Thesis.
SECTION I: ON THE SPIRITUAL AND INCORPOREAL ESSENCE OF GOD
Thesis.
§ 114. God is a spiritual and incorporeal essence or a spirit without a body. We prove this with: (1) Statements of Scripture, both affirmative: John 4:24: “God is Spirit.” Some add 2 Cor. 3:17: “The Lord is the Spirit,” but the article added to the word “Spirit” and the order of the context show that this is being applied more accurately to the divinity of the Holy Spirit. And negative, which distinguish the incorporeal God from His corporeal creatures and say that we must not put Him in their class. Isa. 46:5: “To whom will you liken Me and make Me equal and compare Me?” God is addressing the makers of images who kept trying to express the incorporeal God with corporeal shapes. In Rom. 1:23 Paul is speaking about idolaters and says: “They have changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.” (Cf. Ps. 106:20; Jer. 2:11.)
(2) Rational arguments, the strongest of which the Damascene explains in Orth. fid., bk. 1, c. 4: (a) From God’s simplicity. No body is utterly simple, and an utterly simple being cannot be corporeal, because every body is compounded [compositum], is passively potential,21 and is divisible. God is an utterly simple being and is not passively potential. Therefore He is not corporeal.
(b) From God’s dignity. An utterly noble being cannot be a body, for a body is either living or not living. A living body is more noble than a nonliving body; indeed, a being that lives is more noble than a nonliving being. Moreover, a living body does not live insofar as it is a body, for then every body would live. That by which a body lives is more noble than the body itself. Therefore because God is the most noble living thing, He cannot be a body. Savonarola, De verit. fid., bk. 1, c. 7: “A spirit is more noble than a body. If God, then, were a body, He would not be the most noble among beings.”
(c) From the primacy of being. Prime being cannot be corporeal. Therefore if God were a body, He would be a being in potential, thus He would not be prime being. Simply by nature, actuality [actus] is prior to potentiality [potentia] because nothing can be brought to actuality except by a being in actuality [ens actu]. Furthermore, God is not the form of a body, for that which has being of itself is more noble than that which has being in something else. For every form of body exists in another. Therefore because God is prime being and the prime cause of being, He cannot be the form of any body. (See more arguments in our commonplace [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 3 (On the Nature of God)], § 69.)
(3) The judgment of the fathers. In De monarch. Dei, p. 81, Justin cites these verses from Aeschylus:
Place holy God far away from mortals, and do not think
That He is clad like you in the robes of the flesh.
Justin again: “Not only is God incorporeal, He is superior to all corporeal things” (Confut. Graec. qq., q. 2).
Origen, 
, bk. 1, c. 1, vol. 1, p. 668: “We should not think that God is some body or is in a body. Instead, He is a simple, intellectual nature, admitting no addition to Himself at all. We do not believe that there is something greater and something less [in Him], but that He is simple [
] in every part and, so to speak, the entire mountain and fountain from which comes the beginning of all intellectual nature or of the mind.” The same, homily 1 on Genesis, p. 6: “It is manifestly wicked to believe concerning God that He is corporeal and of human form.”
Arnobius, Advers. gent., bk. 3, p. 107: “Our opinion is such that every divine nature that did not begin to exist at some time and that will not come to the end of life at some time does not have the features of a body nor does it possess any likeness of shapes with which an exterior outline of members usually defines things that are joined. You see, whatever is like this we consider to be mortal and perishable. We do not believe that it obtains perpetual span of life because its necessary extremity closes off its circumference with ultimate limits.”
Hilary, De Trin., bk. 3, fol. 3: “Heaven is confined to the palm of His hand. Again, God’s throne is also the earth, which is contained within His fist. It is also His footstool. But on this throne and footstool we cannot think of an extension of corporeal shape, like one who sits because He—the powerful infinity itself—encloses that which is His throne and footstool by holding it in His palm and fist.”
