The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. John
Worshipped: observe that by worship here and elsewhere is signified the whole public ritual of worshipping God, especially by means of sacrifices, and the other ceremonies instituted by Moses at God’s mouth. This public worship could only be offered in the Tabernacle erected by Moses, and afterwards in the Temple built by Solomon. This is plain from God's law in Deut. xiv. 24. For otherwise, by natural and Divine right, it ever has been, and is lawful to worship and call upon God privately always and in every place. Thus in Gen. xxii. 5, Abraham said to his servants, “After we have worshipped, i.e., sacrificed, we will come again to you.”
In this mountain : Garizim, which overhangs the city of Sichem. From this mountain Jotham, the son of Gideon, cursed the Sichemites, (Judges ix. 7).
There was a famous and unending controversy between the Samaritans and the Jews concerning worshipping and sacrificing in this mountain. In the time of Alexander the Great, Manasses, the brother of Jaddi, the High Priest who met Alexander, and appeased him, when he was incensed against the Jews, married a foreign wife, the daughter of Sanballat, whom Darius, the last king of Persia, had set over Samaria. Manasses, being excluded by his brother from the performance of sacerdotal functions, fled to his father-in-law , Sanballat. Sanballat built a noble temple on Mount Garizim, and appointed Manasses to be its priest. Thither fled many Jewish refugees, especially those who, like Manasses, had married strange wives, contrary to the Law. As an excuse they made use of the argument that Sichem was celebrated for the worship and sacrifices of the Patriarchs, as of Jacob (Gen. xxxiii. 20; Josh. xxiv. 1), of the Tribes (Deut. xxvii. 12), where Moses by God’s command bids Joshua to build an altar on Mount Garizim, and there offer burnt-offerings , and engrave the Decalogue on stones, and promulge the Law of God to the Twelve Tribes, with blessings to those who kept it, the people answering “ Amen.”
This temple stood upon Mount Garizim for 200 years, until it was destroyed by Hyrcanus, son of Simon, the brother of Judas Maccabeus (Jos., Ant., lib. 3, c. 17). Josephus also relates that the Jews and Samaritans referred their controversy for settlement to Ptolemy Philometor, King of Egypt, who decided it in favour of the Jews, on the ground that the latter had built their temple at the instance of Moses. But the Samaritans were not contented with this decision, and still persisted in their schism.
Ver. 21. — Jesus saith, &c. Ye, i.e., whosoever rightly, according to God’s ordinance, wish to worship God the Father. The meaning is, the hour cometh, the time of the Evangelical Law and doctrine, about to be instituted by Me, by which, immediately after My death, which is shortly to come to pass, the Law of Moses shall be abolished, and all its rites for worshipping God in the Temple at Jerusalem, as well as in this your rival temple on Garizim. For throughout the whole world Christian churches shall be built, in which God shall be worshipped in spirit and in truth. This is what Malachi predicted under the reign of Christ (i. 10, 11).
The Hebrew for the pure or clean oblation is mincha, i.e., the Eucharist, or the oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ, which alone has succeeded to all the ancient sacrifices of animals.
Ver. 22. — Ye worship what (Arabic, whom) ye know not, &c. Here Christ gives a direct answer to the woman, and decides the Jews to be in the right in the controversy concerning the worship of God, condemning the Samaritans as schismatics. He says, You, O ye Samaritans , worship ye know not what, because ye worship God together with your Assyrian idols ; and associating God as it were with idols, ye worship a false or fictitious God. Again the Samaritans had their own heresies and errors, which S. Epiphanius recapitulates. In the same manner the Turks and Jews worship a God whom they know not, because they deny Him to be in a Trinity of Persons. So also Calvin with his followers, in denying the omnipotence of God, and making Him cruel in condemning some men to hell without any demerit on their part, worship not a true, but a false God. For the true God is Almighty, and most kind.
2. and better. Ye worship, i.e., ye have a method of worship and sacrifice which ye do not know to have proceeded from God. For ye have framed it out of your own imagination, contrary to the will and law of God. But we Jews know what we worship, because we follow the way of worshipping God which was prescribed by Moses.
