Water and Spirit (Part 1 of 4)
Baptism and the Meaning of Matter
In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. (Gn 1:1)
Jesus answered: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (Jn 3:5)
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone, and the sea is now no more. (Ap 21:1)
Water is the “universal solvent.” Thanks to its peculiar microscopic structure, this substance is capable of breaking practically anything down to its most basic components. At the same time, the simplicity of its atomic composition makes water available in massive quantities throughout the whole universe — especially on our own planet, where its vast extent and profound depth immediately provoke reactions of fear and awe. When this bulk of water is struck by the force of wind, the waves on the surface and turbulent flows below generate an awesome force of annihilation, wreaking destruction on all spatial scales from the meter to the nanometer.
But these very same properties make water an essential precondition for life. The countless transient interactions of proteins and signaling molecules that mediate metabolism, growth and other vital processes depend on the constant chaotic motion that the dissolving power of water makes possible.
The paradox of water is thus inscribed in the very heart of the material world: the same element is the natural symbol of disorder and of death, and of fertility and life. The disorder inherent in the water is necessary for the story of life. Without it, everything is frozen in a static lump, incapable of growth, development or evolution. But water does not cease to be dangerous. Even as it sustains life, it is pointing the way to death as the necessary and unavoidable end.
The ancient philosophers and poets were well aware of the disorder latent within all material things, and of water as its natural symbol. Thales synthesized this insight in the compact formula that “water is the principle of all things.” But this very awareness gradually led many of these thinkers to be wary of matter, as something completely negative — the absence of the symmetry and rationality that should ideally penetrate everything. The “water” was a mistake, the result of an original sin, or the malevolent creation of an evil principle independent of God and opposed to his rational plan.
The biblical narrative persistently resists this temptation, placing water in its full ambiguity at the core of the divine plan from the beginning. The very first lines of Genesis remind us that the “non-being” symbolized by water and darkness is a necessary corollary of the very act of creation. Without the “water,” there would be no genuine activity and no true agents in the created order. There would just be the “one” of Parmenides, and all the richness of life that we observe with our senses would be at best an illusion.
But the biblical perspective raises a fundamental question: why would God create, if every created reality necessarily contains the seeds of its own destruction? Genesis begins to address this problem, describing human beings as the point of intersection between the water and the “breath of God” (Gn 2:7). In us, the whole material creation is elevated to participation in God’s own definitive life. The fragility entailed by the “water” is still present, however, generating the possibility of discarding this participation — which is quickly realized in the sin of Adam (Gn 3). How can the definitive life where “the sea is no more” (Ap 21:1) be made compatible with the exigencies of finitude?
When the renowned rabbi Nicodemus comes to visit him by night (Jn 3), it is precisely this question that Jesus chooses as the topic of conversation. And he claims to have the answer.