Letter 359: Theodore Studite, Letter 359; Greek heading: Πρὸς τοὺς ἀντιλέγοντας μὴ περιγραπτὸν εἶναι τὸν Χριστόν.

He who says that Christ is not circumscribable [perigraptos: able to be delimited and thus depicted] by a bodily form has surely made his objection on this matter by employing some natural sequence of reasoning and a logical demonstration, for the confirmation of the truth and the instruction of the uninitiated. Let him, then, come forward and teach how the argument stands as regards nature, and what is the cause of [Christ's supposed] indepictability: Is it that he was not formed in the species that is ours? That his body was not articulated with bones? That he was not fitted with eyelids and brows over the pupils of his eyes? That his ears were not stretched into their spiral passages? That his nostrils were not set straight to apprehend things smelled? That he was not furnished with cheeks reaching their bloom of youth? That he did not converse with mouth and tongue, lips and teeth, and that he neither ate nor drank? That he was not fashioned with the setting on of shoulders and forearms and hands? That breast and back, together with shins and feet, did not grow upon him? That he did not receive a temporal extension by way of progress and the increase of age? That motion belonging to walking was not displayed together in him: the upward, the downward, the inward, the outward, the rightward, the leftward, the circular? That he did not share in being [synousiotai: was not made to exist in common nature] with toils and burdens and the other blameless passions, with hair flowing upon his head and his whole body covered with garments? But if he was confessedly seen in these things, the aggregate of which is a true man, and of which the portrayal according to the bodily character is an unlying drawing, and without which it is not possible for any composite body even to subsist, since indeed such a thing exists in touch and in color, then what is this excessive blindness and godless strife, to call Christ, who is consubstantial [homoousios] with us and has appeared like us in all things, indepictable? And how, when the depictable is gone, will not all the properties that belong to the same order [systoicha] also depart along with it? For property, says the Theologian [Gregory of Nazianzus], is unmovable. Or how could a property remain that is moved and altered? Let our opponent answer.