Basil, Homily 10, Hexaëm.: “Throw disgraceful imaginations out of your hearts! Throw away improper thinking! God does not have a shape. He is simple, lacks size, is free of quantity—lest you imagine a shape around Him.”
Nazianzen, Orat. 2. de theol., p. 26:
Will you claim that God is a body? In what manner can His infinite nature—limited by no boundaries, without any shape—be touched or seen? Or do these [attributes] also belong to bodies? What presumption! For such things certainly cannot belong to the nature of bodies. Or will you say that He is a body and deny that these things befit Him? What utterly crass stupidity! For it will turn out that the nature of God is stronger than ours in nothing. Why shall we offer Him the reverence of religious devotion if He can be circumscribed within a definite place? Or what keeps Him from being compounded of elements and what, in turn, prevents us from believing that He may one day be reduced to these elements or even immediately perish? For the very composition of things marks the beginning of a battle; the battle, the beginning of separation; separation, the beginning of destruction. However, this simply cannot happen to God and that principal nature.
Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 8, c. 5: “If our mind [animus] is not body, how can God, the creator of the mind, be body?”
The Damascene, Orth. fid., bk. 2, c. 3: “As God in His essence is far beyond body, so also is He beyond anything incorporeal. When anything is compared with God, it is discovered to be rude and material; only God is truly nonmaterial and incorporeal.”
Antithesis.
§ 115. We must set all this against: (1) Some of the ancient philosophers, about whom Justin writes: “Some philosophers have said that God is fire, something to which they will go when they call upon God. Others say that He is water; others, that He is another of the elements that God has created” (Epist. ad Diogn., p. 385).
(2) The rabbinic scholars, about whom Justin writes: “Your teachers assert that hands and feet and fingers and soul belong to the unbegotten God, the creator of all things, even as they belong to a created and compounded animate being. For this reason, they even teach that the Father Himself appeared to Abraham and Jacob” (Dial. cum Tryph., p. 267). Origen, homily 3 on Genesis, vol. 1, p. 17: “The Jews thought that God should be considered as a man, that is, that He was distinguished by human parts and behavior.” Others of the rabbis assert the opposite. In De arc., bk. 2, c. 2, Galatino cites a passage from the Liber formationis in which they call God “the first and highest spirit among the ten incorporeal unities.”
(3) Tertullian, who in his book Adv. Prax., p. 409, contends that God is corporeal. Nevertheless Augustine, in his book De haeres. ad Quodvultd., heresy 86, excuses him by saying that he is not speaking literally and is using the word “body” for substance, because in his [Tertullian’s] book De carne Christi, p. 14, he attributes bodies also to angels and souls.
(4) The Audians or the Anthropomorphites, who around AD 370 attributed to God the shape and parts of the human body. (In De haeres. ad Quodvultd., heresy 86, Augustine calls them “Vadians,” and Theodoret calls them “Audeans.” In his commentary on Genesis, Luther tries to excuse them to a certain extent. In the year 939 their heresy was renewed in Italy. Ratherius of Verona struggled against these more recent Anthropomorphites according to Sigebertus of Gembloux, Chron. Cf. Epiphanius (Haeres., 70), Tripart. (bk. 10, c. 7), and Nicephorus (bk. 11, c. 14; bk. 13, c. 10).
