In two previous posts (here and here), I discussed 1 Pet 3:21, and how this verse supports baptism being salvific and not merely symbolic. In a recent scholarly commentary I just acquired on this epistle, we read the following:
■ 21* This verse is joined to its predecessor by the relative pronoun ὅ, which, together with ἀντίτυπον (“antitype”) and βάπτισμα (“baptism”) serve as a compound subject of the verb σῴζει. It is the interrelationship of the pronoun and the two nouns that constitutes the syntactic problem of the first phrase of the verse. If, as seems likely, the relative pronoun is the subject of the verb, then the two remaining nouns stand in apposition to it There have been attempts to resolve the phrase differently: to take ἀντίτυπον as adjectival (“antitypical baptism saves you”); to take it as appositional to ὑμᾶς; to understand βάπτισμα as a proleptic antecedent to the ὅ; to include the first phrase with the end of the preceding verse, that is, “ … saved through water which even in reference to you (is) a pattern. Baptism now saves, not …”; to substitute the dative (ᾧ) for the nominative relative pronoun, accepting the reading of a few minor texts. The complexity of the sentence is, however, in all likelihood the result of the complex attempt to relate Noah and the flood as a means of deliverance to Christian baptism as a means of salvation, and ought thus to be allowed to stand. (Achtemeier, P. J., & Epp, E. J. (1996). 1 Peter : a commentary on First Peter (p. 266). Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press; emphasis added)
