In his commentary on John 3:5, John Calvin taught that Christ
employed the words Spirit and water to mean
the same thing, and this ought not to be regarded as a harsh or forced
interpretation; for it is a frequent and common way of speaking in Scripture,
when the Spirit is mentioned, to add the word Water or Fire,
expressing his power. We sometimes meet with the statement, that it is Christ
who baptizeth with the Holy Ghost and with fire, (Mt
3:11; Lu 3:16), where fire means nothing different
from the Spirit, but only shows what is his efficacy in us. As to the word water
being placed first, it is of little consequence; or rather, this mode of
speaking flows more naturally than the other, because the metaphor is followed
by a plain and direct statement, as if Christ had said that no man is a son of
God until he has been renewed by water, and that this water is the
Spirit who cleanseth us anew and who, by spreading his energy over us,
imparts to us the rigor of the heavenly life, though by nature we are utterly
dry. And most properly does Christ, in order to reprove Nicodemus for his
ignorance, employ a form of expression which is common in Scripture; for
Nicodemus ought at length to have acknowledged, that what Christ had said was
taken from the ordinary doctrine of the Prophets.
By water, therefore, is meant nothing more than
the inward purification and invigoration which is produced by the Holy
Spirit. Besides, it is not unusual to employ the word and instead of
that is, when the latter clause is intended to explain the former. And
the view which I have taken is supported by what follows; for when Christ
immediately proceeds to assign the reason why we must be born again,
without mentioning the water, he shows that the newness of life which he
requires is produced by the Spirit alone; whence it follows, that water
must not be separated from the Spirit.
Responding to Calvin and those who follow this interpretation of “of
water and of the spirit” (ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος) in John 3:5, Lutheran David
P. Scaer wrote that:
A number of attempts have been
made to deny the strong sacramental implications of this pericope, since it
establishes Baptism as an essential part of a complete Christian life: “Unless
one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Some who
have followed Calvin’s lead, including Barth, have taken the word “water” as
simply another reference to the Holy Spirit. Another attempt to skirt the
sacramental meaning of the passage is to take the reference to water as a
reference to natural, ordinary birth, as a woman’s water breaks just before
birth. What is required first is that a man be born from his mother and then
later receive another birth from the Spirit, usually understood as a conscious
experience in which the individual makes a decision for Christ. Such a
rendering is strained, since the verb “to be born” appears only once, and only
with difficulty could it refer to two birth experiences.
Through the Greek words βαπτιζω and βαπτισμα, which are the roots for the
English “I baptize” and “Baptism,” are not used in this Nicodemus account, John’s
gospel prior to this point does use them. The person of John the Baptist is
introduced as early as the prologue (Jn 1:6-8), and his ministry is described
in Jn 1:19-34. Jesus’ first disciples are those who followed John (Jn 1:35-42).
Immediately following the Nicodemus account the evangelist relates how both
Jesus and John were baptizing, the latter at Salim because of the abundance of
water there (Jn 3:22-30). John, like other New Testament writers, is using the
word “water” in reference to Baptism. Where John writes “water and the Spirit”
the Small Catechism has “water and word,” and seems to be closer in expression,
though not in idea, to Eph 5:26, “the washing of the water with the word.”
The word “Baptism” is not strictly
a native English word taken over from the Anglo-Saxon, but a word borrowed from
Greek through Latin. We use the word “Baptism” as a technicus terminus
for the first sacrament. Though Baptism was already in use in the apostolic
church as a term for the first sacrament, it was not the only term used. While
in English the sacrament with water is referred to exclusively as Baptism, the
New Testament uses “water,” “washing,” “new creation,” and “born again,” or
better, “born from on high” or “born from God.” Thus, for example, in his first
epistle John identifies those whose faith conquers the world as those who have
born from God (1 Jn 4:5). They are the ones who have known Jesus in the water
of Baptism (1 Jn 4:6). Wherever this usage appears in the New Testament, there
is the assumption that the writer is referring to Baptism. (David P. Scaer, Baptism
[Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics 11; St. Louis, Miss.: The Luther Academy,
1999], 62-63)