The Two Wings

A Greek- and Arabic-speaking Syrian Christian, St. John Damascene was massively influential on Aquinas’ thought, especially on the issue of the worship of religious images. Aquinas borrows Damascene’s account of the use of externals in worship as grounded on the hylemorphic nature of human beings, and on the nature of human knowledge, which begins with the senses and only thereby reaches intelligible and spiritual realities. Hence, physical religious practices such as eastward prayer, ‘adoration’—bodily postures such as bowing, kneeling, prostrations, etc.—as well as the offering of sacrifices and the use of icons or religious images are means whereby the human mind is led by the senses to the contemplation of higher realities. Within this context Aquinas defends Damascene’s theory of the proper type of worship due to icons of Christ in particular, offering philosophical grounds for the bold claim that images of Christ are deserving of the worship of latria. We offer latria to these icons, not because they ar