Which sometime were disobedient, when once
the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a
preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like
figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of
the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ: (1 Pet 3:20-21)
This text is
a powerful witness to baptismal regeneration (for a full discussion, see Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation). Notwithstanding
his not holding to baptismal regeneration, Patrick Fairbairn (1805-1874), Scottish
Free Church minister and theologian, wrote the following against those who argue water baptism is not the instrumental means
of receiving spiritual purification:
I am aware of many eminent scholars give a different
turn to this expression in the first epistle of Peter, and take the proper
rendering to be "saved through" (i.e.
in the midst of water")--contemplating the water as the space or region
through which the ark was required to bear Noah and his family in safety. So
Beza, who says that "the water cannot cannot be taken for the instrumental
cause, as Noah was preserved from the water, not by it;" so also Tittmann,
Bib. Cab. vol. xviii,. p. 251: Steiger in his Commen. with only a minute shade
of difference; Robinson, in Lex., and many others. But this view is open to the
following objections: 1. The water is here mentioned, not in respect to its
several parts, or to the extent or its territory from one point to another, but
simply as an instrumental agent. had the former been meant, the expression
would have been "saved through the waters," rather than saved by
water. But as the case stood, it mattered nothing, whether the ark remained
stationary at one point on the surface of the waters, or was borne from one
place to another; so that through, in
the sense of passing through, or through among, givens a quite unsuitable
meaning. That Noah needed to be saved from the water, rather than by it, is a
superficial objection, proceeding on the supposition that the water had the
same relation to Noah that it had to the world in general. For him, the water
and the ark were essentially connected together: it took account, we might say
of the Red sea, that the Israelites were saved by it; for, though in itself a
source of danger, yet as regarded Israel's position, it was really the means of
safety (1 Cor. x.2). 2. The application made by the Apostle of Noah's
preservation requires the agency of the water, as well as of the ark, to be
taken into account. Indeed, according to the best authorities (which read ο
και), the reference in the antitype is specially to the water as the type. but
apart from that, baptism is spoken as a saving, in consequence of it being a purifying ordinance, which implies, as
in the deluge, that the salvation be accomplished through means of a
destruction. This is virtually admitted by Steiger, who, though he adopts the
rendering "through the water," yet in explaining the connection
between the type and the antitype, is obliged to regard water as also
instrumental to salvation. "The flood was for Noah a baptism, and as such
saved; the same element, water, also saves us now--not, however as mere water,
but in the same quality as a baptism." (Patrick Fairbairn, The Typology of Scripture, Volume 1 [2d
ed.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1853], 282 n. 1)
