A History of Christian Doctrine #3 - Online Christian Library

Liberalism and Neo-Orthodoxy
Barth attributed great significance to water baptism.
He said that it relates us to “the one divine act of salvation
and revelation.” Believers are baptized into the following
expectations: 201
(1) The coming to pass of the kingdom and rule of
God in their lives, (2) their baptism and endowment
with the Holy Spirit, (3) the execution of God’s judgment
on them too, (4) the receiving of remission of
sins, (5) their membership of the new people of God
of the last time, and (6) their existence in the unity of
Jews and Gentiles in common judgment and blessing.
Despite his Reformed heritage, Barth opposed the
baptism of infants since they could not have the personal
encounter with God that baptism represents.
He identified the inward work of salvation as the baptism
of the Holy Spirit. It is related to, but distinct from,
water baptism.
Based on passages in Acts and the Epistles, Barth
taught that baptism is an identification with the saving
work of Jesus. He was not willing to say that any specific
baptismal formula was uniform in the early church. He
acknowledged that, theologically, a simple baptismal formula
that invoked the name of Jesus would be the most
appropriate, but since the trinitarian formula is used
everywhere we should not abandon it, even though we
cannot otherwise justify its necessity: 202
The name “Jesus” as the basis and goal of the
apostolic message and apostolic baptism shows that
the divine act had taken place and the Mightier [than
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