Friday, April 29, 2022

Baptist Benjamin Keach's (1689) Attempt to Downplay the Salvific Efficacy of Water Baptism in 1 Peter 3:19-21

  

Baptism, which now saves us by Water, that is, by the assistance of Water, and it Antitypical to the Ark of Noah, does not signifie the laying down the Filth of the Flesh in the Water, but the Covenant of a good Conscience towards God, while we are plung’d in the Water, which is the true use of Water in Baptism, thereby to testify our Belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; so that there is a manifest Antithesis between these words by Water, and by resurrection; Nor is the Elegancy of it displeasing. As if he should say, the Ark of Noah, not the Flood, was a Type of Baptism, and Baptism was an Antitype of the Ark, not as Baptism is a washing away the Filth of the Flesh by Water, wherein it answers not at all to the Ark, but as it is the Covenant of a good Conscience towards God by the Resurrection of Christ, in the Belief of which Resurrection of Christ, in the Belief of which Resurrection we are saved, as they were saved by the Ark of Naah: For the Ark and Baptism were both a Type and Figure of the Resurrection; so that the proper end of Baptism ought not to be understood as if it were a sign of the washing away of sin, altho it be thus oftentimes taken metonymically in the New Testament, and by the fathers, but a particular signal of the Resurrection by Faith in the Resurrection of Christ, of which Baptism is a lively and emphatical Figure, as also was the Ark of which Noah returned as from the Sepulcher to a new Life, and therefore not unaptly called by Philo, the Captain of the new creature: And the Whales Belly out of which Jesus, after a burial of three days, was set a liberty . . . (Benjamin Keach, Gold Refined, or, Baptism in its Primitive Purity: Proving baptism in water an holy institution of Jesus Christ, and to continue in the church to the end of the world [London: Nathaniel Crouch, 1689], 47)