Theme: The Church as God's ark

Exegetical note
After encouraging his readers - probably newly baptized Christians or candidates for baptism - to be ready to suffer in good conscience for their faith with the crucified Christ as their model, Peter (or pseudo-Peter) suggests in verses 20ff. that, as Noah and his family were saved by (rather than from!) the water of the legendary flood, so Christians are saved by the water of baptism. However dubious the logic of his portrayal of that anticie scenario, the idea of the Church as an ark of salvation that floa…