Recently a somewhat popular Orthodox YouTuber named David TheRealMedWhite released a video making a series of arguments against the western devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Given several of his arguments against the devotion directly touch on arguments I have previously made in favor of the devotion, I figured it was worthwhile for me to address this video, especially because David appears to have made some grave errors that merit a response. I want to say from the outset here that I have nothing against David personally, insofar as we are both members of Christ’s Body the Church, he is my brother in the Lord, and this article is not intending to cause scandal or division, but rather to bring out and defend the truth of the Orthodox faith.

I want to start this article by explaining why I, as an Orthodox Christian, am defending the Sacred Heart devotion in the first place. After all, haven’t Orthodox theologians like Fr. Michael Pomazansky already “settled” the issue by writing against this devotion? The answer to that is simply no, for two reasons. First, a single theologian writing against a liturgical practice isn’t enough to dispel it, otherwise we could say something like Iconodulism is heretical given it was condemned by the early theologian St. Epiphanius. Second, the Sacred Heart devotion has been accepted by much of the Orthodox Western Rite, receiving endorsement from members of their clergy such as the Vicar General of the Antiochian Western Rite, Fr. Edward Hughes, who wrote of the devotion, “As conceived by the Roman Church, this devotion [to the Sacred Heart] is commendable. It encourages fervor and love of God, true repentance, and the desire to serve” (Paraliturgical Devotions of the West, p. 16). The devotion has also been endorsed by Fr. John Winfrey, the author of one of the most popular Western Rite prayer books, “The Saint Ambrose Prayer Book,” wherein he explains that “Devotion to the Sacred Heart bestows a deeper insight into the Divine love and a surer confidence in it,” after which he writes out the prayers that Orthodox are to say to the Lord’s Sacred Heart, one of which is:

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I love Thee, and want to love Thee more and more.

O Jesus, meek and humble of Heart, make my heart like unto Thy Most Sacred Heart.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, mayest Thou be known, and loved, and worshipped throughout the whole world.

Heart of Jesus, burning with love of us, inflame our hearts with love of Thee.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, Thy kingdom come!

And indeed, many of these prayers that Fr. Winfrey outlines have made their way into the Western Rite’s celebration of the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which takes place each year in June. My point in saying all of this isn’t to definitively prove that the Sacred Heart is an acceptable devotion within Orthodoxy (otherwise I could just end the article right here), because as David mentions in his video, just because something has made its way into the life of Orthodoxy doesn’t mean it’s automatically acceptable, as abuses are possible and indeed very common these days. Rather the reason I’m making this point is to explain why I think the Sacred Heart is worthy to defend as an Orthodox Christian: I’m not trying to subvert the faith into becoming more like Roman Catholicism, rather I’m simply defending a practice that has become normative within western Orthodox piety. With that in mind, let’s get into addressing David’s video.

In order to give David a proper and charitable response, it’s very important that we properly understand what exactly his argument against the Sacred Heart devotion is. Luckily for us, there are numerous points in the video where David lays the argument out in simple terms, and so to avoid the risk of misrepresenting him, I’ll simply quote David’s exact words:

“[The problem is] the Sacred Heart introduces two worships to Christ: there is one worship to His Person, and another to His Heart.” (Around 12:10)

“The argument [against the Sacred Heart] is that you introduce something new to worship, so that now it’s not just one and the same Christ, but it’s one and another being worshipped. The one being Christ and the other being the Heart. That’s the main problem here. [The] Sacred Heart introduces a new worship, so now you have two worships of Christ, which is precisely what the eighth anathema of Ephesus I is speaking against.” (Around 16:20)

As is clear, David’s main critique of the Sacred Heart devotion is that it introduces something new (the Heart) to be worshipped alongside the Person of Christ. David says that if you worship the Sacred Heart of Jesus then you are creating a subject other than the Second Person of the Trinity that is being given the one worship that is due to God alone. As evidence of this, David cites the Eighth Anathema of the Council of Ephesus, which is worth quoting in full:

