Christ's real body: infancy, growth, passion, resurrection
Eustathius opens his treatise against the Arians by pointing to Christ's bodily life—birth, growth, suffering, and resurrection—as evidence that he possessed a real human body.
What could they say when they look at the nourishings of the infant, or the increase of his age, or the extension of his years, or the growth of his body? And to pass over the wonders performed on the ground, let them look at the revivals of the dead, the symbols of the passion, the marks of the whips, the bruises of the blows, the pierced side, the prints of the nails, the pouring out of the blood, the signs of death, and, to say it all at once, the very resurrection of his own body.
Indeed, if anyone looks at the birth of the body, he will clearly find that he was born in Bethlehem and wrapped in swaddling clothes, that he was nourished in Egypt for some time because of the plot of the accursed Herod, and that in Nazareth, having become a man, he grew.
Greek
De anima contra Arianos (fragmenta) ΠΕΡΙ ΨΥΧΗΣ ΚΑΤΑ ΑΡΕΙΑΝΩΝ 10 Τί δ' ἂν εἴποιεν εἰς τὰς τοῦ βρέφους ἀναβλέψαντες ἀνατροφὰς, ἢ τὴν τῆς ἡλικίας ἀνάδοσιν, ἢ τὴν ἐπίτασιν τῶν χρόνων, ἢ τὴν τοῦ σώματος αὔξην; Ἵνα δὲ παρῶ λέγειν τὰς ἐπὶ ἐδάφους ἐκπληρωθείσας θαυματουργίας, ὁράτωσαν τὰς τῶν νεκρῶν ἀναβιώσεις, τὰ τοῦ πάθους σύμβολα, τὰ τῶν μαστίγων ἴχνη, τοὺς τῶν πληγῶν μώλωπας, τὰς τετρωμένας πλευρὰς, τοὺς τῶν ἥλων τύπους, τὴν τοῦ αἵματος ἔγχυσιν, τὰ τοῦ θανάτου σημεῖα, καὶ τὸ σύμπαν εἰπεῖν, αὐτὴν τὴν τοῦ ἰδίου σώματος ἀνάστασιν. 11 Καὶ μὴν εἴ τις εἰς τὴν τοῦ σώματος γέννησιν ἀφορᾷ, προδήλως εὑρήσειεν ἂν ὡς ἐν τῇ Βηθλεὲμ τεχθεὶς ἐσπαργανώθη, κἀν τῇ Αἰγύπτῳ χρόνοις ἐτράφη τισὶν ἕνεκεν τῆς τοῦ ἀλάστορος ἐπιβουλῆς Ἡρώδου, κἂν τῇ Ναζαρὲτ ἀνδρωθεὶς ηὐξήθη.