Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

God is spirit.

« It is contained in the complex of perfections which we have declared, that God is infinite spirit: therefore, when in Scripture God is said to be spirit, this must be understood in the most proper sense. This is demonstrated expressly from the context of Io. IV. 24., and from the dependence of created spirits and of all spiritual perfections on God the spirit. »

I. By the name spirit we understand a substance which a) negatively has no real parts, whether constituent or integral; but is simple and one in itself, without distinction and dispersion into several components, at least substantial. This simplicity, however, we understand in spirit not only as the negation of parts, but positively as the intrinsic essential nobility of being, which surpasses, in some sense at least infinitely, the grade of substances having perfection in the composition and from the composition of parts; so that, of course, no intensification of such perfections can attain to that nobility, but it is a nobility superior in its whole order. For spirit is, and is understood to be, a b) substance immaterial, that is, negatively not inert, nor acting only outside itself, nor in intrinsic action restricted to composites and dependent on composition; but which positively has life in itself, and that intellectual life: namely, from its very essence it is so ordered that by a vital act it understands the true and has formal truth in itself, and by a vital act tends toward the good known under the aspect of good, and embraces it with love, and is blessed in the good. Moreover, in all these inner vital acts the spirit at the same time has an inner consciousness of its acts, and a consciousness of itself as substantial principle. Finally, c) from the very simplicity, nobility, and intellectuality of being and life of spirit, it is by its nature immortal, in its substance unchangeable, and with respect to place exempt and superior to the modes of existing to which bodies are subject in space. The more perfect this simplicity and intellectuality is, the more perfect is the nature of spirit.

Now from what has been demonstrated in the preceding theses: a) God is most pure act, in whom, on account of his essential perfection, not only physical composition from real parts but also metaphysical composition from parts considered according to reason is absolutely repugnant. b) He is not only an intellectual substance, having the faculty of embracing the true and the good by his vital acts; but he is essentially one substantive act, which is identically both absolute truth and infinite understanding of truth, and absolute good and infinite love of good, and thus in himself and in the fullness of his perfection is an absolute infinite beatitude. c) Just as God is absolute unchangeable truth, goodness, substantial active power and pure act; so every succession, and every limitation of presence, is wholly repugnant to his perfection: he himself is his eternity and his immensity.

This life of infinite understanding, will and beatitude is not only an inner act of the divine substance; but it is the eternal and immense divine substance itself. « He is wholly thought, wholly will, wholly mind, wholly light, wholly eye, wholly hearing, wholly the fountain of all good things » Iren. 1.I. c.12. n.2.¹. Hence the divine understanding and will is not only independent of all things which are, or can be thought, outside itself, but is the principle, exemplar and cause from which depends every truth, every good, every life, every understanding, every love of good, every beatitude. God is therefore infinite spirit, because he is the intellectual life of infinite perfection, ἡ ζωὴ, τὸ φῶς, ἡ ἀγάπη, ἡ αὐτοζωὴ, ἡ αὐτοσοφία, ἡ αὐτοαγαθότης (Dionys. div. nom. c. 2. 5.); he is spirit in an eminent sense, to whom created spirits, and whatever spiritual thing is conceived apart from him, are only images and likenesses. Hence the nearer creatures are to the image and likeness of God, the more properly they are spirits. In the Scriptures themselves the human soul, according to its intellectual faculties, is called spiritus πνεῦμα, to distinguish it from the sensitive faculties, according to which the same substance, informing and animating the body, is called anima ψυχή. Hence, moreover, those intellectual substances which are not ordered to the body through such sensitive faculties are of a nobler order and are pure spirits. Further, the soul elevated by supernatural gifts, which are and are called spiritual, is called spiritualis πνεῦμα; the whole man through this elevation is πνευματικὸς in comparison with the purely natural condition, according to which he is called carnal σαρκικὸς². If therefore the thing itself is considered, which we wish to express philosophically and theologically by the name spiritus, God is and is called spirit in the most proper sense, although, with regard to the imposition of the name, it is said of creatures before it is said of God, which it has in common with nearly all the other names by which we designate the divine perfections (see above Coroll. 1. ad th. XIII.).

II. It is utterly absurd, as is clear from what has been said, what George Hermes taught, that the spiritual nature of God cannot be demonstrated by any other valid argument except that which is supplied in the text Io. IV. 24: God is spirit. Indeed the whole force of this very saying of the Saviour cannot be sufficiently understood unless the other chapters of revealed doctrine, concerning the simplicity and intellectual life which God is, are compared at the same time. Yet with this comparison made, it is most true that in those words of Christ there is comprehended, as it were, a synthesis of all those things which have been demonstrated in the preceding theses concerning the essence, truth, goodness and simplicity of God; for that the nature of God is wholly spiritual is indeed proved from the context, this clause being stated.

In this discourse with the Samaritan woman, Io. IV. 20–24., Christ the Lord deduces from the spiritual nature of God that the worship of God must be spiritual: « God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. »

Therefore, that it may be proved from the context itself in what sense God is called spirit, it must be inquired in what sense the divine worship which the Lord promises is said to be « in spirit and truth. » Again, that we may understand this other point, it must be defined what opposition is, and what is not, there established between the worship of the old dispensation and the worship promised by the New Testament.

