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Born Anew
"Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, 'Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.' Jesus answered him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, one cannot see the kingdom of God'..." (John 3:1-15).
PROBABLY no passage in John's admittedly mysterious Gospel is as totally ambiguous as the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus in the third chapter. Frustrating as that may seem, however, the ambiguity is the clue to how the passage functions-for it is profoundly and pervasively ironical. In the irony lies the text's capacity to engage the reader to the point that she or he participates in building up the multi-layered meaning and, at the same time, comes to the decisions which involve him or her in the community of believers that the evangelist is trying to create.1 The irony centers first on the figure of Nicodemus with whom the reader spontaneously identifies even while knowing that he or she shouldn't! Secondly, the irony pervades the entire dialogue. The dialogue makes perfectly good sense if read in terms of the Old Testament. The reader knows it is not to be read on that level, however. Salvation now lies not in the signs of the Old Testament (the brazen serpent raised up by Moses in the desert, for example [vs. 14]), but in Jesus, the one who has descended from heaven and will be lifted up in crucifixion/glory to reveal God's love for the world and give life to all who believe in him (vv. 13-14, 16). The essence of irony is that it says one thing while meaning another. But simple translation is not possible, because the literal meaning is the only access to the real meaning just as the flesh of Jesus is the only access to the Word of God (cf. 1: 14-18).
I
Who, then, is Nicodemus? It is pointless to inquire whether Nicodemus was a real person with whom the historical Jesus had a conversation
Sandra M. Schneiders is Associate Professor of New Testament and Spirituality at The Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. She is also Associate Editor of Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Biblical Theology Bulletin, and Horizons. Her essay on "Church and Biblical Scholarship in Dialogue" appeared in the October 1985 issue of THEOLOGY TODAY.
1See Gail R. O'Day's excellent treatment of irony as the mode of revelation in the Fourth Gospel, Revelation in the Fourth Gospel Narrative Mode and Theological Claim (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986).
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We will never know the answer to that question. Our concern is with the "textual Nicodemus" who, as most commentators recognize, is a "type" or representative figure in the Fourth Gospel.2 Commentators who see the text primarily as a kind of window on the world of Jesus and/or the Johannine community tend to see Nicodemus as a representative of either those Jews who did not accept Jesus when he came (and were thus the enemies of the Johannine Christians), or of those whose faith was inadequate (based on and terminating in the signs), or of those who knew who Jesus was but would not confess him openly because of fear of persecution.
However, the unbiased reader has trouble feeling toward Nicodemus the animosity toward the unbelieving, the superiority toward those whose faith is inadequate, or the contempt for the "closet Christian" which the Gospel encourages. Nicodemus comes to Jesus with a generous openness, acknowledging that Jesus is credentialled by God. He seems to be guilty of nothing more than befuddlement before a confusing revelation, a befuddlement the reader can easily understand! At the end, Nicodemus does not argue with Jesus or depart in protest. He simply throws up his hands, asking helplessly, "How can this be?" (vs. 9).
The spontaneous sympathy of the reader for Nicodemus is a clue that something has been overlooked. In fact, Nicodemus is "suspended" in the text between Nathanael, the true Israelite who immediately abandoned his skepticism and confessed Jesus as "Rabbi (or teacher)," "Son of God," and "King of Israel" (1:49), and the Samaritan Woman, the heretic Jew who comes to believe in Jesus as "the Christ" (4:29) and brings her fellow townspeople to him by her testimony (4:39). At the beginning of the pericope, Nicodemus is one of those Jews who believe in Jesus because of the signs he does, but whose faith Jesus finds inadequate (2:23-25). At the end of the dialogue, Jesus ironically salutes him as a "teacher in Israel" who does not understand even the basics of Old Testament revelation much less what Jesus has come to reveal (vv. 10, 12). But, if the reader perseveres through the text, it becomes clear that Jesus' irony is not so much a condemnation as a challenge. Jesus goes on speaking to Nicodemus, and through him to the reader, about his own identity and mission. And Nicodemus, who seems to vanish from the stage at this point, will reappear twice more in the course of the Gospel.
In 7:50-52, Nicodemus appeals to the Law of Moses to defend Jesus to his fellows in the Sanhedrin: "Does our law judge a person without giving him a hearing and learning what he does?" The Jewish leaders immediately assimilate Nicodemus to Jesus and his followers by asking,
2See R. F. Collins, "The Representative Figures of the Fourth Gospel-I," Downside Review 94 (1976), pp. 16-46, for a good explanation of the concept of representation as well as for a specific treatment of Nicodemus as a type.
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"Are you also a Galilean?"3 In other words, Nicodemus in this scene, although still dependent on the Old Testament, "does the truth" according to the Law (3:21). We are not told how Nicodemus responds to the taunt, but the evangelist, in 7:50, is at pains to remind the reader that this is the same Nicodemus who had come to Jesus before.
