In history of
interpretation, 1 Peter has been
regarded as a “baptismal homily” or as a “baptismal liturgy.” In other words, we perhaps are reading either
an ancient sermon (homily) setting forth the meaning or significance of
baptism. Or, we may find the letter
descriptive of a worship format (liturgy) for a baptismal event. Even though both descriptions are surely too
narrow, they suggest at the least a significant thematic value for baptism in
the letter. This essay will undertake an
independent investigation of the significance of baptism for 1 Peter.
Before we start, we
should be aware of a theological agenda that has long militated itself against
baptism as a salvific act. Although the
great Protestant Reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, each admitted a role
for baptism pursuant to the initial salvation of a convert to Christianity,
this role came to be harshly denied later in Protestantism. The greatest error feared within
Protestantism is using “works of human merit” to achieve self-righteousness,
instead of seeking justification from God through grace. So grace had to be stripped of “works” so as
to be achieved by “faith only.” After
this theological development, no requirement could be even considered beyond that
of simple faith—sola fide. Baptism was thus squeezed out of discussion,
and even Scriptural declarations that plainly assign it salvific significance
had to be re-interpreted in ways counter to that natural reading and
understanding. This hardened theology
took place sometime after Luther and Calvin; it certainly had no place
historically in New Testament times.
Readers will have to
make their own theological determinations about this. I will simply suggest that Biblical salvation
is a matter of covenant relationship.
And, unapologetically, let it be stated that any relationship requires
two active partners, not just One (in Protestantism, an active convert is often
taken as a threat to God’s sovereignty in determining matters of salvation or
damnation). Salvation is achieved when
relationship succeeds between the convert and the Savior. Like any relationship, success is conditional
on the efforts of both partners. And God, whose right it is to set the terms
that qualify a relationship as successful (and thus, as salvific and saving),
established certain requirements that demand action of a prospective
convert.
Baptism lies among
these relational requirements as the culminating act in the process of
conversion, resulting both in forgiveness of sins and in reception of the
indwelling Spirit (Acts 2:38). One who performs these required acts attains
the prerequisite “relational dynamics” that God desires, enters covenant, and
so is saved. Notions of boasting and
earning one’s own salvation—which later became the key considerations of
hardened Protestantism—should never come into play when one believes, repents
from sin, confesses the Lordship of Jesus, or is baptized into His Name. Baptism, thus conceived as a rite of
covenant-entrance, has no more “earning power” or “merit” than does a wedding
ceremony (another rite of covenant entrance).
Something is wrong when Protestants disapprove of a convert simply doing
what God commanded and for precisely the reasons set forth by God. Baptism is not a forbidden “work”; it is a
required act of salvation.
The
Conversionary Setting.
The letter of 1 Peter harkens
its first readers back to the time of conversion, beginning with the greeting
that opens the letter. And the time of
conversion is the time of baptism.
Being “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God”,
and being “sanctified by the Spirit”, and
being “sprinkled with the blood of Jesus
Christ” are celebrations for every new Christian convert (1:2). The references to “new birth” (1:3, 23), likewise apply to the newly baptized (cf. John 3:3-5). Peter speaks of evangelistic preaching (1:12,
23). He speaks of faith that saves when
believed and of disbelief that brings condemnation (2:7-8). The very theme of 1 Peter is imitating Jesus in His suffering on the Cross, and this
is the heart of evangelistic preaching and of the conversion that responds to
it. After conversion, among the first
necessities is turning away from the old life of flesh and sin lived before
Jesus, and replacing it with the Christian alternative. This recurs repeatedly in 1 Peter.
And, we find urgings for Christians to form themselves into community,
especially in the description of the Christians and of their Lord as “living stones” which are being
constructively joined to form a “temple” with the result that those who
previously “were not a people” now
are (2:1ff.). Conversion is often
described in terms of God’s “calling” through the gospel (cf. 2 Thess. 2:14), and Peter describes a
calling from darkness into light (2:9). These
indications and concerns all point to readers who are still “wet behind the
ears” with conversionary experience.
Of course, it is
often necessary and helpful in pastoral concern to draw even older Christians
back to their conversions. In a similar
way, couples now married for many years need to be reminded of the particular
vows agreed to at their wedding. So this
plainly conversionary emphasis may possibly be directed at Christians not
recently converted. Some Christians fail
to develop and mature, even after much time has passed, and may need to be
addressed as a new convert might (1 Cor.
