Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 2.48

Celsus repeatedly finds himself unable to face the mighty works attributed to Jesus in the records, so he dismisses them as mere sorcery. We have already answered him as thoroughly as we can. Now he claims that we confess Jesus as the Son of God only because he healed the lame and the blind. He also throws in the allegation that, as we say, he raised the dead. The fact that he healed the lame and the blind—which is why we recognize him as the Christ and the Son of God—is confirmed for us by the prophetic writings: "Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will hear; then the lame will leap like a deer" (Isaiah 35:5-6). The further fact that he raised the dead, and that this is no invention of the Gospel writers, becomes clear when we consider what a fabrication would look like. If the accounts were invented, many more resurrections would have been recorded, and the people raised would have been dead for much longer periods. Since the accounts are genuine, however, only a handful are mentioned: the daughter of the synagogue ruler (about whom Jesus said, puzzlingly, "She is not dead but sleeping," a remark that does not fit everyone who dies), the only son of the widow, whom Jesus raised out of compassion after halting the funeral procession, and Lazarus, who had already been in the tomb four days. We will press this point further with fair-minded readers, especially with Jewish interlocutors. Just as "many lepers were in Israel in the days of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian," and "many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah the prophet, and Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon"—for she had been judged worthy of that wonder by divine decree—so in the days of Jesus many were dead, yet only those whom the Word knew to be suitable were raised. This was so that the Lord's deeds would serve not merely as symbols but would themselves draw many to wonder at the teaching of the Gospel. I would also say that, in keeping with Jesus' promise, his disciples have performed "greater" works than the sensory miracles Jesus did. For the eyes of the spiritually blind are continually opened, and the ears of those deaf to virtue now listen eagerly to words about God and the blessed life with him. Many who were lame in the inner person—what Scripture calls the "inward" self—have been healed by the Word; they do not merely leap, but "leap like a deer," an animal that is the serpent's enemy and superior to all the venom of vipers. These healed lame receive from Jesus "authority to tread" with the very feet that were once lame "upon" the "serpents and scorpions" of wickedness and, in short, "over all the power of the enemy"; as they tread, they are not harmed, for they themselves have become stronger than all wickedness and the poison of the demons.