Aristotle in his book "Politics", teaches us that Nature is what the being tends to be in its development, example: the nature of the worm is the butterfly
Then and following this reasoning, arises the question: What is the nature of man? What tends the man in his development? We can say, and this is according to philosophy, that man tend to adulthood or the nature of man is the adult man.
And what is the adult man according to the bible? The adult man is the man gifted of counsel, the counsel is not prudence.
Prudence is associated with the powers of the soul:imagination and fantasy, example: "be prudent imagine ...". Instead the council is associated with the powers of the spirit which are intuition, inspiration, creativity.
The council is: listen, meditate, decide. The council has two characteristics: precision and accuracy. Practical cases of Council are: Jesus and the denarius (Mark 12), Jesus and the prostitute (John 8). The council is a superior instance of the prudence and trascend human reason. The council is known as "great prudence", "esact justice", "sacred listening".
The prudent man lacks, lacks from the use of the spiritual faculties. The reason and therefore Prudence, being the prudence the maximun virtue of the reason, afected by passion can fail, particulary the reason may be not enough to reach the truth in cases where the deception and the cunning are present.
And what is the council? To understand what is the council you have to understand the concepts of imitation and emulation. To imitate is to replicate a behavior. Imitate God is the Golden Rule: "Do for others what you would like them to do for you," the Golden Rule is known as the Gift of Retitude. Emulate instead is imitate with the desire to match as Aristotle says in his book Rhetoric, Aristotle goes on and say that the emulation is the opposite of contempt, the great personalities are emulated. The council is to emulate God, capturing the spirit, the personality of God. Therefore we conclude that the nature of man, according to the bible, is the conformity to God or to say the emulation of God, and this conclusion is very important remember that the genesis tells us that God made man in his image and likeness. For what?? To emulate him and carry on with the design of the Providence.