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.”
