http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=18650#.UxIKDMKYZjo
WATER AND THE SPIRIT: JOHN 3:5
By Roger Salter
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
March 1, 2014
In his divinely inspired book, the Bible, our Creator and Redeemer weds the features of the created world to the facts of the spiritual realm in order to convey the message of his wondrous salvation to our understanding. Gospel symbolism is derived from phenomena that we are capable of perceiving via our senses. Figurative and symbolic language are woven all the way through the content of Holy Scripture. Our conceptual grasp of truth is enlivened and enhanced through the arousal of imagination and stimulation of feeling. Picture language, sensory awareness through vivid illustrations, arrest our attention to the speech of God in his self and salvific revelation. He both teaches and charms us, alluring us to union with himself through the Son he has sent for our rescue and eternal wellbeing.
Old Testament and New are replete with poetic description of God and his works. The historical core and development within the narrative of the Word are embellished with imagery. The facts and essential events are decidedly true. There is literal and historical reliability and accuracy in terms of earthly happenings and occurrences, and attendant spiritual realities are relayed to our minds through analogy and captivating pictorial presentation. The Lord is both Author and Artist in the gracious gift of his truth. He marries beauty to the benefits of his Word. It is a matter of illumination through information and enchantment.
Examples of symbolism, analogy, and illustration are too numerous to supply at length; they are present on almost every page, and especially prevalent in the parables of Jesus. Principles of grammar, contextual reading, poetic sensibility, and doctrinal insight will guide us more and more to safe conclusions in identification of genre and ascertainment of correct interpretation. Prayer and sanctified common sense are ready aids in our patient appeal to God for comprehension. The perusal of Scripture is intended to be a leisurely exercise in slow absorption of the heavenly message through accounts of bygone reality, biographical detail, and graphic metaphor. The reading of Scripture is an adventurous search through varieties of terrain to the place where the Christ may truly be found in the fulness of his love, wisdom, and compassion. He awaits us in the rich and fertile diversity of divine discourse. The Bible is a book that beckons and beguiles through cultivation of curiosity: What do you think about the Christ? (Matthew 22:42). With that question begins the investigation, for prophets and apostles form a chorus that answers that enquiry.
The anthems of Scripture that describe and extol the creation of the Lord are only surpassed by the exquisite and dynamic language that describes and extols the supernatural re-creation wrought through Christ and his Spirit. The vocabulary is intense and affecting. Scripture means to move us powerfully and profoundly to a strong and sober grasp of the marvels it relates by which man is redeemed. Think of John Donne's attempt to seize our concentration upon the shocking reality of the Saviour's shedding of his "rosy red blood" that spilled and splattered from his body lashed by whips and battered and buffeted by human blows: ". . . they made such haste to execution, as that by noone hee was upon the Crosse. There now hangs that sacred Body upon the crosse, rebaptized in his own teares and sweat, and embalmed in his own blood alive. There are those those bowells of compassion , which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as that you may see through his woundes . . . . There we leave you in that blessed dependancy, to hang upon him that hangs upon the crosse, there bath in his tears, there suck at his woundes, and lye downe in his grave, till hee vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that Kingdome, which he hath purchas'd for you, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood" (Death's Duell, etc). In similar fashion Scripture is meant to stun our sensibilities and cause us to feel the vibrancy of divine action that causes and accomplishes our restoration and renewal as souls salvaged from ruin and destruction.
The miracle of regeneration, the result of sovereign and majestic power operative in elect souls, is watered down and tamed by the notion of baptismal regeneration inevitably occurring through priestly performance at the font in some automatic and magical sense described in terms of "by the means of the work done". Regeneration is gloriously, wondrously, beyond and above ritual even when divinely appointed rites splendidly represent the strong work of God in our deliverance from death to life. Scripture depicts being born anew, the baptism of the Spirit, in ways that are beyond human control, human observation and precise pinning-down to any sacramental movement or moment. The actuation of spiritual begettal is exclusively and uniquely God's "moment and motion" in the soul, utterly free of the necessity of priestly coaction and co-operation. God is not tied to means and men. He makes his word of grace potent and then seals it through the sign and seal that men meekly apply in obedience in the "right way". The grace communicated through the sacraments is confirmatory and strengthening of faith. That is mighty grace indeed as far as weak hearts are concerned. When God actually regenerates is dependent upon his determination alone. If it coincides with the application of the sacrament that is his sovereign method at the time and is in no way mechanical. Arguments from exegesis and experience counter the fiction of baptismal regeneration.