“If anyone shall dare to say that the assumed man (ἀναληφθέντα) ought to be worshipped together with God the Word, and glorified together with him, and recognised together with him as God, and yet as two different things, the one with the other (for this Together with is added [i.e., by the Nestorians] to convey this meaning); and shall not rather with one adoration worship the Emmanuel and pay to him one glorification, as [it is written] The Word was made flesh: let him be anathema.” (Council of Ephesus +431, Eighth Anathema of St. Cyril Against Nestorius)

Although I directly dealt with this objection to the Sacred Heart in my previous article on the topic, I’m happy to reiterate why this anathema, contra David, cannot be used against the devotion. As readers familiar with the work of Fr. John McGuckin will know, the heart of St. Cyril’s argument against Nestorianism (as a system) is that it introduces a second subject alongside the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and thus when Nestorians worship Jesus, they are in fact worshipping the divine subject of the Son together with the human subject of the Son, and this is why, despite Nestorius denying it, St. Cyril consistently accused Nestorius of teaching a “two sons doctrine,” because as David rightly points out in his video, this is the logical conclusion of Nestorius’ actual beliefs. Thus, what Ephesus I is anathematizing in its Eighth Anathema is the worship owed to God alone being paid to two different subjects, one being the “assumed man” and the other being the Second Person of the Trinity, rather than paying one worship to the Second Person of the Trinity and only Him.

So in order to see whether or not the Sacred Heart devotion violates this anathema, we have to ask the question: does worshipping the Heart of Jesus thereby turn His Heart into a human subject to whom we are paying worship together with the Second Person of the Trinity? Although it may appear this way at first, the answer is most definitely no. The reason for this is actually explained in the video that David was responding to. ClassicalTheist explains that worshipping an aspect of the Logos’ assumed humanity is not Nestorianism for the very same reason that worshipping the Eucharist is not Nestorianism: because Christ’s humanity, in all of its individual parts (in this case, His Body and Blood), is not a second subject alongside the eternal Word, but rather every aspect of Christ’s humanity has as its subject the eternal Word, it therefore follows that the only subject of the one adoration being paid to Christ’s Body and Blood is the Second Person of the Trinity, i.e. the one to whom the Body and Blood belong. What was David’s response to this? Quite shockingly, he only offered the following rebuttal:

ClassicalTheist: “I don’t see how this argument wouldn’t also apply to the blessed sacrament, the Eucharist…” David: “That’s because we don’t have eucharistic adoration [worship], so that applies to you and not us.” (Around 17:05)

“There is no eucharistic adoration [worship] in John 6.” (Around 17:40)

“[In response to ClassicalTheist saying we worship the Body and Blood of Christ] Again we don’t have eucharistic adoration, Christ says take eat this is my body, He doesn’t say take [and] worship. There is not a single instance where He says take worship, He says take eat.” (Around 18:30)

It would seem that, rather than explaining how it is that worshipping the Body and Blood of Christ is different from worshipping the Sacred Heart of Christ, David completely rejects the idea that we worship Christ’s Body and Blood by saying that this “only applies to [Roman Catholics] and not us [Orthodox],” thereby implying that the Orthodox Church teaches that we do not worship the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. This is incredibly problematic because, in the Orthodox Church, we have dogmatic decrees teaching the exact opposite of David’s argument. The 1672 Pan-Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem (which is dogmatic), when condemning Protestant errors regarding the Eucharist, teaches us the following:

Further, that the Body Itself of the Lord and the Blood That are in the Mystery of the Eucharist ought to be honored in the highest manner, and adored with latria [Gk: adoration or worship]. For one is the adoration of the Holy Trinity, and of the Body and Blood of the Lord. Further, that it is a true and propitiatory Sacrifice offered for all Orthodox, living and dead; and for the benefit of all, as is set forth expressly in the prayers of the Mystery delivered to the Church by the Apostles, in accordance with the command they received of the Lord. (The Confession of Dositheus, Decree 17)

As is clear, the dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church is that we worship “the Body Itself of the Lord and the Blood that are in the Mystery of the Eucharist” with the worship of “latria,” which is the “one adoration” due to God as Trinity “and the Body and Blood of the Lord.” This is quite striking because, as anyone familiar with the Church’s Tradition will know, the Seventh Ecumenical Council dogmatized a distinction between the worship of “dulia,” which is the worship or veneration that we give to God, men, and other sacred created things, and the worship of “latria,” which is the worship that we give to God alone. And so, that the Jerusalem Synod says we owe the worship of latria to the (created) Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and indeed that the adoration we pay to the Body and Blood of Christ is the “one adoration” that we pay to the Father, Son, and Spirit (an apparent allusion to the very Eighth Anathema of Ephesus I that also spoke of the “one adoration” due to the subject of the Son), definitively refutes David’s apparent belief that Orthodoxy does not adore/worship the Eucharist.

And so, given David’s only reply to my and ClassicalTheist’s argument regarding the Eucharist and the Sacred Heart was to deny a dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church, it would seem that the initial argument still carries its full force, and that argument is this: The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are two unique aspects of His assumed human nature, in other words, the entirety of Jesus’ humanity cannot simply be reduced to His Body and Blood, because in addition to Body and Blood, our Lord also has properties of humanity such as a head (throughout Scripture, “body” and “head” are distinct), nous, soul, intellect, and so on. Thus, when we “single out” the Body and Blood of our Lord for worship, we are indeed worshipping “parts” of Jesus’ humanity, which are not identical to His Person, with the one adoration (latria) that is due to God alone, per the Jerusalem Synod’s teaching. As I explained above, this is licit in light of the Eighth Anathema of the Council of Ephesus precisely because we recognize that every aspect of Jesus’ assumed humanity has as its subject the eternal Word of God, and so adoring different aspects of Jesus’ humanity is indeed adoring the Second Person of the Trinity because He is the one who assumes those aspects and makes them His own.

With that understood, perhaps David can better appreciate our defense of worshipping the Sacred Heart of Jesus: just as we are able to worship the particular aspects of Jesus’ humanity that are in the Eucharist, namely His Body and Blood (which are distinct from His Person), without thereby becoming Nestorians, so too are we able to worship the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a unique facet of His humanity, without falling into Nestorianism. This is because, following the same logic that has been outlined above, Jesus’ Sacred Heart is not a subject distinct from the Logos whom we are worshipping together with Him, rather the Sacred Heart has as its subject the eternal Logos made flesh, and so the “one adoration” that we pay to the Sacred Heart is indeed being directed towards one subject, who is the Second Person of the Trinity, thereby falling in line with St. Cyril’s Eighth Anathema.

Now, maybe I misunderstood what David was saying and he actually would agree that worshipping the Body and Blood of Jesus is an Orthodox practice. If this is the case then, he might object to some of my reasoning above by saying something along the lines of: “The Eucharist contains the fullness of Jesus’ humanity, not just His Body and Blood, and so this is why we can worship it. However, the Heart is just one part of His humanity and does not fully encompass or express the Logos, thus the Sacred Heart devotion still falls under St. Cyril’s Anathema.” Keep in mind that David did not make this argument (that he didn’t make this argument or one like it is in fact what makes me think he denies that we worship the Eucharist), rather I’m just speculating an argument he or someone else could possibly make in response to what was written above, in order to deepen my own argument. With that in mind, my response to this objection would be the following:

First, the argument that “the Body and Blood of Jesus contain every aspect of His humanity” could just as easily be applied to His Sacred Heart. Because if you argue that “when we say ‘Body and Blood’ of Jesus we aren’t disconnecting these from the rest of His humanity,” you’re still emphasizing worship towards two particular parts His human nature, just as the Sacred Heart devotion emphasizes worship towards one particular part of Jesus’ humanity, while not disconnecting it from the rest of the whole (this will be touched on a bit more below). More importantly, however, this objection changes the initial argument. The initial argument that David made was that you could not give the “one adoration” due to the Person of Christ to anything with Him, in this case, His Heart, otherwise you create “two worships… one worship to His Person, and another to His Heart” to quote David. However, by conceding that we can worship the Body and Blood of Jesus, this means that we can in fact pay latria worship to something alongside Jesus’ Person, in this case, His assumed humanity, which is truly distinct (though not separate) from both His divinity and His Person. If we were to consistently apply the logic of David’s argument, we would be forced to say something like “worshipping the Body and Blood of Jesus is anathema because it introduces two worships, one to the Person of Christ, and another to His human nature,” however because such an argument is heretical according to Orthodox dogma (Synod of Jerusalem), this must mean that the argument itself is invalid, and cannot be salvaged by making a special exception for the Eucharist.

Once it’s understood that the essence of David’s argument is flawed, it should become apparent that the only way to defend our worship of the humanity of Christ in the Eucharist is by accepting the logic I’ve articulated above, namely that we worship Jesus’ Body and Blood not as distinct subjects, but rather as humanity that has as its subject the Person of Christ. If this principle is agreed to, then there’s no reason why it cannot be applied to the Sacred Heart as well: we worship Jesus’ Sacred Heart not as a second subject, but rather as a Heart that has as its subject the Person of Christ. It seemed to me that this was the very argument that ClassicalTheist was making in his video, and to which David was responding, but did David actually understand this argument? It would seem he didn’t, as is evident from the following (absurd) objection he raised in his video:

“[David’s argument is repeated] But you’re gonna say ‘oh but we don’t worship [this part of Christ] without being in the context [of the Person of Christ.]’ Okay, now if you’re gonna make that argument, I’ll bite. Let’s say I accept that. Who gives the humanity of Christ? The Virgin Mary, right? So we can’t speak of the humanity of Christ without excluding the context of the Virgin Mary. So without thinking of the Virgin Mary, we cannot speak of the human nature of Christ, because without her it wouldn’t exist. And since the human nature is a part of the whole that we ascribe to Christ, and the human nature comes from the Virgin Mary, so why don’t we worship the Virgin Mary either then?” (Around 25:00)

“In this system, because the Virgin Mary gave an integral part of the unity of Christ to Christ, you should be able to worship her.” (Around 25:26)

“Saying ‘I worship the Virgin Mary because I’m not worshipping her outside of the context of the whole Person of Christ’ makes sense in [the Sacred Heart] system.” (Around 25:50)

If you’ve been paying attention to what’s written above, it should be obvious just how much David has fundamentally misunderstood our argument in defense of the Sacred Heart. It would seem that David’s understanding of the argument is that worshipping the Sacred Heart of Jesus is allowed because it’s “in the context of the whole Person of Christ,” whatever that means. And so, David reasons, if you can worship anything that is in the context of the Person of Christ, why can’t you worship the Virgin Mary, the one through whom Christ took His humanity in the first place? This is such a silly argument, not just because the phrase “the context of the whole Person of Christ” is undefined and thus meaningless, but also because it just totally misses the point. As I’ve been describing throughout this entire article, in agreement with ClassicalTheist, the reason why worshipping the Sacred Heart is licit isn’t because it’s “in the context” of the Person of Christ, but rather because the Sacred Heart has as its subject the Person of Christ. This is why we are able to worship aspects of Christ’s humanity, but we’re not able to worship the Virgin Mary: Every aspect of Christ’s humanity has as its subject the Second Person of the Trinity, however the Virgin Mary is her own subject as a separate human person. Thus, if we were to worship Mary with latria, we would be committing idolatry because we would be worshipping a personal subject other than the Logos. However, as I’ve repeated many times, the humanity of Christ, in all of its aspects, is not a personal subject, rather it all belongs to the subject of Christ’s Person, to whom it is “unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, [and] inseparably united” per the Council of Chalcedon. Thus, David’s argument here is completely null and void.

