Tuesday, August 25, 2020

On the Perspicuity of the Bible, Baptismal Regeneration in 1 Peter 3:19-21, and a Discussion of Different "Causes"

Our Protestant friends will often tell us that they hold to the perspicuity of the Bible. While there is, no doubt, many passages of the Bible which are “clear,” one will find that our Protestant (esp. Reformed) friends will reject very clear readings, not because they are actually difficult texts, but because they conflict with their theology, even when a prima facie reading of the text is obvious (or "perspicuous,” to borrow their terminology).

 

Take 1 Pet 3:19-21, a text that clearly teaches baptismal regeneration:

 

By which [Christ] went and preached unto the spirits in prison; 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.

 

In this pericope, the apostle Peter teaches that, just as the flood waters in Noah’s time was the instrumental means by which evil was destroyed, water baptism, being the antitype thereof, is the instrumental means by which our personal evils (our sins) are destroyed by God.

 

Now, before I continue, let me make a note about different “causes,” as many will retort, ignorantly, that defenders of baptismal regeneration believe water baptism have an efficacy in and of itself.

 

           Final cause: the purpose or aim of an action or the end (telos) toward which a thing naturally develops.

           Efficient cause: an agent that brings a thing into being or initiates a change

           Formal cause: the pattern which determines the form taken by something

           Meritorious cause: the foundation/source of the “power” behind the action

           Instrumental cause: the physical means/instrument through which the action is brought about; it exercises its influence chiefly according to the form and intention of the principal efficient cause

 

Such differentiation of "causes" is known in the Reformed tradition. In paragraph 2 of Chapter 11 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, there is a differentiation between the "meritorious" and "instrumental" causes of justification:

 

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification . . .

 

In other words, Reformed theology itself teaches that, while the meritorious cause of justification is solely the atoning sacrifice of Christ, it must still be applied, and the instrumental means of its application is by (saving) faith. Just as it would be fallacious to claim, therefore, that they believe "saving faith" has an energy/power independent of the atonement and that it downplays or depreciates the redemptive sacrifice of Christ, so, too, is it fallacious to claim that baptismal regeneration does the same (therefore, appeals to texts such as 1 John 1:7 are not problematic to the doctrine).

 

So, let us tie this to water baptism:

 

           Meritorious cause: the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ

           Efficient cause: God the Father applying the merits of Christ and the Spirit operating through the physical water

           Instrumental cause: water baptism (N.B.: this is important as this means baptism, in and of itself, has no “energy” or “power” to save—it is dependent upon the meritorious cause [Christ’s redemptive sacrifice] for its efficacy)

           Formal cause: the baptised person being regenerated and receiving a remission of their sins (past and then-present)

           Final cause: the glorification of God in the salvation of souls

 

As the instrumental cause of regeneration, baptism is dependent upon (not independent of) the atoning sacrifice of Christ (the sole meritorious cause of salvation) for its efficacy. Belief in baptismal regeneration is not “adding” to the work of Christ—it is the instrumental means of its initial application. This refutes the claim that “baptismal regeneration . . .teaches that the meritorious work of water baptism . . .achieves regeneration” (Edward L. Dalcour, A Definitive Look at Oneness Theology, p. 39) and similar arguments by critics of baptismal regeneration.

 

Now, back to 1 Pet 3:19-21.

 

In verse 20, we read of how the “water” from the flood “saved” (σωζω) Noah and his family, and how baptism, said to be the fulfilment of this Old Testament type (antitype [αντιτυπος]) “now save us” (νῦν σῴζει [“now saves you”]). Antitypes are always greater than their Old Testament types. Consider the brazen serpent in Num 21:8-9—those who looked at the serpent were healed, but only temporarily, and only members of the nation of Israel. Christ is likened to this serpent, but one brings about salvation, and not to Israel only, but all the nations (John 3:14-17).

 

This fits with the definition of αντιτυπος provided by Lexicons such as Johannes E. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon: Based on Semantic Domains, 2d ed.:

 

ἀντίτυπος, ον: pertaining to that which corresponds in form and structure to something else, either as an anticipation of a later reality or as a fulfillment of a prior type - 'correspondence, antitype, representation, fulfillment.' ὃ καὶ ὑμᾶς ἀντίτυπον νῦν σῴζει βάπτισμα 'which corresponds to baptism which now saves you' 1 Pe 3.21 . . .

 

Therefore, just as Noah et al. were (temporarily) saved “by water” (δι᾽ ὕδατος), we are saved by means of baptism, with baptism saving us in a greater manner, that is, salvifically (thus it being an antitype).

 

Some try to explain this away, arguing that it was the ark, not the water from the flood, that saved Noah. However, this ignores the fact that Peter is offering a typological interpretation of the flood water. Furthermore, Peter is rather explicit in linking baptism to the instrumental means of being saved.

 

This still begs the question as to why one would link the flood water with the water of baptism? The answer is that, just as the water from the flood destroyed all evil, the water of baptism brings about a forgiveness of our personal evils (sins), fitting this typological approach to the flood narrative in Genesis.

