A short thought: Pretend for a moment that Jesus Christ existed exactly as depicted in the Gospels. He performed many different miracles, and, as John 21:25 says, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” He cured the sick, he raised the dead, he walked on water. He turned water into wine, and multiplied loaves of bread and fish to feed the hungry. He exhibited great control over nature and even raised himself from the dead.
If we assume for the sake of argument that these miracles actually occurred, we can conclude that Jesus is extraordinarily powerful. But what reason do we have to conclude that these miracles prove that He is God? After all, a lesser being than God could have done these things – perhaps a technologically advanced alien race, or angels/demons of some sort. We can imagine a lesser god doing all of these things, but without the powers that are attributed to God (ex nihilo Creation, sustaining natural law, Moral Law giver, etc.).
Professor Matt McCormick has argued that miracles underdetermine the case for God, but I’d like to suggest specifically that they underdetermine the case for Jesus’s divinity. Why should we believe based on Jesus’s performance of various miracles, that he is actually God in the flesh? It doesn’t require an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect being to raise the dead, heal the sick, or walk on water.