EXEGESIS
In line with the prophetic use of imagery Jesus says to Nicodemus, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. (John 3:5). This verse is one of only a few verses in the New Testament that link water with regeneration, and it is the principal one that is made to bear the weight of the argument for baptism being the vehicle of new birth (Titus 3:5 is another but its reference to water baptism is uncertain). The fact that the verse in John is cited to prove the absolute necessity of Christian baptism is obviously spurious because such a sacrament did not exist at the time, and if the reference related to John Baptist's baptism of repentance a sincere candidate would already be regenerate, for heartfelt repentance is a gift of God's grace, "Then I remembered what the Lord had said: 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit'. So if God gave them (Peter speaking of the Gentiles) the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?" When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God saying, 'So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.'" (Acts 11:16-18). "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, jut as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.... We believe that it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are saved, just as they are" (Acts 15:7-11). " . . .this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also - not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God" (1 Peter 3:21). Peter, allegedly the first pope, repudiates baptismal regeneration three times in the forgoing quotes. 1) Cornelius and his companions evidenced new birth prior to baptism. 2) God purified the hearts of Gentiles by faith. 3) The baptism that witnesses to our salvation through the resurrection of Jesus is not the outward washing but the cleansing of the conscience through "the sanctifying work of the Spirit" who applies the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ to the defiled conscience (1 Peter 1:2). The essential baptism is interior, as is the case with circumcision also. Abraham was graced prior to his sacred surgery.
The "cleansing blood of the Lamb" is a metaphor for pardon through the Redeemer's saving death. The "cleansed heart" is a term for regeneration. In similar vein in John 3:5 Jesus through John is speaking figuratively of the new birth wrought by the Holy Spirit by taking up the language of Ezekiel. For Jesus the Spirit is the water that Ezekiel describes as purging the hearts of God's people from all impurities (36:25-29). Ezekiel's expectation of "sprinkled water" is fulfilled in the "sprinkled blood", the cleansing of the conscience and heart. In John 3:8 Jesus alludes to the Holy Spirit in his power and sovereignty as wind, and in doing so picks up Ezekiel's astounding vision of the valley of dry bones and the breath that revivifies the parched remains of the long dead - Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, This is what the Sovereign Lord says, : Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live" (37: 1-14).
Furthermore, John the Baptizer likens the inner cleansing that God will perform in believing hearts to a purifying fire: " I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Matthew 3: 11). The agent of regeneration is compared to water, wind, and fire. All three intimate supernatural power at work in the depths of human nature. All three illustrate divine action and there is no reason to isolate water and associate it specifically with ritual, especially a rite whose time had not yet come and with which Nicodemus could not identify. If he had died before our Lord's commission to the church (Matthew 28:19) then sadly the Pharisee would have been lost, but later references to him suggest that he was a secret disciple, like his colleague Joseph, and was saved through belief as his speech and action showed (John 7:50 &19:39). Those from the former covenant and the new are saved in exactly the same way by faith in the Promise.
EXPERIENCE
Sometimes the elements of our convictions are proven or disproven by the observation of their effects e.g baptismal regeneration which proves untrue in the majority of cases, unless like John Wesley, so much the high churchman, and assisted by his Arminianism, you conclude that thousands of those baptized in infancy apostatize into unregeneracy. Baptismal regeneration as a doctrine has presented so many with the wrong key to the kingdom, and it presented Karl Barth with his grounds to call a moratorium on infant baptism and eventually to repudiate the practice. The same notion, baptismal regeneration, was promoted by the Campbells, Thomas and Alexander, and their followers in the various versions of the Churches of Christ originating in America in the 18th century with the assistance of Barton Stone. In Catholicism and Campbellism we find an extremely uneven rivalry as to which is the true church, and each is a hindrance to freedom in Christ through his promises to faith.
