Water (ὕ δωρ)
In the NT, after the Gospels, water is nearly always used in a figurative or symbolical sense.
1. The words employed by Christ in Acts 1:5 seem to echo Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33 . Water was the element in which John baptized his penitents, and the best that he had; but he was profoundly conscious of its inadequacy, and eagerly expectant of an altogether different kind of baptism, to be introduced by the Messiah. It has been contended that the πνεῦμα ἄγιον and the πῦρ which he desired were the sweeping wind and the destroying fire of judgment (so, e.g., A. B. Bruce, EGT, ‘Matthew,’ London, 1897, p. 84), but it is more likely that what he longed for was the life-giving breath and the purifyi ng fire of the Messianic era. If we must not read into his words the Pentecostal and similar experiences, we need not eliminate from them the highest prophetic ideals. When Christ confirms His forerunner’s distinction between baptism in water and baptism in the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5), He certainly regards the latter not as a blast of judgment but as the supreme gift of Divine grace; and Peter, who ‘remembered the word of the Lord,’ and no doubt the tone in which He uttered it, quotes it not as a menace but as an evangelical promise (11:16). Water is referred to in connexion with the baptism of the eunuch (8:36, 38, 39) and of Cornelius (10:47). In the latter case the baptism in water is the immediate sequel to the earliest baptism of the Gentiles with the Holy Spirit, which was attended with the rapturous utterances known as glossolalia.
2. In Ephesians 5:26 the Church is said to be cleansed by the washing (or laver, τῷ λουτρῷ) of water with the word, baptism being regarded as the seal and symbol of a spiritual exper ience which is mediated by faith in the gospel.
3. The writer of Hebrews (9:19) says that water was used along with blood-either to prevent coagulation or as a symbol of purity-at the institution of the ancient covenant, a detail which is not mentioned in Exodus 24:3 ff. It is a striking fact that in his review of the Levitical ordinances this writer never quotes the LXX phrase ὕδωρ ῥαντισμοῦ, ‘water of sprinkling,’ which occurs four times in Numbers 19, but coins in its place the phrase αἷμα ῥαντισμοῦ, ‘blood of sp rinkling’ (Hebrews 12:24). It is his conviction that, while the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer (according to a Scripture which he does not question) cleanse the flesh (9:13), and while water purifies the body (10:22), only the blood of Christ can sprinkle the heart from an evil conscience (9:14, 10:22). He does not, as F. Delitzsch (Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, ii. [Edinburgh, 1870] 179) thinks, suggest that the water of baptism has cleansing virtue because ‘sacramentally impregnated’ with the blood of Christ. Just as he altogether ignores the sacramental value of the Levitical rites which he enumerates, it is not his task to give a philosophy of the Christian sacraments. His distinctive doctrine, to the enforcement of which he devotes his whole strength, is that, while all ritual is at the best but outward and symbolic, the spiritual appropriation of Christ and His atonement by faith has virtue to penetrate and purify the whole personality, beginning with the heart.
4. Peter sees a parallel between the water of Noah’s flood and that of baptism (1 P 3:20), and Paul finds a mystical and sacramental meaning in the sea and the cloud, in both of which the Israelites may be said to have been baptized into Moses (1 Corinthians 10:2).
5. It is the teaching of John that Jesus Christ came by (διά) water and blood, not with (ἐν) the water only, but with the water and the blood (1 John 5:6). Historically the baptism and death of the Messiah were crises in His activity, occurring once for all at the beginn ing and the end of His ministry, but spiritually He ever abides with and in the water and the blood, which are ‘the two wells of life in His Church, His baptism being repeated in every fresh act of baptism, and His blood of atonement never failing in the communion cup’ (H. J. Holtzmann, Handkomm. zum NT, Freiburg i. B., 1891, ii. 236).
6. James (3:11, 12) illustrates the moral law that the same heart cannot overflow in both blessings and curses by the natural law that the same fountain cannot send forth both sweet water and bitter-a variation on Christ’s words in Matthew 7:16-17 .
7. The prophet of the Revelation (recalling Ezekiel 1:24; Ezekiel 43:2) once compares the voice of Christ (1:15), and twice that of the great multitude of the redeemed (14:2, 19:6), to the voice of many waters, in the one case thinking perhaps of the music of waves quietly breaking, in the other of the thunder of great billows crashing, around the AEgean island which was his place of exile. He constantly uses fountains of water, and clear rivers, as symbols of spiritual life and blessing. Per contra, he imagines ‘the angel of the waters’ turning Rome’s rivers and fountains of water into blood (16:4); for, as she has shed the blood of saints like water, it is but just that she should have to drink blood-a grim species of poetic justice. The great star Wormwood falls in Earth’s sweet waters, turning them to wormwood, and those who drink of them die because they are so bitter (8:9-11). The waters of the Euphrates are to be dried up, like the Jordan before Joshua, that the powers of the East-Parthia and her confederates-may come to the invasion of the Roman Empire (16:12). The great harlot, Rome, sits proudly upon many waters-ruling peoples and nations by many rivers and seas (17:1, 15)-but her day of judgment and dethronement is in sight (17:1).
James Strahan.
WAY (ὁδός)
A striking peculiarity of the Book of the Acts is that in several passages the Christian religion itself is called ‘the Way.’ Saul, if he finds at Damascus ‘any that were of the Way’ (ἐάν τινας εὕρῃ τῆς ὁδοῦ ὄντας), is to bring them to Jerusalem (9:2). ‘Some were … speaking evil of the Way’; ‘there arose no small stir concerning the Way’; ‘I persecuted this Way unto the death’; ‘Felix, having more exact knowledge concerning the Way’ (19:9, 2 3, 22:4, 24:22). The idiom, though found only in the Acts, must have been familiar. We do not wonder that a word lending itself so easily to figurative use should be applied to religion as frequently as is the case in Scripture, and that Christianity should be called pre-eminently ‘the Way.’ It is an interesting parallel that in Taoism, the second indigenous religion of China, Tao means ‘Way’; Tao-teh-king = ‘Book of the Way of Virtue.’ In the NT we are familiar with ‘way of the Lord,’ ‘of salvation,’ ‘of God,’ ‘of truth’; ‘I am the way’ (John 14:6); ‘the narrow and the broad way’ (Matthew 7:13 f.). The phrase is even more common in the OT than in the NT, as a reference to the art, in HDB (iv. 899) will show. It is specially frequent in the Psalter: ‘The way of the righteous … the way of the wicked’ (Psalms 1:6). Other notable passages are Isaiah 30:21; Isaiah 35:8 . The Didache, an early Christian manual, expatiates on the way of life and the way of death. The phrase seems to suggest the active, practical aspects of religion-God’s dealings with man, man’s conduct towards God and his fellows. The commandments, worship, prayer, holiness, repentance, all have an ethical side and are even ethical in essence. J. Butler’s remark that religion is a practical thing is quite in the spirit of the whole of Scripture, as seen in the Prophets, the Sermon on the Mount, the Parables, and the Epistles, ‘Every one … which heareth these words of mine, and doeth them … and doeth them not’ (Matthew 7:24; Matthew 7:26); ‘Inasmuch as ye did it … did it not’ (Matthew 25:40; Matthew 25:45). The proof of love is keeping the commandments. The teaching of Paul and Peter, John and James is no less practical than that of the Master.
Literature.-Commentaries on Acts 9:2; A. E. Garvie, HDB, art. ‘Way.’
J. S. Banks.