3:1ff.; Heb. 5:12ff.). It is hard to know, therefore, if Peter is
addressing recent converts or older believers who are still as immature as
converts. Either way, it cannot be
denied that readers of this letter find a message in which baptism is perfectly
at home.
Where
Baptism Surfaces.
Although baptism is explicitly mentioned only in 3:21, there are
thinly-veiled allusions that would be recognized by anyone who understands the
theological meanings that attach to baptism.
Being “born again” or being
given “new birth” (1:3, 23) are
plainly baptismal (John 3:3-5). The notion of “souls being purified through obedience to the truth” might be
anathema to modern Protestants, but NT Christianity regarded the Gospel not
merely as something to be believed, but as something to be obeyed to achieve
salvation (Rom. 10:16; 2 Thess. 1:8; 1 Peter 4:17). See the
discussion below. Also, Peter sounds
quite similar to Paul in 2:24 with “free
from sins, we might live for righteousness”, which resembles the language
of the baptism-themed chapter of Rom. 6
and this expression may also be about baptism for Peter. Finally, the explicit mention of baptism in
3:21 is preceded in vs. 16-17 with a direct link between the suffering of
Christians and the suffering of their Lord in His Passion and Resurrection (v.
18) and then this explicit mention is followed by the same linkage in 4:1. The fact that “baptism now saves you” is meaningful to any whose sufferings correspond
to the sufferings of Christ. This is
strikingly similar to the protective power of faith described in 1:5-7. While we endure suffering and wait for the
salvation to be eschatologically revealed (1:5, 7) meanwhile baptism now saves
us.
Obeying
the Gospel:
Much to the consternation of those Protestants who accept only converts
to Christianity who display extreme passivity before the sovereignty of God,
the NT speaks of the necessity of “obeying the Gospel” for salvation. The truth is, Christians who lived in a time
much closer to Jesus than Luther and Calvin saw the Gospel as something to be
not only believed. They saw Gospel as
something to be obeyed. In other words,
the evangelistic Gospel calls out to active and responsive converts.
The expression is
found in Rom. 10:16;
2 Thess. 1:8; and 1 Peter 4:17. Different vocabulary is used, but the words
are clearly synonymous and cover the same semantic range of meaning. The verb found in Romans and 2 Thessalonians
is, at root, a verb of hearing. We
commonly speak of someone who “disobeys” as someone who “fails to listen” (to
authority). And then the verb found in 1 Peter means fundamentally to disobey,
but the lexicon notes that when employed in Biblical literature the word
describes disobedience to God. Moreover,
since Christians viewed disbelief toward the Gospel as the greatest
disobedience, the word for “disobey” carried connotations of “disbelief.” It may also be significant that Silvanus had
a hand in writing as the scribe for Paul in Thessalonians
and for Peter in his first epistle.
The Gospel may be defined
as the message of the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, of His dying, burial,
and rising. How might one “obey”
that? With the expectation of Jesus that
His followers should take up their own crosses (and thus, die for Him and with
Him), baptism is the obvious answer. In
baptism, one enters death (Rom. 6:3). Not physical death, of course, but in the
sense described in 2 Cor. 5:15—“and he died for all, that they that live
should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died
and rose again.” So thoroughly is
Jesus lived-for as “Lord” that one actually dies to self. The only way to “obey” the death of Jesus is
to die yourself; the only answer—and it faces one and all as a Gospel-imperative
that must be obeyed—is to take up our own executions. We are in the conceptual place of baptism. Baptism takes in not only the shared-death of
Jesus. It also takes the convert into
the shared-resurrection of Jesus.
Baptism entails obedience to the death-burial-resurrection of Jesus as a
performed analogy to the Gospel.
And if “obeying the
Gospel” essentially means “getting baptized” it makes a lot of sense that
baptism is frequently an item placed in a command, a command to be obeyed if
dire consequences are to be avoided.
When Jesus struck a challenge against the Pharisees regarding John’s
baptism, He clearly hung that challenge upon an authoritative imperative, “The baptism of John, whence was it? from
heaven or from men?” (Mk. 11:30; Matt. 21:25; Lk. 20:4). Those Pharisees
who shunned John’s baptism were regarded as now outsiders to the purpose of God
(Luke 7:30).
