Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

WRIGHT Out, In, Out: Jesus' Blessing 201

Infants even to the present time are brought near and blessed by Christ by

means of consecrated hands: and the pattern of the act continues even until

this day, and descends unto us from the custom of Christ as its fountain.

Only the bringing near of infants takes not place now in an unbecoming or

disorderly manner, but with proper order, and sobriety and fear.^47

To what is Cyril referring? His translator is sure that it is the laying on of

hands that immediately followed baptism. Perhaps more likely is a pre-

baptismal catechumenal context, as attested in other sources. Again note-

worthy is the absence of mention of baptism.

Even Augustine himself, unrivalled champion of paedobaptism, appears

not to have utilized this passage to inculcate its necessity with any fre-

quency. The reason may lie in a paragraph in one of his earliest contribu-

tions to the debate emerging over the teachings of Pelagius and Caelestius.

At issue is why infants are baptized. For Augustine the answer was 'the

guilt of original sin', but 'some persons' were advancing Mt. 19.14, 'of

such ...', as though Jesus commended infancy as meritorious. Augustine

doubts that this is the correct meaning, preferring to see tender years as an

image of humility. He hastens on to ground infant baptism in a clearer

text, Mt. 9.13, 'I came not to call the righteous...' At any rate, Augustine

reckoned it a clearer dominical warrant.^48 His extant sermons rarely deal

with the Synoptic passage. In one that belongs to the time of the Pelagian

controversy, he exhorts parents and others to be diligent in bringing help-

less infants to Christ for salvation, with none forbidding. He must have

their baptism in mind.^49

There is no need for the purposes of this paper to pursue further into late

antiquity and the early Middle Ages the elusive paedobaptist claims on

Jesus' blessing of the children. We may simply note the confirmatory evi-

dence of two later collections. The Glossa Ordinaria, the standard biblical

commentary of the later Middle Ages, completed by about the mid-twelfth

century, on the three Gospel passages assembles no gloss that touches in

47. Translated from the Syriac, R. Payne Smith, A Commentary..., II (Oxford:
    Oxford University Press, 1859), pp. 561 -64. An extract preserved in Greek sums up the
    more typical figurative explanation: Joseph Reuss, Lukas-Kommentare aus der
    Griechischen Kirche (TU, 130; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1984), p. 186.


48. Augustine, The Merits and Remission of Sins, and Infant Baptism 1.19.24.


49. Augustine, Sermon 115.4, in Edmund Hill (trans.), The Works of Saint
    Augustine, III/4. Sermons 94A—147A (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1992), pp. 200-
    201;cf.202,nn. 12,14. Sermon 174.9 has a similar anti-Pelagian citation ofMkl0.14.
    Mt. 19.14 in Sermon 353.2 is used to commend humility to newly-baptized believers.