Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
In the case of an image of a saint, the worship would not be latria but rather dulia, while the Blessed Virgin Mary receives hyperdulia. The worship of whatever type, latria, hyperdulia, or dulia, can be considered to go through the icon, image, or statue: "The honor given to an image reaches to the prototype" (St. John Damascene in Summa ³).
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.
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]
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.
Both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions view Mary as subordinate to Christ, but uniquely so, in that she is seen as above all other creatures. In 787 the Second Council of Nicaea affirmed a three-level hierarchy of latria, hyperdulia, and dulia that applies to God, the Virgin Mary, and then to the other saints. [6] [7]