Furthermore, appeals to the church fathers for the the orthodoxy of sacramentalism are conspicuously unsound. There is no absolute unanimity of conviction among the fathers en bloc on so many issues. There are exaggerated sentiments, contradictions, and disagreements among these generally gifted, admirable, and courageous men who were tasked to take up the care and guidance of church after the demise of the apostles. But they were not the equals of the apostles, or even a "little lower than the apostles", as comparisons will show in the quality of their respective writings. Imitation is not equivalent to inspiration, proximity to the apostles is no guarantee of perfection in orthodoxy as the rapid rise of error in the first centuries distinctly shows; earliness in time did not give early generations of believers the opportunity to weigh carefully everything of importance that Scripture imparts; not to the extent that later generations have enjoyed in being able to examine and ponder the wealth of Scripture and subsequent theological reflection and build on solid foundations. On the other hand, the Anglican Reformers were careful students of the fathers and in them they discerned a "catholicism" that favored the Reformation rather than Rome (Cranmer, Ridley, Jewel, Hooker, et al). The Reformers revered the ancient fathers and demonstrated great expertise in citing them against the errant patristics of Roman apologists.
Two "giants" of authentic Anglicanism sum up the classic doctrine of our Church: "In baptism, as the one part of that holy mystery is Christ's blood, so is the other part the material water. Neither are these parts joined together in place, but in mystery; and therefore they be oftentimes severed, and the one is received without the other "(Bishop Jewel, 1559). "Some have the outward sign, and not the inward grace. Some have the inward grace, and not the outward sign. We must not commit idolatry by deifying the outward element" (Archbishop Ussher, 1624).
The Rev. Roger Salter is an ordained Church of England minister where he had parishes in the dioceses of Bristol and Portsmouth before coming to Birmingham, Alabama to serve as Rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church
WATER AND THE SPIRIT: JOHN 3:5
By Roger Salter
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
March 1, 2014
In his divinely inspired book, the Bible, our Creator and Redeemer weds the features of the created world to the facts of the spiritual realm in order to convey the message of his wondrous salvation to our understanding. Gospel symbolism is derived from phenomena that we are capable of perceiving via our senses. Figurative and symbolic language are woven all the way through the content of Holy Scripture. Our conceptual grasp of truth is enlivened and enhanced through the arousal of imagination and stimulation of feeling. Picture language, sensory awareness through vivid illustrations, arrest our attention to the speech of God in his self and salvific revelation. He both teaches and charms us, alluring us to union with himself through the Son he has sent for our rescue and eternal wellbeing. Old Testament and New are replete with poetic description of God and his works. The historical core and development within the narrative of the Word are embellished with imagery. The facts and essential events are decidedly true. There is literal and historical reliability and accuracy in terms of earthly happenings and occurrences, and attendant spiritual realities are relayed to our minds through analogy and captivating pictorial presentation. The Lord is both Author and Artist in the gracious gift of his truth. He marries beauty to the benefits of his Word. It is a matter of illumination through information and enchantment.
Examples of symbolism, analogy, and illustration are too numerous to supply at length; they are present on almost every page, and especially prevalent in the parables of Jesus. Principles of grammar, contextual reading, poetic sensibility, and doctrinal insight will guide us more and more to safe conclusions in identification of genre and ascertainment of correct interpretation. Prayer and sanctified common sense are ready aids in our patient appeal to God for comprehension. The perusal of Scripture is intended to be a leisurely exercise in slow absorption of the heavenly message through accounts of bygone reality, biographical detail, and graphic metaphor. The reading of Scripture is an adventurous search through varieties of terrain to the place where the Christ may truly be found in the fulness of his love, wisdom, and compassion. He awaits us in the rich and fertile diversity of divine discourse. The Bible is a book that beckons and beguiles through cultivation of curiosity: What do you think about the Christ? (Matthew 22:42). With that question begins the investigation, for prophets and apostles form a chorus that answers that enquiry.
