Lutheran theologian Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823-1883), in response to those who try to argue that “water” in John 3 is not a reference to water baptism, responded thusly:
1. That to take the
word “water,” figuratively, makes an incongruity with the idea of a birth. It
is said that water here is the figure of the cleansing and purifying power of
the Holy Spirit. But there is an incongruity in such an interpretation. Had the
Savior meant this, he would naturally have said: Except a man be cleansed,
or washed with water, not “born of it.”
2. One of the
figurative interpretations is in conflict with the evident meaning of the word “Spirit”
here. For it is clear from the whole connection, that the Spirit here means the
Holy Spirit as a person. In the next verse it is said: “That which is born of
the SPIRIT is Spirit,” and in the 8th verse: “So is every one that is born of
the SPIRIT.” No sound interpreter of any school, so far as we know, disputes
that the word “Spirit,” in these passages, means the Holy Spirit as a person;
and nothing is more obvious than the word in the 5th verse means just what it
does in the following ones. But if “water” is figurative, then the phrase water
and Spirit, means, in one of the figurative interpretations, “spiritual water;”
that is, the substantive Spirit is used as an adjective, and not as the name of
a person. This false interpretation makes the phrase mean “spiritual water,”
and Baptism and the Holy Spirit both vanish before it. In its anxiety to read
Baptism out of the text, it has read the Holy Spirit out of it, too.
3. Another figurative
interpretation turns the words the other way, as if our Savior had said: “Born
of the Spirit and water,” and not it means not that we are to be born again of “spiritual
water,” but that we are not to be born again of the “aqueous or water-like
Spirit.” But not only does such a meaning seem poor and ambiguous, but it
supposes the one term, “Spirit,” to be literal, and the other “water,” to be
figurative; but as they are governed by the same verb and preposition, this
would seem incredible, even apart from the other cogent reasons against it. In
common life, a phrase in which such a combination was made, would be regarded
as absurd.
4. The term “to be
born of “leads us necessarily to the same result.
a. The phrase is employed in speaking of natural birth, as in Matt.
1:16: “Mary of whom was born Jesus.”
Luke 1:35: “The holy
thing which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God.” So
in this chapter, “that which is born of the flesh.”
b. It is employed to designate spiritual birth. Thus John 1:13 (“the sons
of God”) were born not of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God.” Here no symbolical title is used, but the
literal name of the Author of the new birth. So in this chapter, v. 8: “So is every
one is born of the Spirit.” John, in his gospel and epistles, uses the
phrase “to be born of” fifteen times. In fourteen of them, it is not pretended
that any of the terms used to designate the cause of the birth is symbolical.
The fifteenth instance is the one before us.
The phrase to “be
born of” is never connected elsewhere in the New Testament with terms
indicative of the means or cause of birth, which are symbolical in their
character. The whole New Testament usage is in conflict with the supposition,
that it is here linked with a symbolical term.
“Born of God” is used
some eight or nine times. “Born of the Spirit” is used twice, and these, with
the words before us, exhaust the New Testament use of the phrase.
Without the context,
then, the text would settle the question, and demonstrate that our Lord
referred to baptism. (Charles Krauth, The Doctrine of Baptism: Selected Writings
on the Sacrament [Classics in Dogmatics; Ithaca, N.Y.: Just and Sinner,
2020], 130-32, emphasis in original)
For more on John 3 and its affirmation of
baptismal regeneration, see:
Baptism, Salvation, and the New Testament, Part 4: John 3:1-7