Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Richard Bauckham vs. "Water" in John 3:5 being a Reference to "Amniotic Fluid"

Commenting on John 3:5, Richard Bauckham noted that


The words “born of water and the Spirit” have been variously interpreted, both in support of a baptismal reference and against one. To guide us through this interpretive debate, I suggest a set of criteria for a plausible reading of the phrase in its context . . .

 

(4) A plausible interpretation must do justice to the close association between the two terms “water” and “Spirit.” This pair of anarthrous nouns connected by και (“and”) resembles other pairs in John’s Gospel (1:14; 4:23, 24; 6:63). While the relation between the two nouns cannot be quite the same in all these cases, in all four cases the two nouns are closely associated and some kind of conceptual unity is implied. So it would seem unlikely that “water” and “Spirit” are contrasted. (Richard Bauckham, “Sacraments in the Gospel of John,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, ed. Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015], 86, italics in original)

 

With reference to the claim that “’Water refers to the amniotic fluid of the womb, and so ‘water and Spirit’ refers to two births, one natural and the other spiritual,” Bauckham notes that

 

there are two objections to this proposal. First, it fails our criterion (4) because, especially in view of 3:6, “water” and “Spirit” would be in contrast to each other. Secondly, it is difficult to see why natural birth needs mentioning in 3:5. Nicodemus does not need to be told that it is necessary. The phrase “born from water and Spirit” seems naturally to refer to one birth only, in parallel with “born from above” and “born from the Spirit.” (Ibid., 87; Bauckham himself interprets the phrase as Jesus teaching “to enter the kingdom of God one must be born . . . from the womb-water that is Spirit” [ibid., 88]).

 

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