that they are both realities that are perceived only in their effects. In the Gospel of John these effects are clearly visible in the new way of life in the community of the disciples, who being born of the spirit are free as the wind. They are not dependent on others’ ideas, criticism, and approval, but are moved solely by the Spirit to love each other. This is their new identity.
Entering into God’s New Order
The Gospel of John calls for a public transfer of allegiance. Those who refuse to believe in Jesus constitute themselves as “the world,” the realm of darkness, untruth, and death. Passing from that world to the new identity is only possible through a reorientation so profound as to constitute a new birth (3:5–8). By physical birth one is born into the world and has to accept its order. To be born again “from above” means to “see” God’s kingdom and the new order. To see, then, is to experience, to encounter, to participate in.110 Moreover, John uniquely relates this rebirth to the Kingdom of God not as a replacement for life in this world but as a new world within this world, the most natural explanation being that John sought to underline the social components of salvation.
Thus the Kingdom of God is a social category. The goal of rebirth is entrance into the Kingdom, and the confession of Jesus as Messiah means that the disciple already lives in the Kingdom under the kingship of Jesus—a kingship that is not of this world, and whose unworldly character is expressed precisely in his servants’ refusal to take up arms in defense of Jesus: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here” (18:36). This kingship, which is neither established nor defended by acts of violence, is the kingship under which the messianic community lives out its love for one another; cf. 13:34–35.
The close relationship between rebirth and the Kingdom of God underlines its communitarian character.111 The rebirth implies not only personal faith, but a change of social location as well. To be born “from above” is to be part of a new community. The worldly community represented by Nicodemus must undergo a change of social location by openly acknowledging the messiahship of Jesus and in so doing will become part of the messianic community. They are called on to abandon the world and its continuing self-centeredness and to be integrated into the community of love.
Contemporary perspectives
New Gnosticism and Reincarnation
The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus is one of the Johannine texts that have attracted great interest among the new religious movements. According to Steiner, the conversation reflects a deep secret regarding the development of humankind, and he would translate the words of Jesus in 3:5 thus: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and air he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”112 The argument is that in New Testament times pneuma (Spirit) meant “air,” and had “exactly that meaning.”113
If we wish to characterize the significance of this evolutionary process, we may say that formerly, when the human being was still living with the gods, his physical and ether bodies were fluidic and gaseous in form, and were only gradually, simultaneously with the solidification of the earth, condensed to their present material form. That is the descent, but just as he has made this descent, so will he also ascend again. After he has had the experiences that are to be in solid substance, he will again mount into those regions where his physical body will be fluidic and gaseous. He must bear within him the consciousness that if he wishes to unite himself again consciously with the gods, his true existence will be in those regions from which he has sprung. He has become condensed out of water and air and he will again become diffused into them. He can only spiritually anticipate this condition today by gaining within his inner nature a consciousness of the future state of his physical body. Only by becoming conscious of it today, however, will he gain the power to do so.114
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