(5) Conrad Vorstius, who argues in his book De Deo et attrib., p. 201: “We can truly attribute body to God” if by “body” “true, solid substance is understood.” p. 251: “On the basis of Tertullian’s opinion, God has His own body, that is, His own true and solid substance.” By this argument, however, he introduces a confusion both of things and of words. Spirit and body are contradistinct species. Therefore because God is spirit, He cannot be corporeal. Therefore there is a contradiction [elenchus] of cause and a play on words in Vorstius’s little argument. “Solid substance” can be understood either as verity of essence or as a property of measurable quantity. If we understand it in the first way, it is false that every solid substance, that is, every substance that truly exists, is body. If we understand it in the second way, it is false that God is solid substance. “Solid” means either density or perfection, firmness, and immutability. In the first way we deny that God is a solid substance, but in the latter, we concede that He is. Vorstius argues that “God has a certain intelligible magnitude and is called ‘great’ not only according to quality but also with respect to quantity, a divine and spiritual quantity, that is, which befits the divine substance” (ibid., pp. 239–40). We respond. God is great not in corporeal quantity but in power, virtue, and operation, not bodily but divinely. The wisdom of men is also called great not in terms of mass but of virtue. (See our De gloria Dei, disp. 5., thesis 12.) Vorstius’s fabrication, then, must say farewell. On the basis of his hypotheses, Englinsemius, in his Discept. contra Vorst., deduces that Vorstius claims that God is “corporeal, visible, long, wide, and deep, attached to a certain place, not all-powerful but much-powerful, not all-knowing but much-knowing, and therefore that God is not God.”
(6) The dream of the Photinians, which Schmalz explains: “We say that Christ was born as much from the blood of Mary as from the material provided from God to beget the body of Christ. For He could not be called the Son of God from His conception unless something had come from God’s side to constitute Him. Otherwise He would only be the son of Mary” (Exam. 157 error., error 18, p. 8). Yet that material which God provided for Christ’s body either is of the very essence of God, by which explanation God is made corporeal, or it is outside of it, and thus, in this respect, Christ could not be called the Son of God, begotten of God.
Arguments against the spiritual essence of God. First, from man’s formation.
§ 116. These are the stronger arguments of those who attribute a body to God: (I) From man’s formation. “Gen. 1:27: ‘God created man in His own image.’ But if God is incorporeal, how is corporeal man created in His image?” Basil (Homily 10, Hexaëm.) and Nicephorus (op. cit.) report that the Anthropomorphites used this argument. We respond. Although it is correct to claim that the image of God was in the body of the first man inasmuch as it was a partaker of immortality in its own way—as we showed in our treatise On the Image of God in Man before the Fall [Commonplace XI], § 104 (against Polanus, who in Syll. thes. th., part 2, p. 56, claimed that the “subject in which” or the seat in which the image of God was located was the soul alone)—nevertheless man was created in the image of God not with respect to body or corporeal shape but with respect to righteousness, holiness, immortality, etc., gleaming in soul and body, as we have demonstrated (§ 31ff.) from Eph. 4:23 and Col. 3:10. Origen, homily 1 on Genesis, vol. 1, p. 6: “No formation of body contains the image of God. He who was made in the image of God, our inner man, is indivisible, incorporeal, incorrupt, and immortal. For the image of God is more accurately understood in ideas such as this.” Augustine, De Genes. ad lit., bk. 6, c. 12: “When it says that man was created in the image of God, this must be understood not as according to the body but as according to the intellect of the mind, though in the body itself he may have a sort of property that would indicate this, namely, that he was made to stand upright.” De civ. Dei, bk. 17, c. 5: “Lest we believe that according to the body man was created in the image of God in the form of this flesh, wings are added, which man certainly does not have. And to God it is said, ‘Protect me under the shadow of Your wings,’ so that men may understand that these things are said about that ineffable nature not in literal words but in the transferred terms for things.” (See Bernard, sermon 24 on the Song of Songs, col. 464.)
Second, from the attribution of body parts.
§ 117. (II) Their second argument is from the attribution of body parts. “Scripture frequently attributes to God parts and organs of the body.” We respond. (1) If we had to take these words literally, we would have to attribute to Him a monstrous form of a body, for “seven eyes” (Zech. 3:9) and “wings” are attributed to him (Ps. 17:8), and He is called a “lion” and “bear,” etc.
(2) Accordingly we must take these things according to anthropopathism and condescension, as being said symbolically. (See our commonplace [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 3 (On the Nature of God)], §§ 71–72.) Justin, QQ. et resp. ad orthod., q. 10, p. 311: “What was stated allegorically about God by the prophets was stated by rising from what are by nature to what is not by nature. It is as if the Lord left a sweet-smelling scent to be tracked. With reference to men, they catch the scent in the realm of the natural; but with reference to God, inexactly and not by nature.”
