WRIGHT Out, In, Out: Jesus' Blessing 199
kinds of infant dedication attested in the fourth century and beyond, when
infant baptism is very rarely in evidence.^37 Basil's monastic texts illustrate
for the first time a more literal reading of the Synoptic incident, but in
terms of monastic initiation, not baptism. The treatise on baptism gener-
ally accepted as Basil's work three times cites Mk 10.15 ('...receive the
kingdom of God as a little child...') but always in terms addressed to
readers of responsible years. The treatise ends as follows:It is necessary and salutary to believe [the Lord] as infants believe their
parents and children their teachers, according to the word of our Lord Jesus
Christ himself, 'Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little
child shall never enter it'.^38Basil mentions infant baptism in none of his writings. Despite the sub-
ject of this treatise, it is impossible to interpret his citations of Mk 10.15 as
implying any suggestion of a paedobaptist interpretation. The first occur-
rence is preceded by Mt. 18.3 ('...are converted and become like little
children...') and that in turn by Mt. 5.20, on the righteousness which
exceeds that of scribes and Pharisees.^39 We should not be surprised. Infant
baptism seems absent from Basil's consciousness.
Epiphanius of Salamis twice quotes our Synoptic passage in contexts
that add nothing fresh to this enquiry. He takes 'children' in a literal sense,
but at the same time they are a model for other ages.^40 Gregory of Nyssa
cites Mt. 19.14 in his funeral oration on the six-year-old Pulcheria to
reassure her father, Theodosius the Great, that she has departed for the
presence of the Lord. The Gospel passage was read as the lection for the- D.F. Wright, 'Infant Dedication in the Early Church', in S.E. Porter and A.R.
Cross (eds.), Baptism, the New Testament and the Church: Historical and Contem-
porary Studies in Honour of R.E.O. White (JSNTSup, 171; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1999), pp. 352-78. - Basil, Baptism 2.4.2 (ed. Jeanne Ducatillon; SC, 357; Paris: Cerf, 1989), pp,
226-27. This passage appears to be echoed in the only unattributed (i.e. non-Jerome)
section of Bede's exposition of the pericope in Mark and Luke. See n. 32 above.
Bede's text likens a child's obedience to the gospel to a pupil's unquestioning
acceptance of what his teachers present. - Basil, Baptism 122 (Ducatillon, pp. 110-111); cf. 1.2.19 (pp. 166-67). In his
homily on Ps. 114.6 LXX [116.6], Basil briefly gives a standard rendering of receiving
the kingdom as a child, in terms of humility: PG, xxix, cols. 489-92. - Epiphanius, Panarion 64.67.3, 67.5.1-4, in Frank Williams (trans.), The
Panarion... Books II and III (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, 36; Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1994), pp. 196, 312-13.