SaulToPaul 2
Well-known member
the difficulty STP is that 'from above' (anothen) is a little tricky to translate. 3:28 shows that it's got to mean from heaven. That seems so obvious until we realize that Nic immediately went to human birth to respond to what was being said. As a Pharisee he must have aggressively believed that birth determined all; is that why 1:13 is so pointed, so quickly in the account? If so, then lineage from Israel is completely decimated, isn't it?
We know he began talking here as spiritually dead. But notice where his Judaism takes him to solve this problem. MOST OF THE NT IS WRITTEN TO DEAL WITH JUDAISM, TO CLARIFY CHRISTIAN TRUTH VS. JUDAISM.
Ie, it is spiritually dead to say that lineage or ancestry has anything to do with being a Christian, which is why I fight 2P2P, which insists that God operates both ways, bipolarly.
Huh?