For salvation, &c. Both because I, Christ, who am the Author of salvation, am not born of the Samaritans, but of the Jews, as well as because the true knowledge and worship of God, which leads men to salvation, formerly emanated from the Jews to the Gentiles, and now in the New Law will emanate from Me, a Jew, to all nations.
Ver. 23. — But the hour cometh, &c. Now is the time of the
New Law of My Gospel, in which the true worshippers, namely,
Christians, whether Jews, or Samaritans, or of other nations, being converted unto Me, shall worship God, not in this mountain, nor Jerusalem only, by the carnal sacrifices of beasts, as the Jews and Samaritans do, but in all places throughout the world in spirit and in truth.
In spirit and truth. Observe, the Samaritans ignorantly and falsely worshipped God. But the Jews worshipped the true God indeed, but chiefly by corporeal victims, and other bodily symbols, and in one stated place, Jerusalem : all which things were shadows and types of the spiritual worship which was to be inaugurated by Christ. To both these Christ opposes His faithful Christians, who instead of the body, worship God in spirit ; and in truth instead of in falsity, shadows and ignorance. For God is an incorporeal Spirit, most true, and most pure. Spirit therefore here signifies the spiritual worship of faith, hope, and charity, devotion, contrition, and other virtues, by which God is most rightly worshipped by Christians , and not through shadows and figures, but in truth. In truth therefore is in the true, sincere, and worthy worship of God, in which God is well pleased, according to the words (Ps. l. 18), “ In holocausts Thou shalt not be delighted : the sacrifice for God is a spirit” (Vulg.). Also (Ps. xlix. 23), “The sacrifice of praise shall honour Me” (Vulg.). And (Ps. iv. 6), “Sacrifice the sacrifice of justice, and trust in the Lord.”
As Theophylact says, “ Because many seem to worship in soul, but have not right knowledge, such as heretics, therefore He added, and in truth. For it behoves us both to worship God with the mind, and also to have a sound faith with regard to Him. Such a worshipper was Paul, as Origen says, when he declares, ‘God is my witness, whom I serve’ (Greek, λατρεύω, worship with latria) in my spirit (Rom. i. 9).” And the Gloss says, not in the Temple, not in the mountain, but in the innermost temple of the heart, and with a true knowledge must God be worshipped. The Samaritan therefore worshipped God in a mountain, or locally, the Jew in a shadow, or figuratively, the Christian in spirit and in truth , truly and spiritually. For, as S. Chrysostom says, “The former things were figures, now all is truth.”
Others explain thus, we must worship God in spirit , i.e., by the Spirit, or the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
“ Mystically, by the spirit is intended,” says Theophylact, “action, contemplation.” For all Christians serve God either by an active, or a contemplative life.
Heretics object, since God should be worshipped by Christians in spirit and in truth , therefore all corporal rites and ceremonies ought to be rejected in baptism.
I answer by denying the consequence. For these are not
shadows and figures of the Old Law, but ornaments, incentives, and effects of the Spirit, and therefore pertain to the Spirit For without sacraments and sacrifices the Church cannot exist, because without them she would cease to be visible, and could not be united and gathered together. In form these ceremonies are practised by Christians, and flow from the inward spirit of faith, hope, and charity. Therefore they belong to the Spirit, as results depend upon a cause, and external upon interior actions. It was otherwise with the ignorant and carnal Jews, who placed all their worship in external sacrifices and rites. So SS. Cyril and Ambrose,
Even the heathen saw that God, to be worshipped acceptably, must be worshipped in spirit and in truth.
“ If God be Mind, as ancient verses tell.
Who worship Him in spirit, worship well.”
God is a Spirit , &c. This is the reason a priori: God is a most pure and true Spirit, therefore He is pleased only with worship in spirit and in truth. “ If God were a body,” says S. Augustine, “it would be fitting to worship Him in a mountain, because a mountain is material. Hence it is plain against the Anthropomorphites, and against Tertullian and Lactantius, that God has not a body, even the least material conceivable, but that He is a most immaterial Spirit.” That axiom therefore of Tertullian is false, “ that what is incorporeal is non-existent.” However, Tertullian and Lactantius seem to use the words body and corporeal in an improper sense, merely to denote an actual substance.