Finally, in 19:39-42, Nicodemus aligns himself publicly with Jesus in his "lifting up" by joining Joseph of Arimathea in removing Jesus' body from the cross and burying him with an enormous outlay of spices that reminds the reader of Mary of Bethany's action in 12:3. The evangelist reminds the reader that this now public disciple is the same Nicodemus who first came to Jesus "by night" (19:39). By doing the truth, Nicodemus has finally come to the Light, and it "is manifest that his works are done in God" (cf. 3:21).
The reader's original sympathy for Nicodemus is vindicated, for the textual Nicodemus is actually a type of the true Israelite who progresses in faith from seeing the signs, to doing the truth according to the Scriptures, to finally confessing Jesus openly as the one in whom the Old Testament finds its fulfillment.4
No doubt Nicodemus functioned in John's community as the hero of its Jewish Christian members, but his primary function in the Gospel is to catch the conscience of the reader. Nicodemus is the very type of the truly religious person who is, on the one hand, utterly sincere and, on the other, complacent about his or her knowledge of God and God's will. Such people are basically closed to divine revelation. Like Nicodemus, they "know" who Jesus is, what his message means (cf. 3:2). And like Nicodemus, it is only after they have been reduced to the futility of their own ignorance that they can begin the process of coming to the light not by argument or reasoning but by doing the truth, a process which gradually opens them to the true meaning of the Scriptures.
II
Let us return now to the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus (vv. 2-10). This conversation is supremely ironical. Jesus returns Nicodemus' respectful but self-confident "no one can do the signs you do unless God is with him" with "no one can see the reign of God unless he or she is born anothen." In a particularly ludicrous example of typical Johannine misunderstanding, Nicodemus asks if one, being old, can enter a second time into the maternal womb to be born, and Jesus in a wonderful word play replies that one must be born of water and spirit in order to enter the reign of God. Nicodemus has understood anothen as "again," that is, "a second time"; but Jesus clearly means "anew." At the level of
3See R. T. Fortna "Theological Use of Locale in the Fourth Gospel," Anglican Theological Review [Suppl. Series] 3 (1974), pp. 58-95, on Galilee as a positive symbol vs. Judea as a negative symbol in relation to Jesus.
4See J. N. Suggit, "Nicodemus-the True Jew," The Relationship Between the Old and New Testament [Neotestamentica 141 (Republic of South Africa, 198 1), pp. 100- 10 1.
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the text, Jesus could not have said "unless one be born from above" because this could not have led Nicodemus to think he meant reentry into the maternal womb.5 Johannine misunderstanding is based on misplaced literalness in interpreting what is said, not on a failure to understand the actual words.
Jesus immediately clarifies the meaning of "born anew." There are two births, one of water and another of spirit. The first is human birth of flesh from flesh; the second is spiritual birth of spirit from spirit. And this is something Nicodemus should have understood on two levels.
First, as an increasing number of exegetes have recently pointed out, the use of "water" to refer to the processes of human reproduction and particularly to the actual coming forth from the womb after the breaking of the mother's water was common in both the Old Testament and other literature of the period.6 Nicodemus' problem is precisely that he thinks being a member of the Covenant, which according to Jewish law he was by birth from his mother, is sufficient to qualify him to judge religious reality, including Jesus' identity and teaching. But Jesus, especially in John's Gospel, insists that being born as a "child of Abraham" is totally inadequate for salvation (cf. 8:33-40), even though it is a preparation for hearing the Word of Jesus. Thus, at the most literal level, Nicodemus should have understood "it is necessary not only to be born into the Covenant of Israel but also to be born anew in the Spirit because what is born of flesh is fleshly while what is born of the spirit is spiritual."
But secondly, the juxtaposing of water and spirit should have alerted Nicodemus to the true meaning of spiritual birth. In the Old Testament, especially in the promise of the New Covenant in Ezek. 36:25-27, it is the washing of the people in clean water and the outpouring of the Spirit that will usher in the new age. Jesus is announcing the fulfillment of that prophecy not only in regard to the people as a whole but in relation to the individual believer whom Nicodemus is challenged to become. Jesus makes this point clear with the little parable about the wind which blows where it wills. One cannot doubt its reality and presence, but its origin and destiny are obscure. The same is true of the inbreaking of the New Covenant in those who are born anew. Their new life is manifest, but those who encounter them do not understand the source or destiny of that life.
5A surprising number of modern exegetes insist that anothen should be translated as "born from above." They base their interpretation either on the sacramental practice of the early church or on the biblical theology of John regarding Jesus' origin. But as Linda Belleville in"- 'Born of Water and Spirit': John 3:5," Trinity Journal [N.S.] 1 (1980), p. 138, n. 75, clearly shows, this makes no sense at the textual level.
