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)
