Some see this appeal as a “pledge” or an “answer” with a good
conscience to follow Jesus. The Protestant New International Version
translation of the Bible renders the word as “pledge” rather than “appeal.”
This is not unreasonable, because the Greek word for “appeal,” eperotēma,
can mean “a pledge.” Others translate eperotēma as an “appeal,” as the Revised
Standard Version does, the implication being that in baptism, Peter is saying
we make a request of God to give us a clear, or good (1 Pet. 3:16), conscience.
This is the primary meaning that many Greek dictionaries give for the word.
Regardless of which translation we use for eperotēma, both
correspond with the salvific efficacy of baptism. Take the view we’re disputing
right now, for example. The pledge to God to follow Christ with a good conscience
doesn’t preclude a sacramental understanding of baptism.
Christians who believe in the salvific efficacy of baptism profess
that such a pledge to Christ is a necessary condition to receive baptism. (In
the case of an infant, the parents and the Church make such a pledge on behalf
of the child.) The pledge is part of the baptismal rite. And this pledge is
made “with a good conscience,” either because it’s a sincere commitment or the
person making the pledge in the baptismal rite is doing so having repented of
sin, which is necessary to be baptized.
The view that translates eperotēma as “appeal” fits with the
sacramental view of baptism as well. If we believe that God interiorly cleanses
our souls by giving us a good conscience through the waters of baptism, then
submitting ourselves to the baptismal waters is a request that God effect
within our souls a clear, or good, conscience.
We can go further in our response to Baker. Consider that Peter’s
statement, “an appeal to God for a clear conscience,” is one of two statements that
Peter intends to explain what he means when he says, “Baptism now saves you.”
The other explanatory statement, which comes first and is set in opposition with
the other, is “not a removal of dirt from the body.”
This creates a few problems for the interpretation that baptism doesn’t
save us and is merely a symbol of our pledge to follow Jesus. First,
it’s unreasonable to think Peter would make such an explicit statement about
the salvific efficacy of baptism—“baptism now saves you”—and then immediately afterward
deny such efficacy in his explanatory remarks.
Second, we end up having to think the language “as an appeal to God
for a clear conscience” with the idea that baptism saves us “as a removal of
dirt from the body.”
This leads us to a third problem. It’s true that Peter denial of an
external cleansing implies the affirmation of an internal cleansing: a “cleansing
of guilt,” as Rhodes put it. But the argument runs off the rails by divorcing this
internal cleansing from baptism, saying baptism is merely a symbol of the
internal cleansing and is not at all an external cleansing. On the
contrary, it’s obvious that baptism does remove dirt from the body, so what
Peter is denying is that baptism is merely “a removal of dirt from the
body.” It thus is also an internal cleansing. (Karlo Broussard, Baptism
Now Saves You: How Water and Spirit Give Eternal Life [El Cajon, Calif.:
Catholic Answers Press, 2025], 58-60)
