The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at (εις) the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. (Matt 12:41)
A common verse used to counter the force of Acts 2:38 to support baptismal regeneration is that of Matt 12:41. The argument goes that, as the preposition εις in Matt 12:41 “obviously” means, not “into” but “as a result of,” one can plausibly interpret Acts 2:38 to mean that one is baptised “as a result of” their (prior) forgiveness of sins. Of course, such is an inane “response” to the appeal to Acts 2:38—for instance, it would mean one repents after they receive forgiveness of sins. There are other problems with this approach. For a full exegesis of Acts 2:38, as well as a response to the appeal to Matt 12:41, see:
In his book defending baptismal regeneration, Orpheus J. Heyward offered the following insightful note on Matt 12:41:
Eis and Matthew 12:41
This passage also contains a prepositional phrase that A.T. Robertson uses to argue for the translation of “because of.” The particular phrase under discussion is “at (eis) the preaching of Jonah.” It is argued that this means that Ninevah repented “because of” the preaching of Jonah. While this seems plausible, it again attempts to change the force of the preposition “eis” from a preposition that looks forward to the intended end, to one that looks backward to a previous source. Spiros Zodhiates provides an explanation of the usage of “eis” in this passage. He states: In Matt 12.41; Luke 11:32, “they repented at [eis] the preaching of Jonath,” where eis, into, means conformable to at or at the preaching of Jonah (Zodhiates S. The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament [Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000]).
Notice that Zodhiates does not water down the force of “eis,” allowing it to maintain its forward-pointing design. He understands “eis” in this passage to carry the idea that the Ninevites conformed “into” the preaching of Jonah. This suggests that the Ninevites experienced a behavior change that was consistent with the preaching they heard. The prepositional phrase in this passage indicates not the basis of the repentance, but the goal of the repentance. They did not repent “because of,” but they repented “into” behavioral conformity. (Orpheus J. Heyward, Dead, Dipped, Delivered: A grammatical and contextual analysis of baptism passages [2017], 56-57, emphasis in original)
