In his study of Paul’s anthropology, Robin Scroggs noted the following, showing that the apostle Paul affirmed baptismal regeneration:
More central to Paul’s theology is the connection between Christ as the life-giving Spirit and the spiritual body bequeathed the believer. The Spirit is the power (δυναμις, ενεργεια) of God which brings the new life to man and the world. Paul usually affirms that Christ is the mediator of this power, indeed in a sense is this power, and thus brings to man his new existence. In I Cor. 15:45 he is the life-giving Spirit. According to II Cor. 3:18 the transformation of the believer into the image of God is accomplished by the ‘Lord who is the Spirit’. In Phil. 3:21 the change is effected by the power (here ενεργεια) which Christ exercises. Since the Spirit is closely associated with power, it may be that this verse is affirming the role of the Spirit as does II Cor. 3:18.
The relationship of baptism to the gift of the new life is readily apparent. Yet whether and to what extent baptism is connected to Paul’s Adamic Christology is a complex problem without a ready solution. Jervell has argued that the motif of Christ as εικων is embedded in baptismal conceptions. Paul’s understanding of baptism as a dying and rising with Christ is not, however, directly related to Christ as Last Adam. Certainly the proleptic resurrection of Christians in baptism unites them with the True Man, but the key notion of the death has rather to do with Paul’s belief in the atoning death of Jesus, perhaps as the righteous martyr. Since for Paul it is Christ as πνευμα who effects the gift of the new creation, one is tempted to see baptism as the gift of the πνευμα, as does the author of Acts. In this case, the rising with Jesus in baptism would be that event in which began the new existence giving by the life-giving Spirit. Linking baptism with the Spirit makes Paul’s thought very coherent. The difficulty is that Paul himself does not relate the two in any significant way. Two passages in 1 Cor., 6:11 and 12:13, do join baptism with the Spirit and may imply the gift of new life given by the Spirit. Yet they have the flavor of formulas or creeds, which Paul does no more than to repeat. The crucial passage, Rom. 6:1-11, not only does not mention the Spirit, but also it is hard to find any word or phrase in it which could be taken as an allusion to the Spirit. Certainly baptism is that event in which the believer, by participating in the resurrection of Christ, enters the new creation. Paul, however, does not explicitly go any further, and the simplest solution may be correct, that he does not relate the motif of Last Adam with that of dying and rising with Christ. (Robin Scroggs, The Last Adam: A Study in Pauline Anthropology [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966], 107-8; emphasis added)
For more, including a refutation of the common claim that 1 Cor 1:17 disproves baptismal regeneration, see, for instance:
