Letter 305: Theodore Studite, Letter 305; Greek heading: Ἡγουμένῳ.

I have been slow to write to your fatherly holiness, hindered as I was in some such way by the close confinement that surrounds me; for I have long ago heard of your guard and your contest of struggle endured for the Lord's sake. But blessed be God, who has called your sanctity also to the confession of his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and God. For to struggle on behalf of the icon [eikon, the sacred image] of his bodily likeness is nothing other than to bear witness concerning him; since the icon is one and the same as the one depicted with respect to the likeness of hypostasis [the relation of resemblance]. And that Christ is depicted in an icon, even the very stones cry out, because he became like us in all things except sin, as it is written; "except sin," because he received the flesh without seed and was conceived in a virginal manner from his all-holy mother and Mother of God [Theotokos]. Since, then, we are all depicted in image (for whoever is not capable of being depicted is not a human being but some monstrous abortion, because every living creature that comes into the light is by nature capable of being depicted), it is plain that Christ too has been depicted, even if it does not seem so to the godless, who thereby deny the mystery of the saving dispensation [oikonomia, God's plan of salvation enacted in the Incarnation]. For how could the Son of God be confessed to have been called man according to our likeness, he who deigned even to be called our brother, if he were not circumscribed equally with us? And how could he be confessed to have been born by the law of nature, if he did not bear resemblance to his own mother? If, therefore, he is not circumscribed, then he is not from her virginal blood, out of which he fashioned for himself a temple, but bears a heavenly body, as it seems to Marcellus the heretic [Marcellus of Ancyra] and to the impious men of old before him. From this it follows further that the mother is not a true mother but a mother in name only, and that he is not like us but of a different substance. Nor indeed has Adam been recalled; for how shall that which is of the dust be raised up in a body of a different kind? Since it has been shown that like is preserved by like. Neither, therefore, by consequence has death been swallowed up, nor has the legal worship ceased; there is still need of circumcision and the rest. Do you see, O man of God, into what pit of impiety the iconoclasts [eikonomachoi, image-fighters] have been driven and impaled through not glorifying Christ by being inscribed upon a panel? They are surely Judaizing, then. From this they receive neither the Mother of God nor any of the saints, abominating those who are represented through the denial of their proper likenesses; for the honor and the dishonor of the icon ascends to the prototype, as the Great Basil [Basil of Caesarea] says. Abominate the figure of the cross: and whom do you abominate? Is it not the life-giving cross? So it is with the emperor, so with any human being whatsoever; so too with Christ, and with his mother, and with every saint. Christ has now been denied and persecuted and set at nought. And blessed are you, father, struggling and holding fast to orthodoxy. But pray also concerning me, wretched as I am, that I may follow after your holiness and not be thrust away on account of my sins.