Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Maurice F. Wells on Early Christian Interpretations of John 4:24

  

Finally, and most distinctively, we have in iv. 24 the words ‘God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth’. Origen fully recognises the importance of this text. It has, he says, every appearance of being a definition of the ουσια of God. But if we were to take it as such we would be committing ourselves to the view that God is σωμα. In its literal sense πνευμα is as physical a word as fire or light. Its use is therefore just as metaphorical in this case as in the others. The significance of the metaphor is this. Just as the literal πνευμα around us provides the essential breath of physical life, so God is called πνευμα because it is he who leads men to real (αληθινος) life (Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John 13, 21-23). So for Origen the assertion that God is πνευμα is not a straightforward assertion of the incorporeal nature of God. Rather God is incorporeal, in spite of the fact that he is called πνευμα (Origen, Con. Cel. 6, 70). In the second half of the text he does allow that the appropriate contrast with worship in the spirit is bodily or fleshly worship, but this is based more on the total context and on the conjunction with worship in the truth than on the inherent meaning of the word πνευμα itself (Origen, De Principiis, 1, 1, 4; Con. Cel. 6, 70).

 

Tertullian agrees with Origen in asserting a physical element in the literal meaning of πνευμα. He writes ‘Who will deny that God is a body, although “God is a Spirit”? For Spirit is body of its own kind, in its own form’ (Tertullian, Adv. Prax. 7, 8) The conclusion is the exact opposite of that of Origen, but the premises are identical. (Maurice F. Wells, The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960], 67-68)

 

Further Reading:


Lynn Wilder vs. Latter-day Saint (and Biblical) Theology on Divine Embodiment