The anthems of Scripture that describe and extol the creation of the Lord are only surpassed by the exquisite and dynamic language that describes and extols the supernatural re-creation wrought through Christ and his Spirit. The vocabulary is intense and affecting. Scripture means to move us powerfully and profoundly to a strong and sober grasp of the marvels it relates by which man is redeemed. Think of John Donne's attempt to seize our concentration upon the shocking reality of the Saviour's shedding of his "rosy red blood" that spilled and splattered from his body lashed by whips and battered and buffeted by human blows: ". . . they made such haste to execution, as that by noone hee was upon the Crosse. There now hangs that sacred Body upon the crosse, rebaptized in his own teares and sweat, and embalmed in his own blood alive. There are those those bowells of compassion , which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as that you may see through his woundes . . . . There we leave you in that blessed dependancy, to hang upon him that hangs upon the crosse, there bath in his tears, there suck at his woundes, and lye downe in his grave, till hee vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that Kingdome, which he hath purchas'd for you, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood" (Death's Duell, etc). In similar fashion Scripture is meant to stun our sensibilities and cause us to feel the vibrancy of divine action that causes and accomplishes our restoration and renewal as souls salvaged from ruin and destruction.
The miracle of regeneration, the result of sovereign and majestic power operative in elect souls, is watered down and tamed by the notion of baptismal regeneration inevitably occurring through priestly performance at the font in some automatic and magical sense described in terms of "by the means of the work done". Regeneration is gloriously, wondrously, beyond and above ritual even when divinely appointed rites splendidly represent the strong work of God in our deliverance from death to life. Scripture depicts being born anew, the baptism of the Spirit, in ways that are beyond human control, human observation and precise pinning-down to any sacramental movement or moment. The actuation of spiritual begettal is exclusively and uniquely God's "moment and motion" in the soul, utterly free of the necessity of priestly coaction and co-operation. God is not tied to means and men. He makes his word of grace potent and then seals it through the sign and seal that men meekly apply in obedience in the "right way". The grace communicated through the sacraments is confirmatory and strengthening of faith. That is mighty grace indeed as far as weak hearts are concerned. When God actually regenerates is dependent upon his determination alone. If it coincides with the application of the sacrament that is his sovereign method at the time and is in no way mechanical. Arguments from exegesis and experience counter the fiction of baptismal regeneration.
EXEGESIS
In line with the prophetic use of imagery Jesus says to Nicodemus, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. (John 3:5). This verse is one of only a few verses in the New Testament that link water with regeneration, and it is the principal one that is made to bear the weight of the argument for baptism being the vehicle of new birth (Titus 3:5 is another but its reference to water baptism is uncertain). The fact that the verse in John is cited to prove the absolute necessity of Christian baptism is obviously spurious because such a sacrament did not exist at the time, and if the reference related to John Baptist's baptism of repentance a sincere candidate would already be regenerate, for heartfelt repentance is a gift of God's grace, "Then I remembered what the Lord had said: 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit'. So if God gave them (Peter speaking of the Gentiles) the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?" When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God saying, 'So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.'" (Acts 11:16-18). "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, jut as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.... We believe that it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are saved, just as they are" (Acts 15:7-11). " . . .this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also - not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God" (1 Peter 3:21). Peter, allegedly the first pope, repudiates baptismal regeneration three times in the forgoing quotes. 1) Cornelius and his companions evidenced new birth prior to baptism. 2) God purified the hearts of Gentiles by faith. 3) The baptism that witnesses to our salvation through the resurrection of Jesus is not the outward washing but the cleansing of the conscience through "the sanctifying work of the Spirit" who applies the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ to the defiled conscience (1 Peter 1:2). The essential baptism is interior, as is the case with circumcision also. Abraham was graced prior to his sacred surgery.