** Chrysostom, Orat. 18, vol. 5, f. 104: “Do not pay attention to the lowliness of the words but gather from them meanings worthy of God.” **
Gregory, Moral., bk. 32, c. 4: “God takes to Himself a likeness not only from human parts but at times even from birds. At times He even draws unlike similarities from inanimate things.”
** Augustine, De speculo, c. 12: “You, our good and holy God, in advising our human weakness, deign to enter into us not with Your property but at least with Your likeness. Thus You are described as having the qualities of the parts of our body, wanting still to endure the indignities of sufferings in Yourself, so that (because we in our present wretchedness cannot know You as You are) You may draw us to Yourself through our [wretchedness] and we, when You condescend to us, may rise more easily to You.” **
Theoph., on Matthew 22: “God compares Himself to animals not because He is like one but because we are. For whenever we live like wild animals, He, too, becomes for us a panther and a bear and a lion.” The Damascene, Orth. fid., bk. 1, c. 14: “All the things that have been said about God in bodily terms have a hidden meaning, using what is characteristic of us to teach what is beyond us, unless something is said about the bodily advent of the Word of God.” (This latter point must be noted carefully because there is no doubt that this refers to the incarnation [
] of the Word). Nicephorus, Hist., bk. 11, c. 14: “Holy Scripture attributes words for human body parts to the works of the Deity so that in this way people who cannot perceive quite subtle matters may understand the counsel of God more easily.”
** Suidas describes 
[“condescension”] in this way: “When God appears not as He is but as he who wants to look upon Him can perceive Him, He shows Himself in such a way as to accommodate the demonstration of Himself to the weakness of those who are seeing Him.” [**]
(3) As some things are said about God in irony (Gen. 3:22) and some imitatively (Ps. 73:11) and some by metonymy (Ps. 18:[1], so also some things are attributed to Him metaphorically and by condescension [
] (as Theodoret says, Dial. 2), and we should understand these in a way fitting for God.
(4) Some of these are taken from man, some from other creatures. From man come the parts of a man, members of the body, the senses, emotions, actions, human subjects, and human adjuncts. The parts of a man: the soul (Isa. 1:14; Jer. 5:9) and the members of the body: the head (Dan. 7:9; 1 Cor. 11:3), the eyes (Ps. 34:[15]; 2 Chron. [16]:9), eyelids (Ps. 11:4), pupils (Deut. 32:10), mouth (Matt. 4:4), ears (Ps. 31:[2]), nose ([2 Sam. 22:9]), nostrils (Gen. 8:21), face (Ps. 31:[16]), neck (Jer. 18:17), hands (Acts 4:28), right hand (Ps. 118:15), arm (Ps. 77:[15]), finger (Exod. 8:19), heart (Gen. 6:6), bowels (Isa. 64:1; [63:15]), feet (Ps. 110:1), and back or hind parts (Exod. 33:[23]). What all of these denote symbolically is understood readily from the analogy with the use of these parts in the human body and from the context of each text. (See Flacius, Clav. Script.) From the senses, we see attributed to Him memory (Ps. 115:12) and its opposite, forgetfulness (Ps. 13:[1]); sight (Gen. 1:4); hearing (Ps. 5:[1]); and smelling (Gen. 8:21). From emotions, there is repentance (Gen. 6:6); gladness (Prov. 1:[26]) and its opposite, grief (Gen. 6:6); hope (Isa. 5:4); anger (Jer. 9:9); zeal (Isa. 9:7); jealousy (Num. 25:11); and hatred (Isa. 1:14). We should understand that all these are attributed to God in a way fitting for Him, without any disturbance, disorder, contradictions of reason, delay of time, and therefore without any imperfection. From this comes the rule of the Scholastics: “Emotions in God indicate effects.” In fact, moderations of those emotions in the same way are attributed to God anthropopathically, such as patience (Isa. 5:4), long-suffering (Exod. 34:6), and gentleness (Ps. 103:10). From human acts Scripture attributes to Him thought (Jer. 4:28), understanding (Gen. 22:12), hiding His face (Ps. 30:[7]), lifting His face (Ps. 4:[6]), speaking, laughing, descending, etc. From human subjects Scripture attributes to Him a royal throne (Ps. 9:[7]), a footstool (Isa. 66:1), a dwelling place, etc. From adjuncts He is called a shepherd, standard-bearer, warrior, etc. Attributes taken from other creatures are nearly countless, for He is called sun, moon, shield, horn, fire, rock, etc., which can be explained by a metonymy.
