"Born Again" or "Born From Above"?

John 3:1 (ESV) Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again [γεννηθῃ ἄνωθεν] he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

From Bruce Demarest, The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation, Foundations of Evangelical Theology, ed. by John S. Feinberg (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1997), 294:

Does the phrase gennao anothen mean "born again" or "born from above"?

Ano, an antonym for kato, means "up" or "above" (John 8:23; 11:41; Acts 2:19; Col. 3:1). Elsewhere in John anothen clearly bears the spatial meaning "above" (John 3:31; 19:11; cf. anothen in John 19:23). In addition, John envisaged believers as born of God (John 1:13; 1 John 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18).

As Ladd noted, the Fourth Gospel reflects the tension between the above and the below, heaven and earth, the sphere of God and the world" (John 3:12-13, 31; 6:33, 62; 8:23). Thus Jesus probably meant that Nicodemus must be "born from above."

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