But we must pass on to the language of the Gospel itself, in which it is declared that “God is a Spirit,” and where we have to show how that is to be understood agreeably to what we have stated. For let us inquire on what occasion these words were spoken by the Saviour, before whom He uttered them, and what was the subject of investigation. We find, without any doubt, that He spoke these words to the Samaritan woman, saying to her, who thought, agreeably to the Samaritan view, that God ought to be worshipped on Mount Gerizim, that “God is a Spirit.” (Book I, Section 4)

The Greek word for spirit being referenced is πνεύμα or pneuma. The literal use was as breath or wind. It came to be understood as the underlying source of vitality in all things. Pneuma is how the logos is expressed, it is the human soul, it is the transcendent form.

Plato had been dead for nearly 700 years when Origen wrote, but the neo-Platonists had used those seven centuries to further refine distinctions between the material and the ideal. In this tradition pneuma was the manifestation of the ideal in this material world.

The ultimate reality of Origen is God. In this corrupt material realm we encounter God as pneuma.