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Latria or Adoration is sacrificial in character, and may be offered only to God. Catholic and Orthodox Christians offer other degrees of reverence to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, John the Baptist, and to the other saints; these non-sacrificial types of reverence are called hyperdulia, protodulia and dulia, respectively.
In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin writes that "(t)he distinction of what is called dulia and latria was invented for the very purpose of permitting divine honours to be paid to angels and dead men with apparent impunity". [34] Veneration is, therefore, considered a type of blasphemy by Luther and some Protestants.
Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church make a major distinction between latria, the worship that is offered to God alone, and dulia, which is veneration offered to the saints, including the veneration of Mary, whose veneration is often referred to as hyperdulia.
Latria (from the Greek λατρεία, latreia) is used for worship, adoration and reverence directed only to the Holy Trinity. [12] Dulia (from the Greek δουλεία, douleia) is the kind of honor given to the communion of saints, while the Blessed Virgin Mary is honored with hyperdulia, a higher form of dulia but lower than latria. [13]
The term hyperdulia indicates the special veneration due to Mary, greater than the ordinary dulia for other saints, but utterly unlike the latria due only to God. Belief in the incarnation of God the Son through Mary is the basis for calling her the Mother of God, which was declared a dogma at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
The term dulia is used for saints in general and hyperdulia (below latria, above dulia) for the Virgin Mary. [11] The definition of the three level hierarchy of latria , hyperdulia and dulia goes back to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.
In Roman Catholic theology, the term hyperdulia is reserved for Marian veneration, latria for the worship of God, and dulia for the veneration of other saints and angels. [295] The definition of the three level hierarchy of latria, hyperdulia and dulia goes back to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. [296]
The Eastern Orthodox Church has differentiated between latria and dulia. A latria is the worship due God, and latria to anyone or anything other than God is doctrinally forbidden by the Orthodox Church; however dulia has been defined as veneration of religious images, statues or icons which is not only allowed but obligatory. [82]