Third, from God’s speaking.
§ 118. (III) Their third argument is from God’s speaking. “If God does not truly have corporeal parts, how does He speak to angels and men?” We respond. Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 16, toward the middle of c. 6: “The unchangeable truth either speaks ineffably through its own self to the minds of rational creatures or it speaks through a changeable creature—either with spiritual images to our spirit or with corporeal voices to the perception of our body.” Origen, homily 3 on Genesis, vol. 1, p. 17:
This very thing that either breathes in the heart of each of the saints or that causes the sound of a voice to reach his ears, God is said to have spoken to man, just as when He indicates that He knows what each either says or reads and says that he has heard, etc. If the human voice can be called air, a beat, that is, struck by the tongue, then the voice of God can be called air, a beat, either by divine might or will. Thus it happens that if at times a word is divinely given, it will not be carried to the ears of all but to the ears of those it concerns, so that you may know that the sound has not been rendered by the pulse of the tongue (otherwise it would be a common hearing) but directed by control of the heavenly command. This is true though the word of God is often reported to have been given to the prophets, patriarchs, and the rest of the saints even without the sound of a voice. In this case the mind was illumined by the Holy Spirit and directed to words.
(Cf. Alcuin, De Trinit., bk. 2, c. 17.) Although a herald may relay the words of a judge, it is not written in histories [that] “the herald said or did” but, rather, “the judge said or did.”
Fourth, from the location of God.
§ 119. (IV) Their fourth argument is from the location of God. “Place is attributed to God—which is a proper accident of body (Ps. 68:[16])—as well as a seat and a throne (Ps. 9:[7]).” We respond. On the basis of the rule set down above, such things are attributed to God not properly but figuratively through a certain condescension [
]. Place is attributed to Him because of some outward appearance or special act; the throne, because of His majesty and sublime authority. Cyril, Thesaur., bk. 12, c. 14: “When God is said to sit or to have a seat or a throne, we take this to mean nothing else but preeminence and royal power, which He has naturally over all creatures. For it is a great madness to attribute to God sitting or a throne or especially a place. These things are written about Him corporeally, according to our custom, and are to be understood suitably.” Epiphanius, Ancorat., § 504: “You should not take ‘He sits’ in a human sense but in an unspeakable and incomprehensible sense.”
The first question, whether spirituality is listed correctly among the attributes of God.
§ 120. The question arises: (I) Is it correct to list spirituality and incorporeality among the attributes of God? We respond. With reference to our conceiving, it is correct to assert that the statement “spirit is His very essence” does not express an attribute of His essence and that it is predicated of God in quid.22 As a result it takes the place of a genus in the definition of God, for it is the same thing whether you say that God is a spiritual, incorporeal essence or that God is an incorporeal spirit. Nevertheless one should not infer from this that spirituality and incorporeality are less correctly listed among His attributes, (a) because the rest of the attributes also are not accidents added to the essence of God but are the essence of God itself. Therefore though some attributes are, for the sake of teaching, said to express the divine essence in the manner of quiddity [i.e., essence] (as we speak here concerning this subject) and some in the manner of quality (as the others), nevertheless no one should think that in God there is some categorical [praedicamentale] accident added to His essence, for this would militate against His utterly simple nature. Because if spirituality is not an essence (because it indicates the essence of God itself), surely the remaining attributes could not have been considered distinctly from the essence and reduced into their own classes. (b) When God is said to be spirit, then by the word “spirit” the divine essence is by no means being limited, restricted, or included in a certain category of beings but is merely being explained in some way according to the guidance of Scripture. For as God is infinite essence transcending all classes of beings, so also He is infinite spirit infinitely transcending all species of spirits, all angels, and all human souls in infinite ways. Therefore we must understand that “spirit” is predicated of God not analogically, much less synonymously, but singularly and uniquely. Also, there is a much different meaning for this word when it is attributed to God than when it is used for angels, so that here we should not think that they share an analogous genus.