Now with all of that out of the way, I want to address some of David’s minor criticisms of the Sacred Heart (minor in the sense of their actual argumentative force), some of which I think are just as important as his major ones. Starting at around 30:00, David gets into a long tirade about how the Sacred Heart devotion has no precedent in the pre-schism Church, and was such a late development that this should cause us to doubt its licitness. Although David and many of his followers believe this to be a slam dunk for some reason, this is really a non-argument. At one point in his video, David asks “why did this devotion develop in the 17th century and not the 3rd or 4th century?,” however what’s the actual argument here? Is it that, in order for a liturgical practice to be licit, it has to come from the “early” Church? If so, what do we define as the “early Church”? When people began to use communion spoons in the 7th century, why didn’t anyone object by saying “but that practice doesn’t come from the early Church!”, with “early Church” most likely referring to the Apostolic Era in those days.

As Fr. Alexander Schmemann documents in his book The Eucharist, the Byzantine liturgical tradition has changed immensely since its inception, which is a good thing! We proudly proclaim that we celebrate the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom or the Liturgy of St. Basil, yet were these the liturgies given to us by the Apostles? In many respects they are because, as Seraphim Hamilton has documented, Jesus taught the Divine Liturgy to the Apostles who then gave it as an inheritance to the early Church. However, although the essence of the Apostolic Liturgy remains in tact throughout the Orthodox Church, it’s a known fact that there have been many many different forms of the Liturgy throughout history, several of which still exist today. And while it’s true that many of these differences between the liturgies came about through the efforts of saints, it’s also true that liturgical development happened through the efforts of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. All of that to say: Orthodoxy has a long tradition of liturgical practices developing over time, in accordance with the specific region in which the Church finds herself, and so the Sacred Heart cannot be repudiated simply on the grounds of not having a precedent in Church history, because if this logic were applied consistently, we would be forced to decry any liturgical or spiritual practice not handed down directly from the Apostles themselves.

Now, while some people may agree with the logic behind my argument regarding the development of liturgical practices, they still might feel like there’s something off about the Sacred Heart devotion, something that jut doesn’t jive with the Orthodox ethos. And although this isn’t an articulate argument against the Sacred Heart, I still think it’s necessary to show how this devotion does flow with the whole counsel of the Orthodox faith, and so to do that I’ll be adapting a bit from my previous article on this topic. Towards the end of his video, David asks why we worship the Heart of Jesus, and not something like His arm or leg. Elsewhere, when touching on whether or not the heart has a special place in human beings, David says:

Speaking of Christ’s heart as the center of the union [between humanity and divinity] is pseudo spiritual nonsense… no one cares what you think, no one cares what I think, we only care what the Fathers think. Where are the Fathers in this equation?” (Around 22:00)

Saying that the heart being the center of the union between humanity and divinity is “pseudo spiritual nonsense” is a very grave mistake (I know David thought that ClassicalTheist was saying that the hypostatic union takes place in the Heart, but that’s not what he was saying, and neither is it what I’m saying). Throughout Scripture, the heart plays an immensely important role, with the word being used over 800 times in the Bible (for comparison, “love” is used just over 300 times), and in most contexts it is emphasizing the tremendous spiritual importance of the heart in human beings, such as when we’re told to “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

What does it mean to say that the springs of life flow from the heart? Well in the context of biblical theology, it’s quite literal: the life of the flesh is in the blood (Genesis 9:4-5, Leviticus 17:11, Deuteronomy 12:23, cf. Acts 15:29), thus the heart’s duty is to pump life to your whole body, thereby acting as a literal source of life in each human being (see Seraphim Hamilton’s excellent work for more on that). This is why Proverbs 4:23 likens the heart to a “spring” from which life “flows.” This imagery is taken from Genesis 2, where we learn about “the rivers of Eden” that flowed down into the creation, thereby giving it life. As St. Ephraim of Syria documents in his beautiful Hymns on Paradise, the four rivers of Eden flowed down from the Tree of Life itself, and thus were the “springs of life” that animated the whole world. Ephraim notes that, after the Fall, this would be reconstructed in the Tabernacle and the Temple, where the Holy of Holies symbolized the very rivers of Eden, flowing down and giving life to the children of Israel.