In his work defending traditional Catholic/Trinitarian Christology, Joseph Pohle wrote the following in defence of “The Adorableness of Christ’s Humanity”:
Thesis II: Because of its Hypostatic Union with the Logos, the humanity of our Lord is entitled to divine worship in itself, though not for its own sake.
This proposition, though not an article of faith, is generally held to be a revealed truth (fidei proximum saltem).
Proof. Let us first determine the state of the question. There is a large distinction between the two propositions: “The humanity of Christ is adored in itself,” and “The humanity of Christ is adored for its own sake.”
The former proposition means that the human nature of Christ is the immediate terminus or object of divine worship (obiectum material, sed partiale); the latter, that it is its motive or formal object. To assert the latter would be false and blasphemous, because the sacred humanity of Christ is essentially a creature. The adorability of Christ’s human nature does not rest upon a Monophysitic deification, but simply and solely on the Hypostatic Union. Christ’s humanity did not exist apart from the Logos, but was assumed into the latter as a quasi-part. Whatever belongs to a person substantially (as in this case the humanity of Christ), is worthy of the same specific veneration as the person himself. The veneration exhibited to a monarch, e.g., is not limited to his soul, but extends to his body, and is in both respects a cultus absolutus, directed primarily to the royal personage and only in a secondary manner to whatever essentially belongs to that personage. Hence John Wiclif was wrong in asserting that the sacred humanity of our Lord is entitled to relative worship only. The union of Divinity and humanity in the Godman creates more than a more moral bond.
The malicious insinuation of the Jansenist Council of Pistoia (1794), that “direct adoration of the manhood of Christ is equivalent to rendering divine honors to a creature,” was formally condemned by Pope Pius VI.
a) That the sacred humanity of our Lord is a fit material object of divine adoration (obiectum material partiale) can be proved from Sacred Scripture and the unanimous teaching of the Fathers.
Cfr. Apoc. V, 12: “The lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and benediction.”
The Fathers adduce the following reasons:
a) If we were not permitted to adore the sacred humanity of our Redeemer directly, i.e., in itself, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, i.e., the Divine Logos, since the Incarnation would be deprived of the worship of latria; for the Incarnate Word exists only as Godman. This argument is made much of by St. Athanasius, who says among other things: “We by no means adore a creature; this is an error of the heathen and the Arians. But we do adore the Lord of the creature, the God-Logos made flesh. For although the flesh is of itself something created, it has become the body of God. But in adoring this body we do not separate it from the Logos, nor do we detach the Logos, when we wish to adore Him, from His flesh . . . Who, then, is so foolish as to say to the Lord: ‘Depart from Thy body, that I may adore Thee’?” St. Epiphanius expresses himself in similar language. “Let no one say to the Only-begotten: Put away Thy body, that I may adore Thee, but adore the Only-begotten One with the body, the Uncreated One with the temple which He assumed at His descent.”
β) The assertion of the Apollinarists that those who worship the sacred humanity of our Lord adore a man and mere flesh, it a shameless calumny which St. Athanasius thus indignantly repels in the first of his Two Books Against Apollinaris: “Again you say: ‘We do not adore the creature.’ Ye fools! Why do you not consider that the created body of the Lord must receive more than the veneration which is due to the creature? For it has become the body of the increate Logos, and you adore Him whose body it is. [This body], therefore, is adored with due divine worship, because God is the Logos whose body it is. Thus the women . . . embraced his feet and adored. They held the feet, but adored God.”
γ) Since the sacred humanity of Christ is in itself adorable, we must also render divine worship to His body and blood as really and truly present in the Holy Eucharist. In an explanation of Psalm XCVIII, 5 St. Ambrose remarks: “Per scabellum terra intelligitur, per terram autem caro Christi, quam hodie quoque in mysteriis [sc. Eucharistiae] adoramus et quam Apostoli in Domino Iesu adorarunt. Neque emim divisus est Christus, sed unus.” St. Augustine expounds the same text as follows: “Adorate scabellum pedum eius. Fluctuans converto me ad Christum, quia ipsum quaero hic, et invenio quomodo sine impietate adoretur terra . . . et scabellum pedum eius. Suscepit enim de terra terram, quia caro de terra est et de carne Mariae carnem suscept. Et quia in hac ipsa carne hic ambulavit et ipsam carnem nobis manducandam ad salutem dedit—nemo autem illam carnem manducat, nisi prius adoraverit—inventum est, quemadmodum adoretur tale scabelum pedum Domini et non solum non pecceum adorando sed peccemus non adorando.”
δ) The worship we render to the sacred humanity of our Lord is not idolatry, because we do not adore mere flesh, but flesh hypostatically united with the Divine Logos. St. John Damascene develops this through with an acuteness which might almost be termed Scholastic. “the flesh is not to be adored in its own nature,” he says, “but it is adored with the Incarnate Logos, not indeed for its own sake, but for the sake of its Logos, with whom it is hypostatically united. For we do not profess that it is the naked, simple flesh which is adored, but the flesh of God or God made flesh.” (Joseph Pohle, Christology: A Dogmatic Treatise on the Incarnation [2d ed.; St. Louis, Miss.: B. Herder, 1913], 283-87)
