His Works Show That He Is God

So when the inspired writers speak of him on this subject as eating and being born, understand that the body, as a body, was born and was nourished with food suited to its nature. Meanwhile God the Word himself, who was united with the body, was ordering all things, and by the works he did in the body was showing himself to be not a man, but God the Word. These things are said of him because the very body that ate, was born and suffered belonged to no one else but the Lord; and because, since he had become man, it was right for these things to be said of him as a man, to show that he had a body in truth and not in appearance. But just as these things made it known that he was present in a body, so by the works he did in the body he made himself known to be the Son of God. That is why he cried out to the unbelieving Jews: “If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.” For just as he is invisible and yet is known through the works of creation, so too, now that he has become man and is unseen in the body, it can be known from his works that the one who can do these things is not a man, but the Power and Word of God. [a]

For when he commands evil spirits and they are driven out, that deed is not a man’s but God’s. Or who that saw him healing the diseases the human race is subject to could still think him a man and not God? He cleansed lepers, made the lame walk, opened the ears of the deaf, and made the blind see again. In a word, he drove away every disease and every weakness from people. From these acts even the most ordinary onlooker could see that he was God. For who that saw him give back what was missing to people born without it, and open the eyes of the man blind from his birth, would fail to see that human nature was subject to him, and that he was its Craftsman and Maker? For the one who gave back what the man had not had since his birth must surely be, as is plain, the Lord of human birth itself.

That is why, from the very start, when he was coming down to us, he formed his body for himself from a virgin. In this way he gave everyone no small proof that he is God, since the one who formed this body is also the Maker of everything else. For who, seeing a body come forth from a virgin alone, without a man, can fail to conclude that the one who appears in it is Maker and Lord of other bodies too? Or who, seeing the substance of water changed and turned into wine, fails to see that the one who did this is Lord and Creator of the substance of all waters? It was for this purpose too that he walked on the sea as its Master, as if on dry land: to give those who saw it evidence of his lordship over all things. And when he fed so vast a crowd on so little, and out of himself brought forth plenty where there was none, so that five thousand had enough from five loaves and as much again was left over, did he show himself to be anyone other than the very Lord whose providence is over all things?