God, of course, appeared to our father Abraham not in the flesh nor in
soul, but in the form of three men. Perceiving one thing and realizing it to be
another, he fell to the ground and worshipped, saying, ‘Lord, if I have found
grace in your eyes, I shall bring water and wash your feet’ and the rest.
Abraham at once ‘believed in God, and this was impute to him as righteousness’,
and he was called the friend of God. And later he appeared to Jacob in the form
of a creature subject to him, which led Jacob to say, ‘I have seen God face to
face and yet my life has been saved’. Behold, if the bodiless and invisible God
willed to be seen by mortals in the form of a creature subject to himself, so
that it should be a grace for those who believe, how can we be criticized
because of the icons of the saints, whom we believe to have been bodily and
visible, if we venerate them as true friends of Christ? For if their effigies
were thought detestable, it is obvious that the relics of those whose flesh
undergoes corruption in the grave ought to be considered of no worth—perish the
thought! (The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 869-70 [trans.
Richard Price; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022], 199)
