NOTE: This article was originally written as a paper submitted to Dr. Fesko while I was a student at Westminster Seminary California.
May 5, 2013. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a cold Sunday morning and the congregation of Wornall Road Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri had gathered outside on the front lawn. The church met at a busy intersection in Kansas City and our lead pastor, in the warmer months, loved to do Baptisms outside in a mobile baptistery rather than inside the church. “After all,” he would say, “If baptism is a proclamation of faith, why not proclaim it to the whole community!” On this particular day I was up to bat, or to be dunked rather. It would be my second baptism by immersion upon confession of faith. The first one occurred when I was seven but now that I was twenty-four I was confident that I had not truly professed faith at the age of seven, thus the baptism must not have been valid. I stepped down into the cold pool and felt the hand of Pastor John Mark on my shoulder. Within seconds I heard the oft-repeated line, “Buried with Christ in baptism, and raised again to newness of life.” Now to be fair, considering the fact that I was underwater for part of the line, I probably only heard “Bu- … -ewness of life.”
The interesting thing for me as I look back at my baptism(s) is that I never really understood baptism. To some degree it always seemed subjective in my Baptist upbringing, with the only consistent parts being that baptism was a proclamation of faith done by immersion in water. Now this first part, the proclamation aspect of baptism, so desperately misses the heart of what I now believe to be the center of baptism, namely that it is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace upon the recipient. But for many Baptists this notion cannot be dropped, and thus to try and argue for infant baptism or for any other purpose for baptism is hardly up for consideration. It’s like the argument stops at the door because it’s based on a different foundation, and thus must be wrong. Such an argument can be found in Duane Garrett’s critique of Meredith G. Kline’s By Oath Consigned, in his chapter titled “Meredith Kline on Suzerainty, Circumcision, and Baptism” from Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ. Now to be fair, Garrett writes as if it is not infant baptism that is errant, although he certainly thinks that is the case, but rather that Kline’s argument for infant baptism from a “suzerain-vassal” backdrop is completely unwarranted. Now the purpose of this paper is not to go head to head with Garrett on every point in his chapter from Believers Baptism. After all, there are places where I believe his critique is warranted. But perhaps Garrett’s weakest point is his exegesis of 1 Peter 3:20-21 and 1 Corinthians 10:1-6. He argues that the former passage is Kline’s primary text and then seeks to disprove any connection that it might have to Kline’s overall argument.[1] In doing so however, his proposed counter interpretation of the text comes up wanting. The purpose of this paper is to prove, contra Garrett, that 1 Peter 3:20-21 and 1 Corinthians 10:1-6 most naturally present the case that baptism is a sign and seal of either promised hope or judgment upon the recipient.
I. Garrett’s Critique
Part I – 1 Peter 3:20-21
Garrett argues from the beginning that “the flood was not a ‘water ordeal’ for Noah.”[2] Instead, he says, it was clearly an act of judgment upon the world. Garrett goes on to make the case that, according to Peter, baptism is also not a water ordeal. Rather, he argues that baptism relates to the ark as a means of salvation from the judgment as they pass through the waters.[3] As he puts it, “Christian’s too are saved from the wrath of God as they pass through the waters (but with no hint that the water is a test of their righteousness).” He then goes on to argue that Peter sees baptism as a cleansing from sin, not a water ordeal.
In his interpretation of 1 Peter 3:21, he continues along the same lines of thought. Garrett bucks against the two most common interpretations of v. 21. He states that Kline believes that at baptism the recipient is promising that he will, from that point on, keep his conscious clean (Interpretation #1), while others commonly hold that v. 21 is implying that the recipient of baptism is appealing to God for a clean conscience (Interpretation #2). Garrett, in staying true with his credobaptist belief that baptism is a declaration of the faith of the recipient, argues that v. 21 should be interpreted as stating that baptism is “an earnest and sincere pledge/request[4] to God.” Ultimately, Garrett concludes that this is “a statement that the believer comes to baptism in good faith, that is, without conscious awareness of hypocrisy.” He is able to reach the conclusion that συνειδήσεως ἀγαθῆς, often translated ‘good conscience’, is probably better understood as “earnest and sincere” or “in good faith,” in large part because of its location at the beginning of this line. Garrett finishes his section on his exegesis of 1 Peter 3:20-21 by stating that ultimately, no matter how you interpret the passage, it still does little to prove that baptism is a “suzerain-vassal covenant wherin the candidate calls down on his head all the curses of Deuteronomy 28.”[5]
Part II – 1 Corinthians 10:1-6
Thus Garrett moves from 1 Peter 3:20-21 to more broadly seeking to disprove the continuity between the Old and New Covenant as Kline sees it. Naturally, Garrett goes first to Kline’s use of 1 Cor 10:1-6 where Paul writes that the Israelites were baptized into Moses via their passing through the sea. He argues that the sea, like the flood, was not a judicial ordeal, but simply an analogy to Christian baptism used by Paul to warn the Corinthian church about becoming complacent in their standing before God. Again, Garrett connects baptism, not to the water of the sea, but to the crossing on dry land (much like he did with the Noah’s ark when addressing 1 Pet 3:20-21). In making that connection he argues that both the crossing and baptism are not judicial ordeals, but rather a means of salvation. Furthermore, he says, the phrase “all were baptized into Moses” from 1 Cor 10:2 identifies the Israelites as being baptized into his leadership. This, Garrett concludes, was probably meant by Paul to contrast the Old Covenant of Sinai with the New Covenant in Christ. Garrett uses this point to move forward into his argument that Kline misses this discontinuity between the Old Covenant and the New. Instead, Garrett writes, Kline sees the New Covenant as merely a “re-issue of the old with some modification due to a change of circumstances.”[6] Garrett’s argument continues on in the chapter, but it is his dealings with 1 Peter 3:20-21 and 1 Corinthians 10:1-6 that are of primary concern for this paper. Thus it would be beneficial to conclude the summary of Garrett’s thoughts with this final statement – From Garrett’s perspective, the New Covenant is one of grace, and yet, he argues, Kline seems to want to emphasize the law in the New Covenant over and against the grace.
II. An Alternative Interpretation of the Text
To provide an alternative interpretation of 1 Peter 3:20-21 and 1 Corinthians 10:1-6 I will try to address the “issues” that Garrett sees with Kline’s covenantal interpretation of the texts through the exegesis of each one. The goal is to present the case that Kline’s view in fact does stand up to the arguments that Garrett puts forward. This will be done, not merely by referencing Kline, but also by examining each passage of scripture and engaging with a handful of other theologians to better understand how one ought to interpret each passage.
Part I Revisited – 1 Peter 3:20-21
Garrett has argued that this passage must be understood as saying two things: 1) Baptism is only like the account of Noah’s ark in that by the ark, Noah and his family were saved, and baptism too represents a salvation from sin. And 2) that Peter is really saying that believers ought to come to baptism in good faith. This is over and against Kline’s interpretation which states that it is the waters of the flood that Peter is connecting to the waters of baptism, not the ark. Here Kline argues that the adjective ἀντίτυπον is best connected with βάπτισμα.[7] To understand it as such would be to render the verse something like this, “and now the antitype – namely baptism, now saves you.” What’s interesting here is the clear connection between ἀντίτυπον and βάπτισμα, both being neuter nominative singular, and their relationship to Peter’s preceding statement in v. 20. There the ESV is rendered, “in which a few, that is, eight persons, were being brought safely through water.”[8] Perhaps the KJV provides a better translation in which it states that the eight “were saved by water.” Here in the Greek, δι’ is best understood as a marker of instrumentality (“by”) and not as the ESV renders it, which is as a marker of extension through an object (“through”). Such a conclusion can be drawn from the nearly one-to-one comparison that Peter makes between the waters of the flood and the waters of baptism. This parallel can be seen both in his use of the word ἀντίτυπον[9] to connect the flood to baptism, and his use of the words διεσώθησαν (rescues/saves) and σῴζει (saves), the former being etymologically rooted in the latter.
While Garrett wants to argue that the waters of the flood are merely for the destruction of the ungodly, Kline rightly sees more than this. He writes:
It may be natural to think of the flood waters as merely destructive, as something from which to be saved. But those waters may in precisely the same and obvious sense be the means of condemnation-destruction or of justification-salvation if they are seen to be the waters of a judicial ordeal with its potential of dual divine verdicts.[10]
Simply put, the flood waters saved Noah and his family from judgment, just as the waters of baptism save us from the judgment of God. Peter goes on to state that this is not to say that baptism, in and of itself saves, just as it was not the water of the flood, in and of itself, that saved Noah and his family, but baptism saves because it is connected to the grace of God in the resurrection of Christ. Garrett will interpret this as essentially, our profession of faith to God in baptism, that we come before God honestly and truthfully committed to him. This is not Peters intention however – since Peter is clearly arguing that Baptism in some way saves, it wouldn’t make sense to then switch the subject of the thought from baptism to us.
Peter goes on to state that baptism is the ἐπερώτημα (appeal) to God of a clean conscience. How? By the resurrection of Jesus Christ of course! In Baptism we are either put forth with a clean conscience (found only by faith in Christ) or we are committed to judgment apart from Christ. Edmund Clowney, building upon the work of Kline, shows how this judgment in baptism ultimately communicates grace to the baptized Christian. He writes:
In that pledge Christians agree with God’s judgment on sin, and on their own sinful past. They acknowledge that to turn from their commitment would be to bring upon themselves God’s just judgment. Yet Peter’s words stress the wonder of the sacrament even more than its solemnity. As Noah was delivered by the grace of God, although only in symbol, so have they been delivered in fact. Christ has saved them, for he died for their sins and gave them life through his resurrection.[11]
In a very real sense, the patience of God is seen not just in the time it took to build the ark, but also in the hundreds of years leading up to Christ. For Noah, apart from the ark, there was no deliverance from the flood to be found. Apart from Christ, there is likewise no deliverance to be found in baptism, only judgment. As Kline so aptly puts it, “In Christ, the ark, there is safe passage; the prevailing waters are themselves overcome in resurrection, swallowed up in victory.”[12]
Part II Revisited – 1 Corinthians 10:1-6
Here, Garrett again emphasizes two main points that he argues disprove Kline’s interpretation. They are: 1) That the waters of baptism coincide with the deliverance on dry ground and not to the waters of the sea. He is arguing here both against continuity between the Old and New Covenant, and against Kline’s argument that any mode of baptism is fitting as is seen in this passage. And, 2) that Paul’s entire purpose for this passage is not to emphasize the continuity between the Old and New Covenants, but rather to stress their discontinuity.[13] Here, it would do good to start by recognizing that Garrett misses the connection that Paul is making, not just between the sea and baptism, but also between eating and drinking and the Lord’s Supper. Paul here is showing the connection between the New Covenant sacraments and the religious events that the Israelites were participating in. So there is from the very beginning a fairly clear connection between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church in the mind of Paul.
Secondly, Paul doesn’t just argue that the Israelites were baptized in the sea, which is how Garrett seems to take it, but he also states that they were baptized in the cloud. If one were to state that Israel’s baptism was merely in their walking across the sea on dry ground, then one would also have to wrestle with Paul’s writing of baptism into Moses in the cloud, which Garrett never addresses. In this imagery however Paul is drawing up a parallel between Israel in the Exodus event and the church today. It is a part of a larger passage in which he is calling the church in Corinth to finish this life strong and to persevere in the faith. So Paul naturally points back to Israel at the time of Moses. According to Kline:
The apostle recalls that the Mosaic generation of Israel participated in events that corresponded in religious significance to the church’s sacramental ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Yet, in spite of experiencing the sacramental privileges of the Mosaic covenant, most of that generation fell beneath its curses because of defection from their sworn allegiance to Yahweh. Therein was a message for the church which Paul proceeded to apply.[14]
The Baptism into Moses, when understood this way, is much easier to make sense of. Where Garrett argues that the phrase “all were baptized into Moses” is meant to simply mean the Israelites were in submission to the Old Covenant law, Kline argues contrary to this that the phrase “baptized into Moses” is not meant to have a sort of general interpretation, much like Garrett’s, but rather it is meant to be taken in its technical religious sense as would be understood by Paul and the Corinthian church. Part of the proof that Kline uses to present his case is that the phrase “baptized into Moses” is a rephrasing of the, by then common technically used phrase, “baptized into Jesus Christ.” Fesko writes, “In the same way that believers are baptized into Christ as their Deliverer, so Israel was baptized into Moses as their deliverer.”[15] Thus Paul is using this terminology to connect Israel’s baptism into Moses in the sea and in the cloud, to the churches present baptism in water and Spirit. Contrary to Garrett’s thoughts that Paul’s passage is meant to usurp any idea that there is continuity between Israel and the church, Paul is actually arguing the case that there is so much in common to be found between Israel and the church.
Paul starts with the commonality of their baptisms, both into a federal head (Moses and Christ) in water and spirit. Not only that but in Israel’s baptism into Moses they were able to partake of the covenant blessings of the church – “And all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” Before moving on to vv. 5 and 6, the judicial nature of baptism as an ordeal should be considered in the Red Sea crossing. In the Sea, Israel is delivered through the baptism by faith, but Egypt was found wanting and succumbed to the judgment of death. For those whose faith was in the covenant God, deliverance was to be had in baptism. But for those who did not have faith (and Egypt clearly showed a lack of faith towards Yahweh in the midst of the plagues), judgment was to be had in baptism.[16] Paul uses a shadow of New Testament baptism to show that in the sea the Israelites were promised both a future salvation received by faith (the promised land) and a future judgment (death) received by lack of faith.
Continuing on now to v. 5 - the reason behind Paul’s referencing the baptism of Israel in the Red Sea becomes evident. He is doing so to remind the church in his day of their need to persevere by faith in Christ. He writes, “Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.” The Israelites who had received baptism, and who had received the blessings of belonging to the covenant community (feasting on Christ), were now receiving the judgment, promised upon their own lack of faith, which was symbolized in their baptism. If Israel was as much a part of the visible Covenant of Grace during the days of Moses as the church is in Paul’s day, then the continuity in Paul’s argument would make perfect sense to the Corinthian church in his day. And Paul is sure of this when he writes in v. 6, “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” Paul’s argument is built upon the underlying premise that baptism offers both blessing and judgment. Much of Israel received judgment, but Paul’s hope for the Corinthian church is that they would cling to Christ by faith – that they would receive in Christ the blessings symbolized in their baptism. After all, it is upon Christ, the blameless one, that the judgment of the wrath of God was poured out so that those who would believe in him could go through the waters of baptism and receive the promise of blessing symbolized within.
Conclusion
I’m sympathetic to Garrett’s desire to keep baptism as a profession of faith in Christ. After all, both my baptisms were understood at the time to be exactly that. But the baptism of scripture is so much more than a profession of faith. Rather, it is an appeal to Christ for the salvation communicated through the sacrament. The key thing to remember in all of this is that baptism is at its core the gospel. It is the sign and seal of salvation received by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. Baptism, understood as a judgment ordeal, proclaims this message clearest. After all, we are sinners saved by grace. Apart from Christ, judgment is our certain doom. Death awaits us in baptism, but for those in Christ, the death of baptism is not one of judgment. It’s one of salvation. Calvin writes in his commentary of 1 Peter 3:21, “so at this day, the death which is set forth in baptism, is to us an entrance into life.”[17]
Bibliography
Calvin, John. Commentary On the Catholic Epistles: Commentaries On the First Epistle
of Peter. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1999. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/comment3/comm_vol45/htm/iv.iv.viii.htm (accessed October 18, 2016).
Clowney, Edmund P. The Message of 1 Peter: The Way of the Cross. The Bible Speaks
Today. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1988.
Fesko, J V. Word, Water, and Spirit: A Reformed Perspective On Baptism. Grand
Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Book, 2013.