Here one must distinguish between the things which are opposed, and the formal reason under which they are opposed. The things which are opposed are not merely external worship and merely internal worship, as the pseudo-mystic heretics asserted, and as impious men now say, who would wish all external worship removed. The woman asks not about any adoration of God whatever, but about that which the Samaritans gave in the temple of Mount Garizim, and the Jews in the temple of Jerusalem only; this was the adoration of public and sacerdotal worship, carried out specifically through sacrifices. Whence also in the opposition public and sacerdotal worship of the New Testament must be understood. This sense is proved both from the question, which concerned public adoration, and from the identity of the word in each member. « Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. » « The hour comes, when neither on this mountain nor at Jerusalem will you worship..... The hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father also seeks such to worship him: God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth »³. But public and sacerdotal worship cannot be merely internal. Therefore the things which are mutually opposed cannot be the merely external worship of the Old Testament and the merely internal worship of the New Testament. But the formal reason under which the opposition is set up must be understood as that which in each worship corresponds to the proper character of the dispensation to which it belongs. In the old dispensation this is indeed external, ceremonial, typical, in itself ineffective, and, as the Apostle speaks (2. Cor. III. 6. sq.; Heb. IX. 10.), a ministry of the letter, deformed, and a justice of the flesh; but in the worship of the New Testament the proper character, arising from the very nature of the dispensation of grace, is that which is internal, spiritual, efficacious unto justification in spirit. Christ the Lord therefore sets over against the typical worship, and so far imperfect, a perfect worship prefigured by it; for in this sense adoration is said to be in truth, and the worshippers are said to be true⁴. With the imperfection of the type coheres the fact that worship, insofar as it is proper to that typical dispensation, is external; and under this formal reason the worship of the New Testament is set over against it as adoration in spirit: « the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. » But adoration in spirit, consisting in dispositions, thoughts and affections of the soul, in faith, hope and charity, under this formal reason is something spiritual, freed from all material things; it is an entirely intellectual life in acts which in the proper sense are and are called spiritual; from this spirituality worship has its perfection, so that it is adoration in truth.

Hence this is the conclusion: adoration in spirit and truth is required from the proper nature of God, because God is spirit: « God is spirit, and (by Hebraism, the particle of inference = ergo) those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. » Now in the phrase « to worship in spirit » the word spirit is necessarily taken in the negating sense of what is material and corporeal, and affirming supernatural intellectual life in faith, hope and charity. Therefore also when God is called spirit, as the demonstration why spiritual worship is due to him, Christ the Lord understood, and wished to be understood, spirit in the negating sense of what is material, and in the affirming sense of intellectual substance and life, according to the concept of spirit set forth a little before, in n. I.

By a nearly similar reasoning, 2. Cor. III. describes the Christian dispensation, in its goods and gifts, as spiritual, to which is opposed the external dispensation and the legislation written on tables and in letters. But the principle of the charisms is called « the Spirit of the living God; » consequently the ministry of the New Testament is « the ministration of the Spirit. » Now the author of the charisms is understood to be not indeed a quality, but a subsisting and personal substance; for the Apostle concludes: « Now the Lord is the Spirit » (ὁ δὲ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν). Moreover, there is no need to appeal to the texts of Scripture by which the spiritual nature and essence of God is set forth, since the whole revealed doctrine concerning the relations of God to creatures demonstrates this very thing evidently.

III. God is not only, as Creator and Conserver, « God of the spirits of all flesh » (Num. XVI. 22; Iob XII. 10.) and « lover of souls » (Sap. XI. 27.); but he is described more distinctly as the sun of intelligible things (ἥλιος τοῖς νοητοῖς), as Gregory Nazianzen says (or. 21. n. 1; or. 28. n. 30. Cf. supra th.XI.n.II.). For God is the principle, in general, of all life, Ps. CIII. (heb. 104.) 30; Iob XXXIII. 4. Specifically he is the fount of intellectual life, « an illuminating light, » first indeed in the natural order also: he himself « gave the heart to think and created the knowledge of spirit » Ecclesi. XVII. 5. 6. Then he is the fount of intellectual life in the supernatural order; for what has not come up into the eye, the ear, the heart of man, that is, into natural knowledge, this « God revealed through his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God » 1. Cor. II. 9.10. « The Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and fortitude, the Spirit of knowledge and piety » Is. XI. 2. He alone is the principle of all spiritual charisms, which are referred either to the intellect or to the will: « all these things are wrought by one and the same Spirit » 1. Cor. XII. 4. sqq.; « there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; » and in the same Spirit is given wisdom, knowledge, the working of virtues, prophecy, discernment of spirits, 1. Cor. 1. c. Finally the same Spirit, by his very gifts, transforms created spirits into the same image, from glory to glory, 2. Cor. III. 18.⁵, so that finally they are made one spirit with the Spirit himself, who is for them the principle and ultimate end, not indeed in substance but by union and likeness, 1. Cor. VI. 17. All these things, however, are wrought by one Spirit, abiding in himself without any change in himself. « The artificer of all things, wisdom… for in her is a spirit of understanding, holy, unique, manifold… having all power, overseeing all things, and passing through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, most subtle… and, since she is one, she can do all things, and remaining in herself she renews all things, and through the nations passes into holy souls, and makes friends of God and prophets » Sap. VII. 21-27.⁶

Thus God is declared to us as absolute understanding and substantial will abiding in himself, or he is declared as personal spirit abiding in himself, so that by no division or emanation of himself, but by his free volition, he is the principle and cause of intellects, wills, finite spirits, and of all substances, powers and spiritual faculties; and so he is said to be principle, because and insofar as he is himself creator of spirit. Therefore not only from the metaphysical principle, that the perfection of an effect necessarily pre-exists in its cause either formally or eminently, but also from the express declarations of Scripture, the dependence of all spiritual effects on God as on an exemplar and efficient cause demonstrates that God is spirit according to all the senses by which these simple perfections, without limitation, can be designated by this name.