Summa III, Q. 25, Arts. 1–3: One Adoration of Christ, Latria for His Humanity, and Adoring His Image

Orientation #

He begins the twenty-fifth question, on the adoration of Christ, noting from the prologue that this and question 26 (Christ as our mediator) complete the things belonging to Christ as a consequence of the union, after which come the things he did and suffered. Verified sources place articles 1–3 in this session. The previous class treated the predestination of Christ.

The class, in order #

1. Opening prayer and the prologue (“adoro te devote, the first word”) #

Anecdote: in his home parish, Nativity in St. Paul, Minnesota, workmen repainting the wooden baldachin over the altar found faded gold words — Adoro te devote, Thomas’s hymn; the parish was delighted to find it had been “following Thomas.”

The prologue: after what pertains to Christ in comparison to the Father comes what pertains to him in comparison to us — first his adoration, second his mediatorship (q. 26).

He lists the articles: (1) whether by one and the same adoration the divinity and humanity of Christ are adored; (2) whether his flesh is adored by latria — “latria is an adoration given to God himself”; (3) whether latria is shown to the image of Christ; (4) to the cross; then his mother; then the relics of the saints. He miscounts aloud — “four things are asked, huh? Six things — did I say four?” — and does not settle the number.

Aside on relics: Thomas’s own relics are dispersed; St. Catherine’s head is in one place, her body elsewhere, a foot in a church he has visited — “they used to fight about these things too.”

2. Article 1, the three objections (“Pretty convincing arguments, huh?”) #

1. The divinity is common to Father and Son (John 5: all honor the Son as they honor the Father), but the humanity is not common to him and the Father; so not the same adoration.
2. Honor is properly the reward of virtue (Nicomachean Ethics IV), and virtue merits its reward through its act; since the divine and human operations in Christ differ, the honors differ. Aside: Aristotle set up a monument to Plato as “the first man to show by both word and deed that the happy life is the virtuous life” — an honor to the chief philosopher before him.
3. Christ’s soul, even unattached to the Word, would deserve veneration for its wisdom and grace (“full of grace and truth”); union with the Word takes nothing of its dignity away; so it deserves its own veneration.

Sed contra: the chapters of the Fifth Synod anathematize anyone who says Christ is adored in two natures with two adorations, rather than the Word incarnate with his own flesh by one adoration, as handed down from the beginning.

He ties this back to the opening prayer: the angel does three things — strengthens the light of the mind, orders the images, arouses us to consider more correctly. The objections “sound pretty correct to me, but apparently isn’t.”

3. Article 1, the body: honored one vs. cause of honor (“honor is shown to the whole thing that subsists”) #

The distinction: in the one honored, consider (a) whom the honor is shown to, (b) the cause of honor.

• (a) Honor is shown to the whole subsisting thing. We do not say a man’s hand is honored but that the man is; if a hand or foot is said to be honored, the whole is honored in the part. Example: in Rome they venerate the arm of Francis Xavier — “the arm that baptized thousands.” Likewise the Unknown Soldier: all soldiers are honored. A man can be honored in something outside himself — his vestment, his image, his messenger.
• (b) The cause of honor is an excellence: “honor is reverence shown to someone on account of his excellence” — honor defined through reverence. One man may be honored for prelateship, knowledge and virtue: one honor on the side of the one honored, many on the side of the causes.

Conclusion: in Christ there is one person, one hypostasis, one suppositum, so one adoration and one honor from the side of the one adored; many, in a manner of speaking, from the side of the causes (uncreated wisdom, created wisdom). Were there many persons or hypostases, there would be many adorations simpliciter. This is what the synods reprobate: Cyril anathematizes whoever “dares to say” the man assumed should be co-adored with God the Word as one with another.

Aside on audacia: the motto of the Enlightenment, Aude sapere, “dare to know” — “right out of the serpent’s mouth”; audacity is dangerous in the life of the mind.

4. Article 1, the three replies (“in the Trinity there are three who are honored”) #

1. The reversal, which he calls interesting: in the Trinity there are three honored but one cause of honor (the divine nature); in the Incarnation it is the reverse — one honored, two causes (his divinity and his humanity). “Two mysteries that kind of reverse of each other.”
2. It is not the operation that is honored but the one who operates; operation is the reason for honor. Example: the Medal of Honor is not given to the deed but to the soldier, and he is honored because of what he did. Aside: a student of his, an army man of 34 years, insisted it is not the “Congressional” Medal of Honor but simply the Medal of Honor — not to be tarnished by association.
3. If Christ’s soul were not united to the Word it would be the chief thing in that man and honor would be owed chiefly to it; but being united to a more worthy person, honor is owed chiefly to that person. The soul’s dignity is not diminished but increased by being joined to something nobler.