The second question, whether the desire to portray God conflicts with God’s incorporeality.
§ 121. (II) The question arises: Does trying to depict God conflict with the incorporeality of God? Aventinus reports that Pope John XXII “renounced those who painted the supreme majesty of God with the likeness of an old man, a youth, or a dove, arraigned them for injuring religious reverence and called them ‘Anthropomorphites.’ In fact, he even condemned some of them to be burned” (Anal., bk. 7, p. 462). Nevertheless they themselves will have seen how the Jesuits want to reconcile many paintings of this type in the papacy with this papal judgment handed down from the papal throne. The Calvinists bring the serious charge against us of being too little mindful of the divine command in Deut. 4:15ff. and of striving to depict God and, in this way, instilling in the minds of simpler people the heresy of the Anthropomorphites. However, the matter is safe (a) because we distinguish between the essence or being of God itself and the revelation or theophany of God. The essence of God—being spiritual, incorporeal, infinite, invisible, etc.—cannot and should not be depicted. But the divine apparitions set forth in Holy Writ can be depicted without any sin at all.
(b) If, however, one is permitted to conceive internally such images that are formed in the mind as a result of reading the historical accounts of divine revelations, why would he not be permitted to express them externally with his paintbrush and to offer to be viewed by the eyes that which is depicted in his mind? As a geometrician describes with lines what a mathematician describes with numbers, so the painter with his brush shapes outwardly the same thing that he conceives internally in his mind.
(c) In fact, when such divine revelations are brought forth in words and conversation, icons and images of them are shaped in the mind by means of the ears. Why, then, would it not be lawful to place before people’s eyes in statues and paintings the same thing that was offered to their ears through words? In Gal. 3:1 the apostle states that Christ crucified was “written”—or as Luther renders it, “depicted”—before the eyes of the Galatians; that is, the doctrine of the crucified Christ was presented to them as clearly and as brilliantly as if they had seen Him crucified before their very eyes. (See our treatise On the Law of God [Commonplace XV], § 67.)
Practical use.
§ 122. The practical use is exhorting, in two ways: (I) To love God, the supreme Spirit. God supreme, the uncreated Spirit, has given to us corporeal humans a living spirit or, as it is in Hebrew, 
, “of lives” (Gen. 2:7), that is, a rational soul to which the name “spirit” is not infrequently attributed in Scripture (Ps. 31:[5]; 146:4; Eccl. 3:21; 8:8; etc.). (They think this soul is called “spirit” or “breath of lives” because a person ought to be preserved thereby not only for temporal and physical life but also for eternal and spiritual life. However, the Hebrew 
is plural only because life includes many years or stages.)
This created spirit of ours clings by faith and love to the uncreated Spirit. Nothing that is corporeal and visible can satisfy and fill the desire of our soul, for it is a spirit more noble and excellent than all physical things. Nothing that is mortal, corruptible, transitory can grant rest to the soul. In fact, this spirit of ours was created for eternity and, therefore, should seek its rest only in the eternal, incorporeal, and uncreated Spirit. That is why the apostle in 2 Cor. 4:18 describes the truly devout as those who do not “look to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are temporary but the things that are unseen are eternal.” All the things described by Moses as God-created in the seven days of creation are corporeal and transitory. (We readily concede that angels were created within that space of seven days, but Moses the historiographer passes over the creation of those invisible creatures.) Of all created things, man alone is spiritual, incorporeal, and eternal with respect to his soul. Therefore he should not seek the goal [finem] of his desire and rest for his soul in the other created things. After creating man, God rested because He wished to rest and dwell in man. Thus man, too, should seek the goal of his desire and rest for his spirit in God alone. That supreme Spirit is the Creator of our spirit and its beginning and end; therefore our spirit does not rest except in its own beginning.
“Let each thing live according to that from which it has life. From where does your flesh have life? From your soul (from your spirit) for once that is separated, the flesh dies. From where does your soul (your spirit) receive life? From your God. Let each of these live according to its own life. The soul is not its own life, but God is the life of the soul; therefore it should live according to God.” Augustine, Serm. 13. de verb. apost.: “O Father, You have created the spirit of all flesh, our spirit, for Yourself. Therefore our spirit is restless unless it rests in You.” Augustine, Conf., bk. 1, c. 1, says the same. Whoever loves anything beneath himself and his own dignity does an injustice [injuriam] to himself. But now, inasmuch as our soul is a spirit created for eternity, it is more excellent than all corporeal creatures and is inferior to God alone. Therefore it should not cling in love to corporeal and transitory things but to the supreme Spirit, which it resembles most closely. 1 Cor. 6:17: “He who adheres to the Lord is one spirit.”
The more corporeal the spirits—that is, the more airy and tenuous the corporeal particles [corpuscula] in a created thing are—the more active and busy it is and the more it tends to rise, as is apparent from the nature of fire, breath, gasses, etc. Why, then, is our soul, our spirit, which truly and clearly is spiritual and incorporeal, not active and busy through its desire to be joined with the supreme and uncreated Spirit in whom all its blessedness consists? Why does it not raise itself up by thinking, desiring, and loving only heavenly and spiritual things?
§ 123. (II) To call upon God in spirit. Christ shows us this practical use in John 4:24: “God is Spirit, and those who adore Him should adore Him in spirit and in truth.” The Savior draws an inference in this way: He who is Spirit must be invoked in spirit and in truth. God is Spirit. Therefore. The Samaritan woman had posed a question about the place to pray (v. 20), and Christ answered her that a distinction of places had been completely removed in the New Testament. Because God is an incorporeal spirit, therefore He is not limited to any particular place to hear our prayers. Acts 17:24: “He does not dwell in temples made by hand.” 1 Kings 8:27: “The heavens of heavens do not hold Him.” When in the Old Testament He wanted the worship of adoration and offering of sacrifices to take place in the temple at Jerusalem, this was done as a type of Christ, in whose assumed flesh “dwells all the fullness of the Godhead” (Col. 2:9). Therefore to worship in spirit and in truth is (a) to call upon God, who is present everywhere, without any distinction of places, “to lift up holy hands in every place” (1 Tim. 2:8); (b) to call upon God with a genuine and serious attitude of the heart, not with a hypocritical observance of external ceremonies and circumstances; (c) to call upon Him in true faith kindled by the Holy Spirit.
Hilary, De Trin., bk. 2: “The presumption of both Samaritans and Jews confined God, in whom are all things and outside of whom there is no room for anything, to the top of a hill or to the hollow of a constructed house. Therefore because God is invisible, incomprehensible, immeasurable, the Lord says that the time has come when God should be worshiped neither on a mountain nor in the temple, because God is Spirit, and a spirit is neither circumscribed nor held because, by virtue of its nature, it is everywhere and is absent nowhere, richly bringing forth all in all.” Ambrose, De Spirit. s., bk. 3, c. 12: “Often ‘spirit’ is used for ‘spiritual grace.’ Therefore here God is worshiped not in wickedness of heart but with spiritual grace. The Holy Spirit infuses the gift of spiritual grace in which God is worshiped, as He is also worshiped in truth. For that person does not worship unless he draws the truth of His divinity with devout affection.”