It follows when Peter
declares the condemnation of those who “stumble
at the Word, being disobedient” (2:8) and when he speaks of the husbands of
Christian wives who “obey not the Word”
(3:1), he is essentially indicating that such disobedient people are
unbaptized. They have not “obeyed the
Gospel.” Notice that the expression is
usually used negatively in all of its locations, by both Peter and Paul, with
condemnation to attend those who disobey.
Acts
5:32
is also suggestive. Peter (and the
apostles) declare to the Jewish authorities, “We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God
has given to those who obey Him.”
The notion of “obeying” turns up in immediate context in the necessary
choice to be made by the Christians before competing authorities: “We
must obey God rather than men!” But
reception of Spirit is assigned to baptism in the paradigmatic conversion
account in Acts 2, and here the
Spirit is given by God to those who “obey” Him.
If Luke (reporting Peter’s activity), like both Paul and Peter, also
sees baptism as Gospel-imperative and thus something to be “obeyed” to secure
the baptismal gift of Spirit, we have a rather broad swath of Biblical
authorship bearing their witness to a commonplace theology in the early church.
Romans
6 sets focus on baptism as an event that brings to a practical end the
involvement of a Christian with sin. The
power of sin has been broken and enslavement has ended. The believer now walks in “newness of life”
and this means living in such a way as to bring a firmly negative answer to the
question that opened the chapter: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue
in sin, that grace may abound?” Having
been baptized, the answer must be “No!
God forbid!” Baptism has led the
believer in “interchange” fashion (Morna Hooker) to participate in the
Gospel-events of Jesus’ own experience.
He died in crucifixion; we die.
He was buried; we are buried into His death. He was raised from the dead; it follows that
we will be raised in the likeness of His resurrection. As Paul begins to wrap up his discussion, he
writes: “But thanks be to God, that, whereas ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to
that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered.” This again is obedience to the Gospel, and
Paul is speaking of baptism.
Perhaps it would not
be excessively bold to expect baptism to be treated post-Reformation as a
Gospel-imperative, in all of its salvific glory. This was commonplace in the pre-Reformation
church and is pervasive in the Bible. Although
the allusion may escape those living under the shadows of Luther and Calvin,
Peter was speaking of baptism when he wrote to Christians who had “purified your souls in your obedience to
the truth.”
1 Peter 3:21: So Peter is writing to a situation in which
it is pastorally strategic and appropriate to draw upon conversionary
experience to lead his readers into appropriate worldview and praxis. That conversionary experience in Biblical
Christianity did not merely include baptism, it centered on baptism as the
culmination of conversion to Christ Jesus.
Peter harkens back to evangelistic preaching of Gospel. Without making explicit references, Peter
makes allusions that would not have been missed as clear references to baptism. The only direct reference to baptism comes here
in 3:21, and it finds itself in a ready-made home in which it is secure in
familiar surroundings. We need to hear
this verse embedded in the larger flow of the message that surrounds and
incorporates it.
The primary purpose
for the epistle was to enable fairly new Christians to face persecution which
they were actually facing or were potentially going to face. They were living as disempowered exiles and
aliens in a culture that was alert with a hostile edge against the appearance
of new religions that could disrupt the harmony of homes and, from there, the
very fabric that held society together.
Suffering was either real or a ready possibility. This word on baptism takes its place in this
discussion about Christians suffering persecution.
Peter begins in
3:14-17 with basic philosophic and strategic approaches to hostile
culture. Then in v. 18 he sets forth the
essential Christian touchstone in times when faith brings pain and
hardship: the example of Christ Jesus. He suffered before you did, and how can you
possibly expect anything different or anything less? This model of leadership into suffering
begins with Jesus in the Gospels and is carried into the Epistles. The writer of Hebrews (who quite likely is the same Silvanus/Silas who served
Peter as scribe) is perfectly blunt about the implications of the Cross. He chides Christians who feel they’ve taken
all they can stand and are ready to abandon the Christian faith by reminding
them that, in battling sin, they had “not
yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (12:4). There was no degree of suffering, including
martyrdom, that was considered outside of expectations. Our faith anchors in His Cross, and follows.
V. 18 may well be a
snippet from an ancient Christian hymn.
Jesus has been “put to death in
the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.”