The "cleansing blood of the Lamb" is a metaphor for pardon through the Redeemer's saving death. The "cleansed heart" is a term for regeneration. In similar vein in John 3:5 Jesus through John is speaking figuratively of the new birth wrought by the Holy Spirit by taking up the language of Ezekiel. For Jesus the Spirit is the water that Ezekiel describes as purging the hearts of God's people from all impurities (36:25-29). Ezekiel's expectation of "sprinkled water" is fulfilled in the "sprinkled blood", the cleansing of the conscience and heart. In John 3:8 Jesus alludes to the Holy Spirit in his power and sovereignty as wind, and in doing so picks up Ezekiel's astounding vision of the valley of dry bones and the breath that revivifies the parched remains of the long dead - Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, This is what the Sovereign Lord says, : Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live" (37: 1-14).
Furthermore, John the Baptizer likens the inner cleansing that God will perform in believing hearts to a purifying fire: " I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Matthew 3: 11). The agent of regeneration is compared to water, wind, and fire. All three intimate supernatural power at work in the depths of human nature. All three illustrate divine action and there is no reason to isolate water and associate it specifically with ritual, especially a rite whose time had not yet come and with which Nicodemus could not identify. If he had died before our Lord's commission to the church (Matthew 28:19) then sadly the Pharisee would have been lost, but later references to him suggest that he was a secret disciple, like his colleague Joseph, and was saved through belief as his speech and action showed (John 7:50 &19:39). Those from the former covenant and the new are saved in exactly the same way by faith in the Promise.
EXPERIENCE
Sometimes the elements of our convictions are proven or disproven by the observation of their effects e.g baptismal regeneration which proves untrue in the majority of cases, unless like John Wesley, so much the high churchman, and assisted by his Arminianism, you conclude that thousands of those baptized in infancy apostatize into unregeneracy. Baptismal regeneration as a doctrine has presented so many with the wrong key to the kingdom, and it presented Karl Barth with his grounds to call a moratorium on infant baptism and eventually to repudiate the practice. The same notion, baptismal regeneration, was promoted by the Campbells, Thomas and Alexander, and their followers in the various versions of the Churches of Christ originating in America in the 18th century with the assistance of Barton Stone. In Catholicism and Campbellism we find an extremely uneven rivalry as to which is the true church, and each is a hindrance to freedom in Christ through his promises to faith.
Furthermore, appeals to the church fathers for the the orthodoxy of sacramentalism are conspicuously unsound. There is no absolute unanimity of conviction among the fathers en bloc on so many issues. There are exaggerated sentiments, contradictions, and disagreements among these generally gifted, admirable, and courageous men who were tasked to take up the care and guidance of church after the demise of the apostles. But they were not the equals of the apostles, or even a "little lower than the apostles", as comparisons will show in the quality of their respective writings. Imitation is not equivalent to inspiration, proximity to the apostles is no guarantee of perfection in orthodoxy as the rapid rise of error in the first centuries distinctly shows; earliness in time did not give early generations of believers the opportunity to weigh carefully everything of importance that Scripture imparts; not to the extent that later generations have enjoyed in being able to examine and ponder the wealth of Scripture and subsequent theological reflection and build on solid foundations. On the other hand, the Anglican Reformers were careful students of the fathers and in them they discerned a "catholicism" that favored the Reformation rather than Rome (Cranmer, Ridley, Jewel, Hooker, et al). The Reformers revered the ancient fathers and demonstrated great expertise in citing them against the errant patristics of Roman apologists.
Two "giants" of authentic Anglicanism sum up the classic doctrine of our Church: "In baptism, as the one part of that holy mystery is Christ's blood, so is the other part the material water. Neither are these parts joined together in place, but in mystery; and therefore they be oftentimes severed, and the one is received without the other "(Bishop Jewel, 1559). "Some have the outward sign, and not the inward grace. Some have the inward grace, and not the outward sign. We must not commit idolatry by deifying the outward element" (Archbishop Ussher, 1624).
The Rev. Roger Salter is an ordained Church of England minister where he had parishes in the dioceses of Bristol and Portsmouth before coming to Birmingham, Alabama to serve as Rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church
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