Friday, December 26, 2014

Another note on 1 Peter 3:21 and Baptismal Regeneration

The issue of baptism is one I have studied in some detail over the years, and I remain convinced that the Latter-day Saint doctrine and practice of baptism is reflective of “biblical Christianity,” to throw out a term. I have posted a few times on various texts used in favour and against baptismal regeneration in the past, including this note on Acts 2:38, which also touched upon 1 Pet 3:21. The following comes from my personal favourite work on baptism (so I highly recommend this, for those interested) by Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the first five centuries (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009), 190-91:


I would construe the pronoun ὃ, referring to water, with “antitype,” understood as a noun, and refer both to baptism. To give a more literal rendering than the above, “[W]ater, which antitype [the antitype of which], is baptism, now saves also you,” or “[W]ater, which in its antitype, baptism, now saves also you.” The former makes clearer that baptism saves, the latter puts more emphasis on the water in baptism as saving, but both renderings convey the idea that grammatically baptism, not the water of the flood, “saves you.”