That seems to indicate His death in the earthly realm, followed by an
infusion of resurrection-life from the spiritual realm. And being “made alive” refers to the
resurrection. That sets the time frame
in a significant way. Some interpreters
have thought that the spirit of Jesus descended into Hell while His body lay
three days in the tomb. This verse skips
that time period and neither this verse nor any other teaches a descent into
Hell by Jesus. Subsequent views of
atonement held that for Jesus to truly be our substitute, He had to take our
place in Hell-fire as well as upon the Cross.
That is wrong also, as Jesus declared it all to be finished on the Cross
(John 19:30). No further payment for sins was necessary.
So resurrection
ushered Jesus back into the unseen realm when Jesus ascended from Earth to
Heaven. And in that resurrected,
spiritual state (v. 19) Jesus re-entered the Heavenly realm and preached to
spirits in prison. The notion of the
“harrowing of Hell” by Jesus (described above) led to conjecture that He found
Hell to be a prison system, that He went there and preached so as to offer the
doomed and damned souls imprisoned by Satan a second-chance at salvation. By means of such preaching, Jesus set the
spirits free. We can now see that this
conjecture is also off-target (and with it, Catholic notions of Purgatory), because it is demonstrable that Peter is
operating here largely on the conceptual framework provided by the
non-canonical Book of Enoch. This becomes apparent to those who read both 1 Peter and Enoch (the book is also quoted in Jude 14-15).
Enoch is the Bible
character from Gen. 5:24 who was
apparently translated from Earth to Heaven without experiencing death. The Book
of Enoch is written as though this Enoch were the author. This is obviously fiction, as the book was
actually written closer to the time of Jesus than that of Enoch. Enoch interprets (wrongly, I think) Gen. 6:1-5 as teaching interbreeding
between evil, disobedient angels and human females. These angels, on analogy to the influence of
the Serpent on Adam and Eve, instigate a human rebellion against God of worldwide
proportion by a proliferation of evil, sin, and wickedness. Enoch is sent to preach to these disobedient
angels, and his message is a prophetic oracle of doom that offers the angels no
chance of reprieve from God. They are
consigned to chains and prison in a fiery abyss. Peter accepts this conceptual framework and thus sees
Jesus also preaching to these angels. In
all likelihood, the message of that preaching is again one of doom—only this is
now bolstered by Jesus’ claim to victory founded on His resurrection from crucified
death.
This is significant
for the suffering readers of Peter, because they intuitively understand their
persecution from their culture to be an expression of the larger battle between
good and evil. And, from all appearance,
they have fearful minority status before forces of evil that seem to be
supreme. This presentation of Jesus in
spiritual victory adds another crucial layer to this conception. Yes, evil seems to be the superior power, but
Jesus has achieved victory that assures that while the current minority status
is temporary, the situation will finally be overturned and God will put things
right eschatologically.
Peter turns to that
ancient rebellion. God dealt with the
perpetrating angels with eternal imprisonment.
He dealt with the expansive rebellion among humanity by sending the
Flood, which resulted in a purified Creation.
And God provided a salvation for eight people via the ark of Noah. And Peter says, “Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you…”
Forces of cosmic evil
are again at work to persecute Christians.
These are the forces that have always been at work since ancient times,
and Peter conjoins his contemporary experience with the ancient one with the
link of an analogous event of salvation.
The ancient and modern salvations both benefit few people and both are
achieved through the instrumentality of water.
First there is Noah’s ark; then there is Christian baptism. Both offer a saving rescue from the pervasive
rebellion instigated by the beings we now refer to as demons or evil spirits. When we read that “baptism now saves you”
this is what Peter means.
A word should be
inserted here to ward off another Reformed Protestant dodge of baptismal
responsibility that is all too common.
Because Peter uses the type/antitype expression to relate Noah’s
salvation to Christian baptismal salvation, and because this is translationally
expressed at times either as a “like figure” it is sometimes suggested that
baptism only saves figuratively. [Note: it becomes wearisome when Protestants
toss up ridiculous arguments in shocking and repetitive denial against what
always seems to be the plain meaning of Scriptures that mention baptism!] The notion here is similar to the “moods”
that attach to Greek verbs. The “indicative
mood” conveys fact, but the “subjunctive mood” expresses what may be true only
conditionally and, thus, potentially.
