Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Maurice F. Wells on Origen and Cyril on πνευμα (Spirit) in John 6:63

  

Two important occurrences of the word remain in which an interpretation in terms of the Holy Spirit was hardly possible. The first is vi. 63. ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.’ Again we have not got Origen’s comment, but there appears to be a generally accepted understanding of the passage in which πνευμα is identified with Christ’s divine nature (Tertullian, De Resurrectione Mortuorum, 37; Cyril, in John vi 63). Cyril, in fact, is concerned to insist that the statement that ‘the flesh profiteth nothing’ is not literally true of Christ. His flesh, though not life-giving in his own right, becomes life-giving by virtue of its association with the life-giving Word. (Maurice F. Wells, The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960], 67)

 

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