Letter 437: Theodore Studite, Letter 437; Greek heading: Νικήτᾳ κουράτωρι.

Nothing is more worthy of esteem than a faithful friend; but when a disagreement concerning the faith comes between those who love one another, then love too is naturally torn apart along with the faith. Why, then, have we begun with such a preamble, master? Surely Your Admirableness is not ignorant either of our former friendship or of the subsequent estrangement; and for this reason, when the missives of Your Most Excellent Self arrived, we were at once seized with dizziness as to whether we should receive them. But since our brother Glykerios reported thus and thus, that the friendship abides and the orthodoxy is sound, and that the lapse [hypoptosis, the falling away into heretical communion] and the heretical communion (such as every lover of his own life falls into) were due only to human fear, then, inclining toward the more humane course, we accepted both the greeting and the offering, and we loved you again, and we returned to our former state, especially having heard that Your Honor is making preparations to set up holy icons [eikones, sacred images] in your house of prayer, which is a proof of a more ardent zeal. And indeed, most precious one, the error of the iconoclasts [eikonomachoi, 'image-fighters'] is manifest. For of old, when God was without flesh, it was not possible to represent God in likeness; for 'no one has ever seen God,' it says, and he who does this is an idolater. But when the Word and God became flesh, made like to us in all things, then He is circumscribed, that is, He is depicted in an image just as we are, if indeed the Apostle speaks truly when he says, 'God was manifested in the flesh.' And if this is so, then He was also depicted in an image in the flesh, and whatever else you may say that is human: He ate in the flesh, He sweated in the flesh, He wept in the flesh, He suffered in the flesh. Whatever, then, you wish to say, the phrase 'in the flesh' will meet you; and the argument stands forth with shining clarity, and to overturn the fact that He is depicted in an image in the flesh overturns along with it, of necessity, all the things mentioned above. And thus one would be compelled to say, 'God was not manifested in the flesh' -- and what could be more Judaizing than this? These things have been said within the measure of a letter; but if God should grant that we one day at last see one another face to face, then so many doctrines of the truth will be spoken to you, concerning both Scripture and the veneration [proskynesis] of the holy icons, as not even Your Honored ear could be able to hear.