul a supernatural image of God, whereby man acquires a mode of being similar to the divine one and a tendency to act, that is, to think and to will in the divine manner. A dynamic image therefore or, as another theologian acutely suggests (De la Taille), an actuation of the soul by the divine nature similar to that which occurs in the human nature of Christ by virtue of the hypostatic union and in the souls of the blessed, which by the light of glory is elevated to the direct intuition of the divine essence (v. SANCTIFYING GRACE; INDWELLING OF GOD IN MAN).