{"id":75,"date":"2002-09-02T19:48:35","date_gmt":"2002-09-03T03:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/archives\/2002\/09\/02\/unless-one-is-born-of-water-and-spirit\/"},"modified":"2002-09-02T19:48:35","modified_gmt":"2002-09-03T03:48:35","slug":"unless-one-is-born-of-water-and-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2002\/09\/02\/unless-one-is-born-of-water-and-spirit","title":{"rendered":"Unless One Is Born of Water and Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow\u2013Jack, author of Intregrity<\/i> blog<\/a> made several comments back-to-back in response to my earlier posting about baptism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll have to wait to address his lengthier comment, but I\u2019ll tackle his shorter question right now: To make my question more explicit: what I don\u2019t understand is how you reconcile this \u201cphysical birth\u201d interpretation in the context of Jesus stating the conditions of entry into the Kingdom. Are you suggesting that it read as, \u201cTruly, truly, I say to you, unless one is physically born and spiritually born, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.\u201d Doesn\u2019t seem odd to cite physical birth \u2014 something we all have experienced by the virtue of our existence \u2014 as a condition to entry into Heaven? Doesn\u2019t that interpretation render the \u201cof water\u201d part of the phrase a moot point? After all, who hasn\u2019t been physically born?<\/i><\/p>\n

Thanks\u2013I was worried that I wasn\u2019t clear enough in my previous posting. I now know that I was positively muddy!<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the flow of conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in the NET Bible<\/a> translation of John 3.5\u20137: <\/p>\n

Jesus replied, I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above [anothen<\/a>], he cannot see the kingdom of God. <\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

In this snippet of dialog, Jesus explains the whole shebang: you must be born from above. The word anothen<\/a> is ambigious in Greek. In this context, it might either mean \u201cfrom above\u201d or \u201cagain\u201d. Recent scholarly translations come down on the side of \u201cfrom above,\u201d which makes the most sense of the conversation (NET and NRSV are two of the translations: check them out).<\/p>\n

Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mothers womb and be born a second time, can he? <\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Nicodemus doesn\u2019t understand what Jesus is saying. Being born from above doesn\u2019t make any sense to him, but neither does being born again. Evidently, he thinks being born again is the more likely meaning, so he asks Jesus the above question based on that mistaken understanding.<\/p>\n

Why would Nicodemus assume that Jesus was talking about physical birth? Because Nicodemus thought his own physical birth was salvific. Nicodemus was trusting in his status as a biological member of God\u2019s chosen peole to assure him of citizenship in God\u2019s Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Jesus answered, \u201cI tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, \u2018You must all be born from above.\u2019 \u201d (John 3.3\u20137, NET Bible)<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Jesus is now trying to help Nicodemus understand his real point\u2013that everyone must be born from above. To that end, he draws a contrast between the physical birth that Nicodemus thinks Jesus is talking about and the spiritual birth that Jesus is driving at.<\/p>\n

What evidence is there for this point of view?<\/p>\n

1) It makes sense of the flow of conversation. Jesus talks about spiritual birth, Nicodemus thinks he\u2019s talking about physical birth, so Jesus bridges from physical birth back to spiritual birth.<\/p>\n

2) \u201cBorn of water\u201d is clearly a metaphor for something. Physical birth is the topic being discussed when the metaphor is used, and the metaphor fits.<\/p>\n

3) The parallelism in the text itself. The unclear term \u201cborn of water\u201d is in parallel construction with \u201cborn of flesh\u201d. Using the clear to interpret the unclear, we see that \u201cborn of water\u201d means the same thing as \u201cborn of flesh.\u201d In other words, being born.<\/p>\n

4) It does justice to Nicodemus\u2019 likely frame of mind. Nicodemus thought he was guaranteed access to the Kingdom of God based purely on the accident of his birth as a Jewish person. <\/p>\n

I hope that helps. <\/p>\n

There are other interpretations out there: just do a search on Google for \u201cborn from above.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which I attempt to clarify what I mean by being \u201cborn from above\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-of-random-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-1d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}