WRIGHT Out, In, Out: Jesus' Blessing 193
Third, he took the opportunity to explain what entry into the Kingdom
meant and its preconditions, and finally he blessed them.^18
We will return briefly at the end to the implications of this departure from
a tradition going back to the Reformation. The Reformers were quite capa-
ble of starting traditions, in this case partly by an ignorance of the earlier
development of orders for baptizing infants—an ignorance for which they
were not in the least culpable. Furthermore, the development in question
cannot be regarded as the most felicitous in the history of infant baptism.
Focusing, then, on the baptismal fortunes of this Gospel pericope in rela-
tion to the Church's service of paedobaptism casts some light on the con-
torted evolution of paedobaptism itself.
Despite the arguments of Cullmann, Jeremias and others, there is very
little evidence that the early Church associated the blessing of little chil-
dren by Jesus with baptism.^19 This is not merely a matter of a lack of
evidence for the reading of one of the three accounts when babies were
baptized. Nearly everything we know of baptismal liturgy in the age of the
Fathers shows us believer's baptism, so that it would be anachronistic to
draw conclusions from the silence enveloping the use or non-use of Mk
10.13-16 in baptism of infants. Such information as can be gleaned about
the changes made to accommodate young children as the recipients of
baptism suggests that they were minimal. When evidence begins to become
available for the inclusion of infants in the baptismal rite, first unam-
biguously in the Hippolytan Apostolic Tradition in Rome early in the third
century, the only observable change is that the little ones 'who cannot
speak for themselves' are baptized first, with parents or other relatives
speaking for them.^20 The earliest attestation of how such youngsters were
spoken for emerges around the late fourth and early fifth centuries: the
parent or other sponsor is asked by the minister about the child 'Does
he/she believe?'—precisely so in the third person.^21
- Jasper and Bradshaw, A Companion, p. 346, citing Baptism, Thanksgiving and
Blessing, an Anglican Doctrine Commission report of 1971. - Shown in summary fashion by C.E. Pocknee, 'The Gospel Lection in the Rite
of Infant Baptism', Theology 62 (1959), pp. 496-99 (496-97). - Geoffrey J. Cuming, Hippolytus: A Text for Students (GLS, 8; Bramcote:
Grove, 1976), p. 18. - The witnesses are homilies of Asterius (now redated to c. 400 CE); see
W. Kinzig, In Search of Asterius (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990) and
Augustine; J.-C. Didier, 'Une Adaptation de la liturgie baptismale au bapteme des
enfants dans l'eglise ancienne', Melanges de science religieuse 22 (1965), pp. 79-90.