21. The
like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us] The MSS. present
two readings; one that of the Textus
Receptus, answering to the English Version as giving the relative pronoun
in the dative, the other, supported by the better MSS., giving the pronoun in
the nominative, “which also” (sc. the element of water) “the antitype [of the deluge,] doth even now
save us,” and then he adds, as explaining what was the antitype, the word
“baptism” in apposition with the subject of the sentence. At first it seems
hard to see the parallelism between the flood which destroyed and the baptism
which saves, but reflection will shew that the Apostle may well have thought of
the deluge as burying the old evils of the world and giving the human race, as
it were, a fresh start, under new and better conditions, a world, in some
sense, regenerated or brought into a new covenant with God, and therefore new
relations to Him. Does not the teaching of the previous verse suggest the
inference that he thought of the flood as having been even for those who
perished in it, not merely an instrument of destruction, but as placing even
the souls of the disobedient in a region in which they were not shut out from
the pitying love of the Father who there also did not “will that any should
perish”?
not the putting away of the
filth of the flesh] The
Greek word for “putting away” may be noted as one of those common to the two
Epistles (see note on 2 Pet. 1:14). The implied protest against the notion that
this was all that was meant by Christian baptism, though it might be necessary
both for Jewish and heathen converts, gains immensely in its significance if we
think of the Epistle as addressed mainly to the former class. They were in
danger of looking upon baptism, not as the sacrament of a new birth, but as
standing on the same level as the “washing” or “baptism” (the same word is
used) of the older ritual. So, even during the ministry of the Baptist, there
was a dispute between some of his disciples and the Jews “about purification”
(John 3:25), obviously rising out of that confusion of thought. So it formed
part of the elementary instruction of Christian catechumens that they should
learn the “doctrine of baptisms” (Heb. 6:2), i.e. the distinction between the
Jewish and the Christian rites that went almost or altogether by the same name.
St Peter warns men against the perilous thought that they washed away their
sins by the mere outward act. So far as he may have contemplated heathen
converts at all we may remember that they too thought of guilt as washed away
by a purely ceremonial institution. So Ovid, Fast. ii. 45,
“Full easy souls who dream the crystal flood
Can wash away the deep-dyed stain of blood.”
[Ah, nimium faciles qui tristia crimina caedis
Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua.]
Comp. also Juven. Sat. vi.
522, Persius, Sat. ii. 15, Horace, Sat. ii. 3.290. History records but too
many instances of the revival of a like superstition. The tendency to postpone
baptism in order to cancel the sins that were in the meantime accumulating, and
avoid the danger of postbaptismal sin, of which we see conspicuous instances in
the lives of Constantine and Augustine, the mediæval dogma still lingering in
popular belief, that unbaptized infants are excluded from salvation; these are
examples of ways of looking at baptism more or less analogous to that which St Peter
condemns. With him the saving power of baptism varies with the activity and
purity of the moral consciousness of the baptized.
but the answer of a good
conscience toward God]
The words admit of very different interpretations. (1) The Greek word
translated “answer” means primarily “question,”
“enquiry.” If this sense be admitted here, there would then rise the question
whether the words “of a good conscience” were in the genitive of the subject or
the object. If the former, the condition on which St Peter lays stress would be
equivalent to (a) the enquiry of a
good conscience, the seeking of the soul after God; if the latter, that
condition would be (b) the prayer
addressed to God for a good conscience. Neither of these interpretations,
however, is satisfactory. It is against
(a) that it is the idea of
baptism that men are no longer seeking God but have found Him. It is against (b) that it is also the idea of baptism
that it is more than the asking for a gift. A true solution is found partly in
the forensic use of the Greek word for question, as including, like our word
“examination,” both question and answer, and so applied to the whole process of
a covenant, the conditions of which were determined by mutual interrogatories
and affirmative or negative replies, and partly in the fact that at a date so
early that it is reasonable to infer an Apostolic origin, the liturgical administration
of baptism involved interrogatories and answers, in substance identical with
those that have been in use in the Church at large and are in use still. “Dost
thou renounce Satan?” “I do renounce him.” “Dost thou believe in Christ?” “I do
believe in Him,” the second question sometimes taking the form “Dost thou take
thy stand with Christ?” and the answer, “I do take my stand.” In this practice
of interrogation then we find that which explains St Peter’s meaning. That
which is of the essence of the saving power of baptism is the confession and
the profession which precedes it. If that comes from a conscience (see notes on
chaps. 2:19, 3:16) that really renounces sin and believes on Christ, then
baptism, as the channel through which the grace of the new birth is conveyed
and the convert admitted into the Church of Christ, “saves us,” but not
otherwise. The practice of Infant Baptism, though the scales of argument both
as regards Scripture and antiquity turn in its favour, presents, it must be
admitted, an apparent inversion of the right order, though the idea is still
retained in the questions put to the sponsors who answer in the infant’s name,
as his representatives. If the question is asked, What then is the effect of
Infant Baptism? the answer must be found, that it is, in the language of
Scripture, as a new birth, the admission into new conditions of life, into, as
it were, the citizenship of a new country. It gives the promise and potency of
life, but its power to save the man that grows out of the infant varies with
the fulfilment of the conditions when consciousness is developed. Now, as when
St Peter wrote, it is not the “putting away the filth of the flesh” that saves,
but “the answer of a good conscience towards God.”
by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ] So far the words
have brought before us the human side of baptism. But the rite has also a
divine side and this the last words of the verse bring before us. Baptism
derives its power to save from the Resurrection of Christ. It brings us into
union with the life of Him who “was dead and is alive for evermore” (Rev.
1:18). We are buried with Him in baptism, planted together with Him in the
likeness of His death, that we may be also in the likeness of His resurrection
(Rom. 6:4, 5). (E. H. Plumptre, The General Epistles of St Peter and St Jude, with Notes and
Introduction [The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1890], 136-38)