But then the “optative mood” expresses what is true in such a most unlikely
and improbable way that it becomes like a mere wish. Every step—from indicative to subjunctive to
optative—takes one further away from factual reality. And it is suggested that Peter is robbing the
true force from the saving power of water-baptism by suggesting it was “prefigured”
by Noah’s salvation. This does not
follow, and may be brought to consideration only after the rest of the plain
matter-of-fact declarations of other NT Scriptures are disregarded. For if they are assumed, the passage in 1 Peter looks just like yet another one
of those.
Peter then offers two
explanations regarding baptism, one explaining a wrong conception of its saving
power and another explaining how it actually does save. First the saving power of baptism has nothing
to do with the cleansing action of water on skin. Occasionally one hears from Reformationists the silly take-away
from this that water-baptism has no saving power. And this leads the silly into the false
dichotomy between “spirit baptism” and “water baptism.” This suggests that spirit baptism really is
potent in its internal effects, while water baptism is merely external and
non-consequential.
The genesis of this
false dichotomy begins with the Protestant error of supposing the Holy Spirit
does His real converting (regenerative) work not only prior to water-baptism,
but even prior to faith! The convert, in
this thinking, comes to faith only after (and because) the Spirit creates such
faith and this activity is salvific. So
the convert is thought to be already saved before getting dunked in water. But this whole conception is errant because
the Scriptures teach that the Holy Spirit indwells a convert after that
believer is water-baptized into Christ.
There is no personal experience called “spirit baptism” to be found that
is in addition to water-baptism (in which sins are forgiven and the Holy Spirit
is received as per Acts 2:38). The only proper application of the term “baptism
in the Holy Spirit” is the event of Pentecost, and this is not a personal
experience—it is a major not-to-be-repeated event in God’s unfolding work in
His Kingdom. Yes, individuals had
personal experiences (such as tongue-speaking) that attended this event as "signs" and
so thus created awareness that it was taking place, but even tongue-speaking was never intended
as a normative part of conversion that would become a model for all Christian
believers to follow! When the apostles
preached evangelistically after the Pentecost event, they presented
water-baptism as the culminating event of salvation that both forgave sins in
sanctification and imparted the Holy Spirit as an indwelling Presence. There is no additional “spirit baptism”. So when Peter indicates that the saving power
is not caused by water on skin, he is not urging us away from water-baptism.
When Sam Houston was
baptized in 1854, a friend remarked, “Well, General, I hear your sins were
washed away." "I hope
so," Houston is said to have replied. "But if they were all washed
away, the Lord help the fish down below."
That was obviously a joke that turns on the notion that the water of
baptism somehow cleanses certain toxins off of the skin, and Houston expressed
concerns that the toxins from his sins would be so potent as to present an ecological
danger to fish swimming in the baptismal waters. That is exactly what Peter says does not
happen in baptism. I am reminded here of
the occasion on which a Protestant friend disparaged my baptismal beliefs by
lampooning the hymn, “There is Power in the Blood” by ridiculing, “There is
power in the water, power in the water!”
That inexcusable critique and Sam Houston’s excusable humor both turn
precisely on what Peter denies as the saving power of baptism. The power is in the Blood and it saves in
water-baptism.
Peter then explains
that the saving power of baptism derives not from its external workings, but
from those internal—and this brings us to the realm of conscience. The conscience is where feelings
of guilt register when you know you have done something wrong and when you know
that others know. The conscience first
makes us feel ashamed, and then as we contemplate facing consequences for what
terrible things we have done, then the conscience makes us afraid. Shame and fear are a terrible burden to carry
on the inside. No feeling is more
disturbing and uncomfortable than a guilty conscience. And no feeling is more refreshing that when a
dirty and guilty conscience is unburdened, so that the conscience is again free
and pure and relieved.
But the greatest
difficulty to understanding 3:21 is the presence of a word so difficult to
translate that it yields a bewildering variety of options. It is the word that points to precisely what
it is regarding conscience that “now saves you.” The reason for the difficulty is that this
word is extremely rare and is found only here in the entire NT. Moreover, we find but few usages even outside
of the NT. It is the noun form that
pertains to a verb whose meaning is simple enough: to ask
or to request. And the noun likewise
seems to denote either a question or a request.