Garrett, Duane, ed. “Meredith Kline on Suzerainty, Circumcision, and Baptism.” In Nac
Studies in Bible and Theology, edited by Thomas R. Schreiner, Shawn D. Wright, and E Ray Clendenen. Vol. 2, Believer's Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ, 272. Nashville, TN: B & H Academic, 2006.
Hyde, Daniel R. Jesus Loves the Little Children: Why We Baptize Children. Grandville,
MI.: Reformed Fellowship, ©2006.
Kline, Meredith G. By Oath Consigned: A Reinterpretation of the Covenant Signs of
Circumcision and Baptism. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1968.
Kline, Meredith G. Genesis: A New Commentary. Peabody, Massachusetts:
Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, 2016.
Watson, Duane Frederick, and Terrance Callan. First and Second Peter. Paideia:
Commentaries On the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012.
[1] Duane Garrett, ed., “Meredith Kline on Suzerainty, Circumcision, and Baptism,” in Nac Studies in Bible and Theology, ed. Thomas R. Schreiner, Shawn D. Wright, and E Ray Clendenen, vol. 2, Believer's Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ(Nashville, TN: B & H Academic, 2006), 272.
[2] Garrett, 275.
[3] For a similar view see Balthasar Hübmaier, On the Christian Baptism of Believers, in Balthasar Hübmaier, eds. And trans H. Wayne Pipkin and John H. Yoder (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1989), 134. Here Hübmaier writes, “From this passage you can obviously see that Noah’s ark is a figure or shadow of baptism.” As found in J V. Fesko, Word, Water, and Spirit: A Reformed Perspective On Baptism (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Book, 2013), 74.
[4] The pledge/request comes from his prior statement that ἐπερώτημα in v. 21 could be translated either way. He writes, “The matter of whether the Greek word in question, ἐπερώτημα, means ‘pledge’ or ‘request’ is complex, with evidence cited for both sides.” He will go on in a later part of the chapter to deal a little more with the meaning of ἐπερώτημα.
[5] Garrett, 277.
[6] Garrett, 278. The change in circumstances Garret lists are that the “Messiah has come, the Jews have been condemned and rejected in the ‘covenant lawsuit,’ and the gospel has gone to the Gentiles.”
[7] Meredith Kline, By Oath Consigned: A Reinterpretation of the Covenant Signs of Circumcision and Baptism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1968), 65.
[8] Unless otherwise noted, all passages of scripture will be quoted from the ESV.
[9] The significance of the meaning of the use of ἀντίτυπον here is left undealt with by Garrett. It’s other use in scripture, Hebrews 9:24, seems to imply that it was used by the apostles, not to merely marked a correspondence between two things, but to show how OT types pointed forward to NT realities – Thus here the flood as Peter interprets it is pointing forward to Christ. While Paul doesn’t use the word ἀντίτυπον in 1 Cor 10:1-6, he applies the same sort of logic. For more on this see Duane Frederick Watson and Terrance Callan, First and Second Peter, Paideia: Commentaries On the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 92.
[10] Kline, By Oath Consigned, 66. For a more concise argument in line with that of Kline’s in By Oath Consigned, See Daniel R. Hyde, Jesus Loves the Little Children: Why We Baptize Children (Grandville, MI.: Reformed Fellowship, 2006), 23-24.
[11] Edmund P. Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter: The Way of the Cross, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 58.
[12] Meredith G. Kline, Genesis: A New Commentary (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, 2016), 38.
[13] Garrett, 278.
[14] Kline, By Oath Consigned, 67-68.
[15] Fesko, 206. Fesko offers helpful clarification here which might save the reader from adopting any errant views. He writes, “This is not to say, of course, that Israel had a mystical union with Moses as believers now have with Christ. There are differences between the type and the antitype, the shadow and the reality. Some details require elaboration so that the connections between the typical event and the antitypical reality are understood.”
[16] Fesko, 243.
[17] John Calvin, Commentary On the Catholic Epistles: Commentaries On the First Epistle of Peter (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1999), 1, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/comment3/comm_vol45/htm/iv.iv.viii.htm (accessed October 18, 2016).