 

Let us quote some scholarly sources affirming that this text clearly teaches baptismal regeneration:

 

21* This verse is joined to its predecessor by the relative pronoun ὅ, which, together with ἀντίτυπον (“antitype”) and βάπτισμα (“baptism”) serve as a compound subject of the verb σῴζει. It is the interrelationship of the pronoun and the two nouns that constitutes the syntactic problem of the first phrase of the verse. If, as seems likely, the relative pronoun is the subject of the verb, then the two remaining nouns stand in apposition to it There have been attempts to resolve the phrase differently: to take ἀντίτυπον as adjectival (“antitypical baptism saves you”); to take it as appositional to ὑμᾶς; to understand βάπτισμα as a proleptic antecedent to the ὅ; to include the first phrase with the end of the preceding verse, that is, “ … saved through water which even in reference to you (is) a pattern. Baptism now saves, not …”; to substitute the dative (ᾧ) for the nominative relative pronoun, accepting the reading of a few minor texts. The complexity of the sentence is, however, in all likelihood the result of the complex attempt to relate Noah and the flood as a means of deliverance to Christian baptism as a means of salvation, and ought thus to be allowed to stand. (Achtemeier, P. J., & Epp, E. J. (1996). 1 Peter : a commentary on First Peter (p. 266). Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press; emphasis added)

 

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.” (Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the first five centuries [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009], 190-91)

 

A new means of salvation marks the new era: “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (3:18). A reference to “the days of Noah” and the eight persons who “were saved through water” turns the thoughts of our author to baptism. “And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him” (3:20-22). Baptism in the name of Christ means participation in the atoning work of Christ, and hence the enjoyment of eternal salvation. (Donald A. Hagner, How New is the New Testament? First-Century Judaism and the Emergence of Christianity [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2018], 153, emphasis added)

 

The flood is, therefore, a cleansing destruction, purging the earth of that which is corrupt. This helps to explain why Peter sees it as an antitype of that which baptism symbolizes, particularly if we accept that his understanding of baptism may actually agree with that of Paul: the flood, as a purging judgement, prefigures the death of ‘flesh’ in Jesus and the establishment of a new order by the Spirit. It is worth mentioning that other literature of the time, notably The Book of Watchers, understands the flood as a cleansing and restorative event, prefiguring the eschatological judgment (particularly 1 Enoch 10, where the same theme of purging is encountered).

 

This requires, though, that Jesus’s identification as the sin-bearer is not simply representative but is also participatory, putting to death the old order of sins in which we used to participate and establishing a new order of righteousness in which we now participate. (Grant Macaskill, Union with Christ in the New Testament [New York: Oxford University Press, 2018], 277-78, emphasis in bold added, comment in square brackets added for clarification)

 

1 Pet 3:19-21 teaching baptismal regeneration also ties nicely into Peter’s words in Acts 2:38, which also teaches the same. For more on this, see:

 

Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation

 

Notwithstanding how clear the grammar is, many will reject the clear meaning of this pericope, not because it is obscure--the "difficult" nature of the pericope is due to it refuting many formulations of Sola Fide and errant understandings of the relationship baptism has to salvation. Such only shows us that the Protestant understanding of the perspicuity of the Bible is a shell-game. Furthermore, it is ironic that, for those who claim they hold to the perspicuity of the Bible, they hold to dogmas which are not taught therein, such as the teaching that special revelation ceased with the inscripturation of the final book of the New Testament (and no, Jude 3 and Rev 22:18-19 do not teach such!)


Indeed, the Protestant Reformers had to make distinctions about the nature of perspicuity that went beyond the subjective “difficult” and “clear” distinction, including external vs. internal perspicuity of the Bible itself. As Robert Fastiggi noted:

 

Luther concedes that there are certain passages of Scripture which “are obscure and hard to elucidate, but that is due not to the exalted nature of their subject, but to our own linguistic and grammatical ignorance” (Bondage of the Will; Dillenberger, p. 172). However, he maintains that, since revelation of Christ, “the entire content of the Scriptures has now been brought to light, even though some passages which contain many unknown words remain obscure” (Ibid.) If people find the contents of Scripture obscure, Luther contends that this is due “not to any lack of clarity in Scripture, but to their own blindness and dullness, in that they make no effort to see truth which, in itself, could not be Plainer” (Ibid., p. 173)

 

Luther goes on to make a distinction between the external perspicuity or clarity of Scripture and the internal perspicuity. As he sees it, the external clarity of Scripture must be affirmed. He maintains that “nothing whatsoever is left obscure or ambiguous, but that all that is in the Scripture is through the Word brought forth in the clearest light and proclaimed to the whole world” (Ibid., p. 175). However, the external clarity of the Bible is only perceived by those who have been given the gift of internal perspicuity by the Holy Spirit. As Luther writes: “the truth is that nobody who has not the Spirit of God sees a jot of what is in the Scriptures” (Ibid., p. 174). Those without the Spirit “can discuss and quote all that is in Scripture,” but “they do not understand or really know any of it” (Ibid.) This is because “the Spirit is needed for the understanding of all Scripture and every part of Scripture” (Ibid., pp. 174-175). (Robert Fastiggi, "What did the Protestant Reformers Teach about Sola Scriptura?" in Robert Sungenis, ed. Not By Scripture Alone: A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura [2d ed.; Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, 2013], 295-334, here, p. 301)

 

For more on the broader topic of Sola Scriptura and the formal sufficiency of the Bible itself, see:

 

Not By Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura

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