Whoever depicts the faces of the saints with material colors on soulless icons, which do not bring absolutely any benefit (!), for this thought is false and originated from the devil, and will not reflect on himself their virtues – these living icons, to him – anathema.

Anathema from the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and of the holy Ecumenical Councils, against him who does not accept this holy and the Seventh Ecumenical Council, but in any sense rejects it and does not kiss with full readiness its definitions based on the teaching of the inspired Scriptures."

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Thus, the question of the veneration (in this case, the rejection) of icons was posed by Eastern theologians in an Eastern, i.e. theological-metaphysical, way, and was connected with triadology and Christology. The iconoclasts drew incorrect conclusions from the Orthodox teaching about the Trinitarian and Incarnate God. But they did not distort the very teaching about the Incarnation. Their heresy was not the consequence of any corruption in Christology. Reproaches of this kind are polemical extremes.

In the same way, the iconoclasts did not touch the veneration of the Mother of God, as part of the Christological dogma, and the veneration of the saints. The Council of 754 clearly affirms these dogmas. Nor does the council say anything directly about the veneration of the relics of saints. But he had nothing to object to from the point of view of his theories. The iconoclasts, referring to the Old Testament commandment, all the time protested against the worship of things "made with hands, χειροποιητα".

This term is the strong point of the iconoclastic polemics with the church. And the relics were not man-made. What the iconoclasts are morally guilty of is the falsification of historical documents and evidence. When, later, at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), the hierarchs who participated in the iconoclastic council were interrogated, how they could be convinced of the alleged patristic rejection of icons, the following falsity was revealed.

To the question "Were the original books read at this false council?" Gregory of Neocaesarea and Theodosius of Amora answered: "No, here is God! there they did not see books, and we were deceived by cards" (μη, ξ Θεος εκει βιβλος ουκ εφανη, αλλα δια ψευδοπιττακιων εξηπατον ημας).

And how little accuracy there was in these cards (τπιτακια), is similar to what was done at the council with the epistle of St. Nilus to Olympiodorus, the eparch. He wanted to "place icons and depict various hunting and fishing scenes" in the martyr's church he was creating. But St. Nilus, having condemned this childishness (νηπιωδες αν ειη και βρεφοπρεπες), decreed "to depict in the altar on the east side of the church only one cross, for through one saving cross the human race is saved. And the walls of the church on both sides are to be filled with images of the sacred history of the Old and New Testaments by the hand of a skilful painter.

Former participants in the Council of Copronymos later said at the Seventh Ecumenical Council: "If we had heard my father say, 'Here and there paint pictures of the Old and New Testaments in the church,' we would not have been fooled to such an extent as to believe. For instead of "depict here and there" they substituted "whitewash — λευκανον", which greatly deceived us."

In addition to outright forgeries in general, fragmentary phrases taken out of context were easily perceived in the tendentious interpretation of the iconoclasts. These are passages from the Fathers against pagan idols, passages that require the veneration of saints by active imitation of them, i.e., passages that do not concern icons at all.

But the iconoclastic fathers seek the most decisive proofs in the heights of theology. They also heard from icon-worshippers a very convincing psychological argument that we cannot but revere the portraits of the persons we revere, and why is the icon of Jesus Christ not His portrait? To avoid an affirmative answer, the iconoclasts fell into maximalism. They demanded not only not to depict the invisible (God the Father), but also Jesus Christ Himself, for in Him is the mystery of the indescribable, the Divinity-Logos.

The inner self-undermining of this maximalism lies in the fact that, having rejected the right to a conditional and partial depiction of the incarnate Lord by the technical means of art, the iconoclasts would logically have to reject any other reflection of the mysteries of the knowledge of God. For example, in the human word (thought), for the mystery of the Incarnation of God is both "indescribable" and "ineffable." And it would be necessary to reject every "word" and "theology" and even the "words" of Holy Scripture. And in any case, this rejected any positive religious service of the entire human culture. And this was purely absurd for iconoclasts, as they were supposedly enlighteners and "progressives." In other words, Orthodox theologians should have exposed the absurdity of agnosticism by referring to the primitive anthropomorphic means of the entire biblical revelation about God.

Orthodox polemicists have not been able to epistemologically radically expose the lie of the maximalism of the iconoclasts. But they built their objections in this direction, in the direction of the relativity of the means and instruments given to the earthly Church in its knowledge of God in human forms. However, for all the relativity of these human forms, they nevertheless reveal the mysteries of the divine and in some way participate in the absolute. This image and method of cognition, however, was not then revealed by Orthodox theology with sufficient philosophical persuasiveness.

The Orthodox responded strongly and subtly to the iconoclasts, pointing out the degree of dogmatic adequacy of the icon to its prototype. They pointed out that in the icon they see not only the historical image of Christ according to His human flesh, but partly (to the extent of its capacity) a reflection of the glory of His Divinity. The Orthodox, therefore, did not renounce the ideal of the icon, on which the iconoclasts thought to "cut off" them as absurd. Here are the arguments of the Orthodox, scattered according to the acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council: