Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Patrick Fairbairn (1805-1874) on 1 Peter 3:21 and Water Baptism being the Instrumental Means of Spiritual Purification



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)



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