"All the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the sky were opened... after Noah and his family of seven had entered the ark. It rained for forty days and forty nights, the waters rose above the mountains, and the ark floated on the surface of the water... All flesh that moved on the earth perished... and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark" (Gen. 7:11,18,21,23).

"...the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. And corresponding to that, baptism now saves you - not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience - through the resurrection of Jesus Christ . . . " (I Peter 3:21)

What was the baptism that was saving the first-century saints? We have two basic choices: It was either a ritual baptism or a spiritual (or non-ritual) baptism.

If we say that the New-Testament saving baptism to which the Noahic experience corresponded was a ritual baptism, one of many problems immediately presents itself: It is Biblically incongruous that an old-testament event prefigured a ritual. It is on the other hand an established hermeneutical principle that old-testament rituals prefigured New-Testament events / experiences / realities. And since old-testament rituals (such as sacrifices) symbolized New-Testament non-rituals (such as the death of Christ/the believer’s sacrifice of praise), it seems even more likely that the non-ritual Noahic salvation foreshadowed a New-Testament non-ritual baptism.

But ignoring this obstacle for now, let us examine how I Peter 3:21 might be understood to teach that the salvation of Noah and his family in the ark could have somehow typified a ritual-baptism:

Perhaps Peter might have been speaking of one of the ritual baptisms mentioned in Heb. 9:10,13,19-22 ("various washings" in 9:10 is literally "various baptisms"). The problem with this proposal is that those baptisms were only to be "imposed until a time of reformation" (Heb. 9:10), that is, until the consummation of the old covenant. It is hardly believable that ritual-baptisms which could not perfect one's conscience (Heb. 9:9), and which were destined to be done away in the disappearance of the old covenant (Heb. 8:13; 9:10) were "saving" the Christians in the apostolic era.

But perhaps Peter was talking about the ritual-baptism which was being administered to converts to Christianity. If we are going to say this, we must presuppose that Christian ritual-baptism was not included in the "various baptisms" of Heb. 9:10 that were only to be imposed until A.D. 70. If Christian ritual-baptism came out of the old covenant, and was thus to be no longer "imposed" after A.D. 70, then it would be axiomatic that Christian ritual-baptism was not the saving baptism of I Peter 3:21. (We will save a discussion on the cessation or continuation of Christian ritual-baptism for another place.)

There is another problem though with the idea of the saving baptism in I Peter 3:21 being a ritual, and that is the tense of the verb "saves." The verb is present tense, active voice, and the phrase literally reads, "baptism is now saving you." The meaning seems to be that just as Noah and his family were in process of being saved by a baptism in the ark, so were the first-century believers in process of being saved by baptism. This should further lead us to consider the saving baptism as being spiritual.

Thus far, general hermeneutical principles of typology, the weakness and temporary nature of the old-covenant rituals and the tense of the verb "saves" ("saving") direct us toward the idea that the baptism of I Peter 3:21 might be a non-ritual, spiritual baptism. But what kind of a non-ritual baptism could have been in process of saving the first-century Christians?