Letter 432: Theodore Studite, Letter 432; Greek heading: Θεοφίλῳ ἡγουμένῳ.

Not few were the things I heard concerning your honorableness, things which also grieved me not moderately; yet they were set aside by your honored letter. And indeed, I dare to say, the Lord has accepted your repentance and the defense you offered for your return back into the monastery, even if at that time it was not seemly, when Christ was being persecuted. But now, since the persecution has slackened, what reasoning is there for return rather than for contest [athlesis, the struggle of confession or martyrdom]? "You shall see what I do, and so do likewise" [cf. Judges 7:17]. This is what you ought to have proclaimed to your disciples when they were calling upon you to run back home, not to comply and to become a pattern of defeat, and that too after the fall. Or do you not know that the communion [koinonia] you shared, both you and those impiously led away with you, amounted to a denial of Christ? Then, since you chose repentance by means of your withdrawal (for this is the chief point of repentance, and without it the fall is past all remedy), why have you again bent back toward the offense (forgive me, father, I am compelled, since you have surrendered yourself to my lowliness, to speak to you the fitting words as from the mouth of the Lord)? Why have you not either admonished them all to be persecuted alongside you in the same manner, or, if they were unwilling, left them as Christ-haters, as flesh-lovers, as disobedient, and not as sons? In this too you would have well recalled your defeat, and you would have become a kindly model to those under your hand, and you would have appeared to the Church of Christ an edification instead of your former demolition. So did our most God-beloved brother and abbot of Medikion act; so did our most holy father of Laodicea, since others too did the same. One of two things must hold: if these men acted lawfully, then he acted unlawfully, and so did anyone who has behaved like you. But there are some, as I learn, of that company involved in the same misfortune (whose names I willingly pass over), who say that one ought not to repent in the least concerning it, nor again to ask for even a single word of pardon, and that they have done well; and from this, they say, the brethren too have been saved and the churches kept undefiled. Oh, the hardening! Oh, the war against God! Christ has been denied, since His holy icon [eikon, the sacred image] is set at naught, and the Mother of God [Theotokos], and any one of the saints, on account of whom the high priest [chief bishop] was persecuted and bishops were confined and abbots suffered the same, monks and nuns, laymen and laywomen, some being beaten, some imprisoned, others starved, others flayed, others cast into the sea, others put to death, others hidden away, others fleeing. The wildernesses and the caves are full, full are the mountains and the wooded glens; flesh being cut, blood flowing, the whole inhabited world among us pealing like a bell with the persecution, all that is under heaven, so to speak, groaning and lamenting. And you, O thrice-wretched man, captured by the soul-destroying communion and remaining in the place of destruction (since, when it is thus, it is no monastery), say that you are doing well, and you laugh at the Christ-bearers, or rather at Christ Himself, for whose sake there is also the suffering? And what kind of church have you preserved, when you have defiled the church of God, which is yourself? And what brethren have you guarded, when they have been corrupted by your destructive communion, even if only in the matter of food? A scandal to the world, an example of denial, an exhortation to ruin, flesh but not spirit, a darkener but not a light-bearer. These things does Truth itself cry out against those who are so impious; and these men, if they do not repent of pronouncing such godless things, are not to be reckoned Christians. Have you heard the judgment, father? You have sinned, in returning and in setting at naught your promise. Nevertheless the good God will forgive you. Remain, then, now in the monastery, since affairs have turned out otherwise, holding fast to confessing before every man the words "I have sinned," so that God may be made gracious and may lead you up again into the former light, when the lamp of your way of life shone bright, when you were revered even by emperors, when not even a chance oversight was a thing to be despised in you. And as for what follows, according as the Lord shall dispense [oikonomesei, govern by His providential dispensation] the affairs of the Church, so shall we also speak, so shall we also die together with you, for love's sake, in love. Pray concerning us sinners, and do not suppose that we have written contemptuously (for we know ourselves to be an abomination among holy men), but for the sake of the truth and of your salvation; and if of others' salvation too, may he who has suffered confess the grace to God.