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]).