6B. Witherington, in an unpublished paper given to the Society of Biblical Literature at its 1986 meeting in Atlanta, "The Waters of Birth: John 3.5 and I John 5.6-8," summarizes the arguments from Old Testament and comparative literature. See also R. Fowler, "Born of Water and the Spirit (Jn. 3:5)," Expository Times 82 (197 1), p. 159; M. Pamment, "John 3:5: 'Unless One Is Born of Water and the Spirit, He Cannot Enter the Kingdom of God'," Novum Testamentum 25 (1983), p. 190; D. Spriggs, "Meaning of 'Water' in John 3:5," Expository Times 85 (1974), pp. 149-50.
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What Jesus said should have been clear to Nicodemus against the background of the Old Testament. He is being challenged to recognize the arrival of the New Covenant in the person of Jesus whose signs are meant to draw him into relationship with this Teacher-Revealer who surpasses Moses. Instead, Nicodemus, who begins with a confident assumption of spiritual wisdom expressed in his "we know who you are and whence you come," regresses through literal misunderstanding into total confusion. His final words are a defeated, "How can these things be?" Jesus, with supreme irony, then turns back on him his opening recognition. He who called Jesus "Teacher," an address which the reader recognizes as the perfect title on the lips of a disciple (because the Johannine Jesus is the ultimate Teacher-Revealer) but which Nicodemus did not really understand, is now gently mocked as a "teacher in Israel" who does not understand even "earthly things" such as the literal meaning of Jesus' discourse and thus is totally incapable of believing in the "heavenly things" Jesus is about to reveal.7
The reader goes on to understand Jesus' self-revelation as the one who comes from above to reveal, through his lifting up in death, what he has seen and heard with God, namely, that God so loved the world as to will its salvation and eternal life for those who believe in the only Son (3:13-18). Equipped with this revelation, the reader can now re-read the passage and hear what it really says in and through the ironically literal message.
The birth anothen is indeed a birth "from above" like that of Jesus who comes as Son from above. This is a birth through baptism.8 It both results from and opens one to Jesus' revelation, which is, elsewhere in John's Gospel, referred to by the conjunction of water and Spirit (cf. 4:10; 7:37-39; 19:30, 34-35). Now the little parable gives up its true meaning. It is the Spirit, given to the one who believes, whose voice is heard in and through the believer whose origin and destiny, like that of Jesus, is hidden in God. Like Jesus, the disciples are not of this world for they are born not of the will of the flesh, nor of human concupiscence, but of God; not of "water" or flesh, but of spirit.
III
There is a twist to this pericope, however, that contemporary Christian experience brings to light if the reader is attentive. We are meant to identify with Nicodemus, thus recognizing ourselves as believers and at the same time mistrusting ourselves as those who too readily assume they understand the Christian mystery. We, like Nicodemus, are religious people who tend to be overly confident in our faith-based
7W. A. Meeks, in "The Man from Heaven," Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972), pp. 53-54, shows that in contemporary literature this was a common rebuke or warning to the disciple who has arrogantly presumed to question beyond his or her capacity to understand. Its function is to put the disciple in his or her place, which is exactly how it functions in this scene.
8Cf. M. Michel, "Nicodème ou le non-lieu de la vérité," Revue des Sciences Religieuses 55 (1981), p. 236.
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religious knowledge. Like Nicodemus, we tend to be enslaved by the theological assumptions of the religious establishment, so that we are not prepared to hear what is really new in the revelation of Jesus.
Christians have, for centuries, read this passage without realizing that the Fourth Evangelist here supplies us, through the voice of Jesus, with one of the clearest New Testament images of the femininity of God. The Spirit is the one of whom we are born spiritually in the waters of baptism just as we are born physically of our mothers in the waters of natural birth. Nicodemus' literalism about entering a second time into the maternal womb allows the evangelist to emphasize that Jesus bad indeed used the metaphor of coming forth from the womb to describe our new birth in the Spirit. Jesus was not speaking here of being "engendered" by God, as of a male principle, but of being "born" of God, as from a female principle. We are, in John's Gospel, tekna theou, children engendered by the God who is both Jesus' Father and our Father (cf. 20:17), but also born of the Spirit who is our Mother (cf. 1: 13 in addition to the present passage).