5. Article 2, objections: may the humanity receive latria? (“owed to the creature alone — Creator”) #

1. The gloss on Psalm 98 (“adore the footstool of his feet”) says the flesh taken on by the Word is adored by us without impiety — “no one eats his flesh spiritually unless he first adores” — but not by the adoration of latria, which is owed to the Creator alone. (He first says “creature,” students correct him; “half asleep today.”) Aside: Thomas is said to have paused after consecrating to say Adoro te devote — “so you can adore him before you can receive him.”
2. Latria is owed to no creature; the Gentiles are reproved for worshipping the creature (Rom. 1); Christ’s humanity is a creature.
3. Latria is owed to God in recognition of his supreme dominion (Deut. 6:13); but Christ as man is less than the Father.

Sed contra: Damascene (book IV) — the flesh of Christ is adored, the Word being incarnate, not on account of itself but on account of its hypostatic union with the Word; and the gloss on the Psalm: who adores the body of Christ does not look upon the earth but on that of which it is the footstool.

6. Article 2, body: latria and dulia in one person (“nor is this inconvenient”) #

Recalling the previous body — honor of adoration is owed to the subsisting hypostasis, though the reason of honor may be something non-subsisting — the adoration of Christ’s humanity is understood two ways:

1. As of the thing adored: to adore the flesh of Christ is nothing other than to adore the Word made flesh — “just as to adore the vestment of the King is nothing other than to adore the King.” This is latria.
2. By reason of the humanity’s own perfection with every gift of grace: this is not latria but dulia. (A student asks how “dulia” is translated — is it just anglicized? He answers: dulia is honor, but not the honor given to God alone; latria is the name of the honor owed to God alone.)

So the same person of Christ is adored with latria for his divinity and dulia for the perfection of his humanity. Not unsuitable: the Father himself is owed latria for his divinity and dulia for the dominion by which he governs creatures — gloss on Psalm 7: “He is Lord of all by his power, to which dulia is owed; God of all by creation, to which latria is owed.”

7. Article 2, replies and hyperdulia (“a certain more excellent one — hyperdulia”) #

1. The gloss does not mean the flesh is adored apart from the divinity; that could happen only if the hypostasis of God and of man were different. Damascene: if you divide by subtle thoughts what is seen from what is understood, he is not adorable as creature, i.e. not by latria; so understood as separated from the Word, dulia would be owed — not common dulia shown to other creatures, but a more excellent kind, sometimes called hyperdulia. 2–3. Latria is shown to Christ’s humanity not by reason of itself but by reason of the divinity to which it is united, according to which Christ is not less than the Father.

A student raises Mary’s hyperdulia; he notes Thomas here uses the term of Christ’s humanity, and that the article on the Virgin comes later — left unresolved in the exchange.

8. Digression: iconoclasm and holiday stamps (“they’re kind of iconoclastic”) #

Before article 3 he wonders what Muslims would make of it — they allow no representation; “the first Protestants.” Students discuss post-office seasonal stamps: Kwanzaa, Christmas, a Muslim one bearing only the Arabic word for feast, no image; a nativity scene on a stamp would be thrown out in some shops. Whether the feast is a particular one (Isaac?) is left uncertain.

9. Article 3, objections: the image of Christ (“the devil can quote scripture”) #

1. Exodus 20:4 — you shall not make any graven likeness; no adoration may be against God’s precept.
2. We must not communicate with the works of the Gentiles (Eph. 5), who are guilty of changing the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of corruptible man.
3. Latria is owed to Christ by reason of his divinity; yet even the image of the divinity impressed on the rational soul does not receive latria — much less a bodily image representing his humanity.
4. Nothing should be done in divine worship except what God instituted (Paul on the sacrifice: “I received from the Lord what I handed on to you”); no tradition in Scripture about adoring images.

He praises the objections — “so Thomas can attack the faith better than the people who don’t have it; knowledge is of opposites.” Aside: he and his brother Mark found they could satirize their own political position better than the opposite one.

Sed contra: Damascene citing Basil — “the honor of the image arrives at the prototype,” the exemplar; but the exemplar, Christ, is adored with latria.

10. Article 3, body: the twofold motion toward an image (“one and the same with that which is in the thing”) #

From Aristotle, On Memory and Recollection (one of the little books following the three on the soul): the soul moves toward an image twofold — (1) toward the image as a certain thing in itself; (2) toward it as image of another. The first motion is other than the motion toward the thing; the second is one and the same with the motion toward the thing.

Therefore: to the image of Christ as a thing — a piece of sculpted or painted wood — no reverence is due, since reverence is owed only to a rational nature. It is reverenced only as image; hence the same reverence goes to the image and to Christ; and since Christ is adored with latria, so is his image.

His example: a picture of someone we do not know — we merely look at the interesting face; a picture of someone we know carries us to the person himself and the scene, and we rejoice or groan in the thing itself through the image.

