It proves one thing at least. The view I posted in the first post of this thread is not unique to Anglicans. Presbyterians share it. Catholics and Orthodox have a similar view. In fact the Christians holding to the kind of interpretation presented by Albert Barnes is the majority Christian view. This is not a battle between the bible and tradition as some like to characterise it. It is a dispute between Christians about how various passages are to be interpreted. Baptist leaning groups - a minority in Christianity - take various views on each passage. The view that presents amniotic fluid as the water in the phrase "water and the Spirit" is, as far as I can tell, rather recent and not in accord with past views held by Baptists and those with Baptist like views. In the older Baptist commentaries (John Gill is an example) the "water" is taken to be figurative and no mention of amniotic fluid is made. John Gill writes
except a man be born of water and of the Spirit: these are, מלות שנות, "two words", which express the same thing, as Kimchi observes in many places in his commentaries, and signify the grace of the Spirit of God. The Vulgate Latin and Ethiopic versions read, "the Holy Spirit", and so Nonnus; and who doubtless is intended: by "water", is not meant material water, or baptismal water; for water baptism is never expressed by water only, without some additional word, which shows, that the ordinance of water baptism is intended: nor has baptism any regenerating influence in it; a person may be baptised, as Simon Magus was, and yet not born again; and it is so far from having any such virtue, that a person ought to be born again, before he is admitted to that ordinance: and though submission to it is necessary, in order to a person's entrance into a Gospel church state; yet it is not necessary to the kingdom of heaven, or to eternal life and salvation: such a mistaken sense of this text, seems to have given the first birth and rise to infant baptism in the African churches; who taking the words in this bad sense, concluded their children must be baptised, or they could not be saved; whereas by "water" is meant, in a figurative and metaphorical sense, the grace of God, as it is elsewhere; see Eze 36:25. Which is the moving cause of this new birth, and according to which God begets men again to, a lively hope, and that by which it is effected; for it is by the grace of God, and not by the power of man's free will, that any are regenerated, or made new creatures: and if Nicodemus was an officer in the temple, that took care to provide water at the feasts, as Dr. Lightfoot thinks, and as it should seem Nicodemon ben Gorion was, by the story before related of him; See Gill on Joh 3:1; very pertinently does our Lord make mention of water, it being his own element: regeneration is sometimes ascribed to God the Father, as in 1Pe 1:3, and sometimes to the Son, 1Jn 2:29 and here to the Spirit, as in Tit 3:5, who convinces of sin, sanctifies, renews, works faith, and every other grace; begins and carries on the work of grace, unto perfection;
Perhaps his view is acceptable to you?
