ACC ~ John 4 v24a
āSPIRITā DISTINGUISHS GOD FROM THE MATERIAL WORLD
ORIGEN: In the language of the Gospel itself, it is declared that āGod is a Spirit.āā¦ To the opinion of the woman that God is rightly worshiped according to the privileges of the different localitiesā¦ the Savior answered that anyone who would follow the Lord must lay aside all preference for particular places. He expressed himself as follows: āThe hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor on this mountain shall the true worshipers worship the Father. God is a Spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.ā Observe how logically he has joined together the spirit and the truth. He called God a Spirit so that he might distinguish him from bodies; and he named him the truth in order to distinguish him from a shadow or an image. For they who worshiped in Jerusalem worshiped God neither in truth nor in spirit, being in subjection to the shadow or image of heavenly things. And such also was the case with those who worshiped on Mount Gerizim. Having refuted, then, as well as we could, every notion that might suggest that we were to think of God as in any degree corporeal, we go on to say that, according to strict truth, God is incomprehensible and incapable of being measured. ON FIRST PRINCIPLES 1.1.4-5. [1]
[1] ANF 4:243*. See also Augustine Letter 238.
THE SPIRIT IS A BEING, NOT WIND
DIDYMUS THE BLIND: Since God cannot be seen, his incorporeal nature follows directly on his invisibility. For if God is unseen, then he must be incorporeal. And if this is the case, then the Spirit spoken of here cannot be air that has been set in motion. For among people a body reveals its spirit; however, we cannot say the same about God. Just as the Light spoken of here is not a physical light, but an intellectual light since it illuminates the mind, not the face, and just as he who is called Love is not a disposition but rather a Being who loves what he has made and takes care of it, so he does not address the Spirit as a blast of wind, but rather presents him as an incorporeal and life-giving Being. Everyone who has learned that āGod is spiritā worships him spiritually āin spirit and truthā and no longer worships the God of all under the shadows of types. He makes a distinction between the letter and the spirit and distinguishes between the type and the truth. The letter and the type were useful for a time, but when the truth came, that is, when Christ arrived, all these things came to an end. FRAGMENTS ON JOHN 3. [1]
[1] JKGK 178.
GOD IS SPIRIT IN BRINGING US TRUE LIFE
ORIGEN: Since we are made alive by the spirit [1] as far as ordinary life is concernedāand what we usually mean by the term ālifeā concerns when the spirit that is in us draws, what is called, in the literal sense, the breath of life [2] āI suppose it has been understood from this that God, who brings us to true life, is called spirit. In the scriptures, the spirit is said to make alive. It is clear that this āmaking aliveā refers not to the ordinary life, but to the more divine life. For the letter also kills and produces death, but it is not death in the sense of separation of the soul from the body, but death in the sense of the separation of the soul from God, and from the Lord himself, and from the Holy Spirit. COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 13.140. [3]
[1] See Gen 2:7, 2 Cor 3:6.
[2] Gen 2:7.
[3] FC 89:97**; SC 222:106.
GOD IS WITHOUT A BODY AND IS EVERYWHERE
THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA: God is of an incorporeal nature and cannot be circumscribed into any one place. Rather, he is everywhere, and it is necessary that he be worshiped according to this understanding. The true worshiper is the one who honors him with the right intention and believes with a pure conscience that everywhere he can speak with the one who is incomprehensible. COMMENTARY ON JOHN 2 4.23-24. [1]
[1] CSCO 4 3:91.
FREEDOM WITH KNOWLEDGE IN WORSHIP
HILARY OF POITIERS: We see that the woman, her mind full of inherited tradition, thought that God must be worshiped either on a mountain, as at Samaria, or in a temple, as at Jerusalemā¦. The prejudices of both confined the all-embracing and illimitable God to the crest of a hill or the vault of a building. God is invisible, incomprehensible, immeasurable. The Lord said that the time had come when God should be worshiped neither on mountain nor in temple. For the Spirit cannot be shut up, as if in a cabin, or confined. It is omnipresent in space and time, and under all conditions it is present in its fullness. Therefore he said that they are the true worshipers who shall worship in the Spirit and in truth. And these who are to worship God the Spirit in the Spirit shall have the One for the means, [1] the Other for the object, [2] of their reverence. For each of the two stand in a different relation to the worshiper. The words āGod is Spiritā do not alter the fact that the Holy Spirit has a name of his own and that he is the gift to usā¦. The imparted gift and the object of reverence were clearly shown when Christ taught that God, being Spirit, must be worshiped in the Spirit, and revealed what freedom and knowledge, what boundless scope for adoration, lay in this worship of God the Spirit, in the Spirit. ON THE TRINITY 2.31. [3]
[1] Worship in the Spirit.
[2] The Spirit as God is to be worshiped.
[3] NPNF 2 9:60-61*.
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