11. Article 3, replies: precept, Gentiles, the soul, tradition (“the making of likeness is not prohibited”) #

1. Exodus forbids not making a likeness but making it in order to adore it — “you shall not adore it nor worship it.” Since the motion to the image and to the thing is one, forbidding adoration of the thing forbids adoration of its image: the Gentiles’ images of their gods, i.e. demons (“you shall not have alien gods before me”). To the true God, being incorporeal, no bodily image can be set: Damascene calls it the greatest insipientia — he glosses via Thomas’s sapida scientia, savory knowledge, so “greatest tastelessness” — and impiety to make a figure of the divine. But since in the New Testament God was made man, he can be adored in his bodily image.
   • Aside: the Sistine Chapel’s God the Father; he cautions about Renaissance artists, since the medieval custom was not to depict the Father, no one having seen him. A student notes certain images are of the Trinity as recorded in Scripture, a typology; another raises Isaiah’s vision — he saw something the angels figured for him.
2. The Apostle forbids sharing the fruitless works of the Gentiles, not their useful ones (“whatever is good, whatever is true”). Adoring images is fruitless on two counts: they adored the images as things, believing some divine power in them because of demons’ responses and marvelous effects; and because of the creatures the images represented, which they venerated with latria. We adore the image of Christ, who is true God, not for the image but for the thing imaged. Aside: Heraclitus — “they talk to these statues as if a man should talk to his house” (the early fragments criticizing anthropomorphic gods).
3. To a rational creature reverence is owed on its own account, so latria shown to a man bearing the image could occasion error — the adorer’s motion stops at the man as a thing and is not borne to God whose image he is. This cannot happen with a sculpted or painted image. Hence, he notes, we should not adore the image of God in other men.
4. The apostles, by a familiar instinct of the Holy Spirit, handed down things to be observed not left in writing but kept in the church’s observance through the succession of the faithful — “hold the traditions you have learned, whether by word or by letter.” Among these is the adoration of images of Christ; whence St. Luke is said to have painted an image of Christ kept at Rome.
   • Students debate which image: Salus Populi Romani at St. Mary Major, Our Lady of Good Counsel, Perpetual Help (the Redemptorists’) — all variously attributed to Luke; the identification is left unsettled. Joke: Luke “beat Henry Ford to the mass effect — painters paint the same thing.”

12. Closing exchange: tradition and the ordination of women (“mainly under tradition”) #

He notes the Pope seems to argue against ordaining women chiefly from tradition rather than from the written text. His own preferred argument: the sacrificial lamb had to be without blemish and male; if the figure of Christ had to be male, so must he be. A student replies there are also arguments from natural reason; he grants it, adding that the reason Thomas gives would be rejected by feminists today, and quotes Father Boulay: “you can’t teach the church’s doctrine of a woman today.” Another student offers his mother’s argument from the seal of confession as also an argument from reason. Class ends there.

His words #

• baldachino — the canopy over the altar of his home parish.
• latria — “an adoration given to God himself”; the honor owed to God alone.
• dulia — “honor, but not the honor given to God alone”; he notes it is simply anglicized, not translated.
• hyperdulia — “hyper, above”: a dulia more excellent than that shown to other creatures.
• honor — “reverence shown to someone on account of his excellence.”
• hypostasis / suppositum / person — the one subsisting thing to which honor is shown; “we saw what those words meant before.”
• simpliciter (loquendo) — speaking without qualification: only one adoration, since only one person.
• audacia / Aude sapere — “dare to know,” the Enlightenment motto, “right out of the serpent’s mouth.”
• prototype / exemplar — Basil’s term: the honor of the image arrives at the prototype.
• insipientia — “greatest tastelessness,” glossed against wisdom as sapida scientia, savory knowledge.
• communicatio in sacris — joked about the Huguenot restaurant.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 25, prologue; a. 1; a. 2; a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies throughout).
• Cited within those articles and read aloud: John 5; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IV; chapters of the Fifth Synod; chapters of Cyril; Psalm 98 with gloss; Romans 1; Deuteronomy 6:13; Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa IV; Psalm 7 with gloss; Exodus 20:4; Ephesians 5; 1 Corinthians on the handing on of the sacrifice (inferred); Basil via Damascene; Aristotle, On Memory and Recollection; 2 Thessalonians on holding the traditions (inferred).

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote.
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 26 (Christ as mediator) — announced as next.
• Heraclitus, fragment on talking to statues.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (inferred) — a passing “fifth book of names / wisdom,” garbled.
• Isaiah’s vision, via a commentary a student was reading.

His questions #

• Whether the divinity and humanity of Christ are adored by one and the same adoration. One adoration, because there is one person, hypostasis and suppositum; many only on the side of the causes of honor.
• Is the hand honored, or the man? The man; the part is honored only as the whole is honored in it.
• What does dulia mean? Honor, but not the honor given to God alone — latria being the name of the honor owed to God alone.
• Whether Christ’s humanity is adored by latria. Yes, as the thing adored (the Word made flesh); but dulia, by reason of the humanity’s own perfection.
• Is Mary’s honor the hyperdulia Thomas names here? Left open; the article on the Virgin comes later.
• Whether the image of Christ is adored by latria. Yes — not as a piece of wood, but as image, since the motion toward the image as image is the same as the motion toward the thing.
• Should we adore the image of God in other men? No — the danger is that the motion stops at the man as a thing and is not borne to God.
• Which image did St. Luke paint, and where is it? Left open; Salus Populi Romani, Good Counsel and Perpetual Help are all proposed.
• Is the lamb-without-blemish-and-male a good argument against ordaining women? He offers it; students answer that there are also arguments from natural reason — left undecided.