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| Chapter LXX
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Chapter LXX.
If Celsus, indeed, had understood our teaching
regarding the Spirit of God, and had known that “as many as are
led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God,”4640
he would not have returned to himself the
answer which he represents as coming from us, that “God put His
own Spirit into a body, and sent it down to us;” for God is
perpetually bestowing of His own Spirit to those who are capable of
receiving it, although it is not by way of division and separation that
He dwells in (the hearts of) the deserving. Nor is the Spirit, in
our opinion, a “body,” any more than fire is a
“body,” which God is said to be in the passage, “Our
God is a consuming fire.”4641
For all
these are figurative expressions, employed to denote the nature of
“intelligent beings” by means of familiar and corporeal
terms. In the same way, too, if sins are called “wood, and
straw, and stubble,” we shall not maintain that sins are
corporeal; and if blessings are termed “gold, and silver, and
precious stones,”4642
we shall not
maintain that blessings are “corporeal;” so also, if God be
said to be a fire that consumes wood, and straw, and stubble, and all
substance4643
of sin, we shall
not understand Him to be a “body,” so neither do we
understand Him to be a body if He should be called
“fire.” In this way, if God be called
“spirit,”4644
| 4644 πνεῦμα. There is an
allusion to the two meanings of πνεῦμα, “wind”
and “spirit.” | we do not mean that
He is a “body.” For it is the custom of Scripture to
give to “intelligent beings” the names of
“spirits” and “spiritual things,” by way of
distinction from those which are the objects of “sense;” as
when Paul says, “But our sufficiency is of God; who hath also
made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of
the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth
life,”4645
where by the
“letter” he means that “exposition of Scripture which
is apparent to the senses,”4646
| 4646 τὴν
αἰσθητὴν
ἐκδοχήν. | while by the
“spirit” that which is the object of the
“understanding.” It is the same, too, with the
expression, “God is a Spirit.” And because the
prescriptions of the law were obeyed both by Samaritans and Jews in a
corporeal and literal4647
| 4647 τυπικῶς here evidently
must have the above meaning. | manner, our Saviour
said to the Samaritan woman, “The hour is coming, when neither in
Jerusalem, nor in this mountain, shall ye worship the Father. God
is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and
in truth.”4648
And by these
words He taught men that God must be worshipped not in the flesh, and
with fleshly sacrifices, but in the spirit. And He will be
understood to be a Spirit in proportion as the worship rendered to Him
is rendered in spirit, and with understanding. It is not,
however, with images4649
that we are to
worship the Father, but “in truth,” which “came by
Jesus Christ,” after the giving of the law by Moses. For
when we turn to the Lord (and the Lord is a Spirit4650
), He takes away the veil which lies upon the
heart when Moses is read.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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