This is not a case of some kind of divine biologism suggesting an intra-trinitarian marriage, but a way of introducing us into the deep mystery of our spiritual origin in God, a mystery too rich to be rendered by a single metaphor, however expressive. We have a similar juxtaposition of the male and female parental metaphors in the Old Testament. In Deut. 32:18, God rebukes Israel: "You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth."9
The biblical presentation of God as feminine has been virtually suppressed by the male religious establishment, which finds it as difficult to accept God in feminine form as the Jewish establishment found it to accept God in human form. And it may be that accepting this revelation will revolutionize our God-experience as radically as the acceptance of Jesus' divinity revolutionized the God-experience of the Jews in John's community. Nicodemus is not a figure of the past. He lives in the heart of every believer who is tempted to settle down in the secure religious "wisdom" of the establishment and thus resist the challenge of ongoing revelation.
IV
Three theological presuppositions underlie the foregoing interpretation of the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus. First, I am assuming that the locus of meaning of the text is the text as it stands in interaction with the reader. Thus, the meaning is not to be sought primarily in the history behind the text, either in the life of the historical Jesus or in the experience of the Jobannine community. Although the text does enable us to glean a certain amount of historical information which is useful
9See P. Trible, "Feminist Hermencutics and Biblical Studies," The Christian Century 99 (1982), p. 117, on this verse and the masculinizing translations of it.
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both in interpretation and for other purposes, the primary meaning of the text does not lie behind it in history but in it as text.
Furthermore, the real meaning of the text is not in the dogma or doctrine which it teaches. Although this passage is replete with theological content, that content cannot be extracted from the text which can then be discarded as a kind of semantic husk. The layers of interweaving meaning in which the reader becomes involved by participation in the ironical dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus can only be grasped in and through the text. This is why the reader returns again and again to it, entering more deeply in successive encounters with it into the mystery of conversion, discipleship, and divine filiation which can never be adequately grasped as doctrine.
By the same token, the meaning of the text is not to be found in its proclamation. Although each proclamation which is historically, theologically, and pastorally informed leads the reader into the meaning of the text, no proclamation captures it fully. Rather, the text remains a fountain of meaning whose waters can be endlessly gathered but never exhausted.
My second presupposition is that the locus of revelation is the text as it stands in interaction with the reader. The first conclusion of John's Gospel tells us that the historical Jesus did many other signs during his earthly life which are not recorded, but the Gospel is written so that we may believe (cf. 20:30-3 1). In other words, revelation for us lies not in the deeds of the earthly Jesus in their historical facticity but in our encounter with him through the written account of those deeds.
The text is for us what the signs of Jesus were for his first disciples. Just as the signs were ambiguous, leading some to belief and others to incredulity, so the text is filled with the ambiguity of irony, double entendre, symbolism, metaphor, and all the other forms of tensive language that engage the reader in the quest for meaning. In the Nicodemus passage, the reader experiences both identification with and distance from Nicodemus and comes to recognize in him or herself the split disciple who comes to the light only through an ongoing doing of the truth. We are caught up in the textual reversals: Nicodemus who claims to know is played off against Jesus who truly knows; the one whom Nicodemus blindly calls "teacher" reveals that the self-confident scribe is not truly a teacher; the "signs" that brought Nicodemus to Jesus are revelatory only in the light of the new birth which he cannot understand, and thus his "coming to Jesus," the Light, is really a remaining in darkness, and so on.
As the ironical character of the passage becomes clear to the readers, they are enabled to re-read the text with Christian eyes, not only understanding it in depth but allowing it to raise the question, "Do we really understand?" Or are we, perhaps, like Nicodemus, secure in our already acquired religious wisdom and thus blind to the newness of on-going revelation?
The third presupposition operative in this interpretation is the
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feminist "suspicion" that alerts the interpreter to the ignoring, neutralizing, distorting, or suppressing of women's experience and all that relates to it. The masculinizing of the Christian tradition in the course of two thousand years of androcentric and patriarchal interpretation necessitates a watchfulness on the part of the exegete for what has been distorted or lost.
Those who are privileged by any social system tend to see that system and its products as self-evidently total and adequate. But those who have been marginalized by the system can see its inadequacies precisely because it does not include them. This is what is meant by the "hermeneutical advantage" of the poor. Among the poor of Christianity are women who view the tradition, including its sacred literature, from the edges to which they have been confined. From this vantage point, they can see "new" things which are invisible from the mainstream perspective. One wonders how the clear birth metaphor in the Nicodemus episode could have failed over the centuries to evoke the recognition of the femininity of God until one remembers that virtually all biblical interpretation and preaching have been in the hands of men whose control of the ecclesiastical system was legitimated by a patriarchal God.
Encounter with the Nicodemus text is a perennial challenge to be born again, to enter ever more fully into the mystery of divine revelation and thus to appropriate anew our identity as disciples. The path to this new birth for us, as for Nicodemus, is the doing of the truth insofar as we can grasp it. Perhaps, in our day, part of what is demanded if we are to come to the Light is the integration of the feminine into our God-experience and the full inclusion of women in the church which this implies.