The matter is complicated a little by a usage apparently found in some
papyri which use this noun as a technical term in legal application. It here indicates a formal request that has
legal consequence. For example, one
business partner may query another about their acceptance and agreement to certain
obligations. And, in this technical
usage, the same word may come also to include the formal response or answer offered
to the essential query. Thus, the word
may denote the query, the response given to it, or both. Take this to translations of the Bible and
you will find two primary options:
·
Baptism is regarded as an appeal/request made by the convert for
a good or clean or untroubled conscience from God.
·
Baptism is regarded as a pledge/answer made to God from a good
conscience.
So this word is rare
(at least as a noun) and we cannot settle the matter simply by consulting a
dictionary or lexicon. In these
reference books for word meanings we merely find a record of meanings
historically associated with a word.
These definitions may or may not be applicable to a particular usage
that we are trying to understand. Our example,
after all, may evidence a totally new meaning that is assigned to the
word. Fortunately considerations beyond
the dictionary may be consulted to help us identify the truest translation.
First, while there is
a technical application of the word in legal settings that would include both a
question and its answer, there is no indication that this technical sense
applies outside of the legal realm. The
obvious weight of meaning for both the verb and the noun leans toward question
or request. And even the legal use of
the term always begins with the query.
It is not certain that the extra technical meaning that includes the
answer ever applies outside of that technical use of the word.
Second, notice the
dynamics created by each translational and interpretive option. The one suggests that the conscience is ill
at ease in the approach to baptism; the other suggests a composed and ordered
conscience at this approach. Although
Reformed Theology suggests that salvation takes place before baptism and thus
the convert may approach getting-wet-all-over with a settled conscience that already
luxuriates in the comfort of forgiving grace, nothing like this is found in the
NT (unless 3:21 proves to be the sole exception).
What we find
regarding these dynamics in other passages is that those coming for baptism
have consciences weighted down with sin-guilt and full of fear for the wrath to
come. They thus come to baptism hoping
to find forgiveness and relief of conscience.
Thus on the day of Pentecost, Peter (the author of 3:21!) lays guilt for
the crucifixion of Jesus on the consciences of his Jewish audience and they are
“cut to the heart” and query, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:36-38). Before this in the Gospels, John proclaim a “baptism
of repentance for the remission of sin.”
Although Protestants bob and weave before the plain meaning of this, the
clear implication is that the preaching of John, that highlighted moral
failures and warned of the wrath of judgment that was sure to follow, this
preaching troubled the conscience of his hearers and offered relief in baptism
for the conscience. The same applies
when Paul is commanded (yes, this is imperative!): “Get up
and be baptized, and wash away your sins by calling on His name” (Acts
22:16).
In every case, the
troubled conscience is the precipitating experience that calls for baptism as
the solution offered by God in Christ Jesus.
This salvation pulls each individual convert from the expansive
rebellion that takes in not only humanity but the disobedient angels beings who
instigated and empowered the rebellion.
An ark lifted Noah from the destruction that follows this rebellion;
baptism now saves us (be sure to read 3:22 as confirmation of all of this).
Conclusion: 1 Peter
is surely not a baptismal liturgy, although it probably exhibits expressions
and elements of Christian theology that were commonplace at ancient
baptisms. Nor is it a baptismal sermon,
although Peter no doubt included in his preaching much of what he put into
epistolary form with the help of Silvanus.
That said, it is abundantly evidenced that baptismal theology is deeply
expressed in this epistle.
It is tragedy that we
live downstream of historical events in the Protestant Reformation that
militate against baptism as it is presented in the NT Scriptures. The command to get-wet-all-over has been
retained by Evangelical Protestants, but only after the essential meaning of
the act has been changed to the point of being thoroughly replaced. Clearly if God with strongest imperative
commands converts coming to Christ Jesus to get-wet-all-over, the significance
of that must be found not so much in the getting-wet as in the meanings that
follow by association. So, for example,
when Protestants urge getting-wet-all-over as a means of publically displaying
faith, isn’t that silly on the face of it?
It would seem that to strip baptism of its Biblical significance and to
still call it “baptism”—just because it is still getting-wet-all-over—renders 1 Peter 3:21 robbed of its meaning. What Protestants do with their water is not
baptism at all. The dynamics created by
a theology that soothes a sin-stained conscience before water-baptism renders
that event meaningless, and Protestant attempts to supply some other rationale
for why one should get-wet-all-over are nothing but silly in their futility. Baptism now saves you.
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