HistoricalChristian.Faith

Does “Suffer the little children to come unto me” (Mark 10:14 par.) support infant baptism?

Type: supporting argument (off-timeline) · Assessment: weak — the pericope genuinely shows that Jesus received, embraced, and blessed infants (Luke’s brephē) and declared the kingdom to belong “to such,” which does resist any view that shuts infants out of grace; but it says nothing of baptism, the earliest exegetes — paedobaptist and credobaptist alike — read “of such” (not “of these”) as childlike character rather than literal infancy, the one father who traces a continuing church practice from it (Cyril) traces infant blessing, not baptism, and the philological bridge to the font — the “kōlyō (hinder/forbid) formula” — is a suggestive but contested conjecture. On its best available case the passage does not reach the baptismal conclusion · adduced by the popular patristic catalogs; scholarly form: Oscar Cullmann and (cautiously) Joachim Jeremias

Related arguments: the New Testament warrant — see also baptism as circumcision · the household baptisms · children “holy”

The claim

In all three Synoptics, people bring infants and little children to Jesus; the disciples rebuke them; and Jesus overrules the disciples, welcomes the children, and says the kingdom belongs “to such”:

And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them… But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God… And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them. (Mark 10:13–16)

Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray… Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 19:13–15)

And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them… Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:15–17)

The paedobaptist catalogs adduce the scene for infant baptism on three grounds: Jesus welcomes and blesses infants (Luke specifies brephē, babes in arms); he says the kingdom belongs “to such,” so infants are not outside it; and his command “forbid them not” (Greek mē kōlyete) is the very verb that recurs in the New Testament’s baptismal scenes — “what doth hinder me to be baptized?” (Acts 8:36), “Can any man forbid water…?” (Acts 10:47). If a child belongs to the kingdom and must not be “hindered” from Christ, the inference runs, the sign of entry into the kingdom must not be withheld either.¹

Who advances it

The scene is a fixture of the popular paedobaptist proof-lists (Catholic Answers, churchfathers.org, and their Protestant counterparts). Its serious scholarly form is Oscar Cullmann’s: writing against Karl Barth’s rejection of infant baptism, Cullmann argued that the pericope had been shaped in transmission so that “a baptismal formula of the first century gleams through it” — the recurrent “kōlyō (hinder) formula” of Acts 8:36, 10:47, 11:17 being, on his reading, the standing question of the early baptismal liturgy (“is there anything to hinder your being baptized?”). Joachim Jeremias pressed the same “kōlyein formula” more cautiously, gathering its occurrences in later baptismal orders.² Among the fathers, the closest thing to this reading is Cyprian, whose council-letter on infant baptism turns throughout on the language of not hindering — “nobody is hindered from baptism and from grace… how much rather ought we to shrink from hindering an infant” — audibly echoing Christ’s “forbid them not.”³

The evidence for

Steelmanned, the argument is more than a sentiment about Jesus liking children. Three strands support it:

• Jesus receives infants, not just older children. Luke’s brephē are babes in arms — the same word used of the newborn Christ (Luke 2:12) and of John leaping in Elisabeth’s womb. So the objection that a subject of the rite must be old enough to respond meets a Lord who deliberately embraces, touches, and blesses the pre-verbal — and rebukes the disciples who would keep them back. Whatever else is true, infancy is no bar to Christ’s active blessing.
• “Of such is the kingdom.” The kingdom is said to belong to little children in some real sense; they are not merely tolerated but held up. On the covenantal reading (baptism as the covenant seal), if infants already belong to the kingdom, denying them its sign inverts the order — the sign should follow the belonging, as circumcision followed covenant membership from the eighth day.
• The kōlyō echo. The verb “forbid/hinder” (kōlyō) that Jesus uses is, demonstrably, the word the New Testament reaches for at the moment of baptism (Acts 8:36; 10:47; 11:17). That is not invented: the lexical overlap is real in the Greek, visible even in the KJV’s “forbid”/“hinder.” If the earliest churches heard Jesus’ “forbid them not” against the backdrop of a baptismal liturgy that asked what “hinders” a candidate, the pericope would carry a baptismal resonance from very early — and Cyprian’s letter shows a bishop doing exactly that by the mid-third century.

So the interpretation is coherent and has a genuine philological hook; it is why a scholar as serious as Cullmann could build a case on it.

Adversarial assessment

What holds. The narrow point is sound and should not be minimized: Jesus welcomes, touches, and blesses infants, and declares the kingdom theirs “of such.” A theology that treats babies as outside grace, or that makes conscious response the precondition of any relation to Christ, has to reckon with this scene. That is real weight — but it is weight toward infant inclusion and blessing, which is precisely where the pericope’s only patristic afterlife lands it.

What is overstated. As support for baptizing infants specifically — the use the catalogs put it to — the argument outruns its evidence at four points:

• There is no baptism in the text. The scene is one of blessing by touch and prayer (“put his hands on them, and pray,” Matthew 19:13; “took them up in his arms… and blessed them,” Mark 10:16). Jesus does not baptize the children, nor tell anyone to. The move from “Christ blessed infants” to “therefore baptize infants” is an inference the passage never makes — and even credobaptists who read the text as warrant to welcome and bless believing children grant the blessing while denying it reaches the font.
• The one continuing practice the fathers draw from it is blessing, not baptism. Cyprian aside, the sole patristic reading that traces an ongoing church custom from this scene is Cyril of Alexandria’s on Luke: “even until now, infants are brought near and blessed by Christ by means of consecrated hands… the pattern of the act continues even until this day and descends to us from the custom of Christ as its fountain.” That is a description of infant blessing (the ancestor of baby dedication and presentation), not baptism — the very verse’s natural liturgical heir is a blessing, not a font.⁴
• “Of such,” the fathers insist, means character, not literal infancy. The dominant early exegesis reads the pericope as a lesson in humility: the kingdom is promised to those who resemble children, not to children as such. Bede — on Mark 10 and Luke 18 alike — presses the grammar: Jesus “significantly said ‘of such,’ not ‘of these,’ to show that it is not age that reigns, but character.” Ambrose says outright, “Childhood is not meant here, but that goodness which rivals the simplicity of childhood,” for “virtue consists not in our inability to sin, but in our unwillingness.” Origen allegorizes the children as “the foolish of this world… whom the teacher must not forbid”; Theophylact reads a “lesson of humility.” None of them — including the paedobaptists among them — draws infant baptism from the passage. Its own strongest plank (“of such is the kingdom”) is the one the fathers most firmly turn away from literal infants.⁵
• The credobaptists own the same verse. The earliest Christian writer to discuss infant baptism, Tertullian, quotes this very saying against the practice: “The Lord does indeed say, ‘Forbid them not to come unto me.’ Let them ‘come,’ then, while they are growing up… let them become Christians when they have become able to know Christ.” If “forbid them not” settled the question for baptism, its first recorded interpreter could not have read it as a warrant for delay. The text underdetermines the dispute — both sides have always claimed it.⁶

The kōlyō-formula bridge, finally, is a genuine observation carrying more than it can bear. Kōlyō is an ordinary verb; its presence in the Acts baptism scenes shows what one naturally says when someone might be turned away, not that Mark 10 is a baptismal text. Cullmann himself conceded the story stands “without being related to Baptism” on its face; his claim is the subtler and more speculative one that a liturgical formula “gleams through” the wording — a reconstruction that presupposes the very baptismal liturgy whose existence at that date is unproven, and which Baptist scholarship (G. R. Beasley-Murray) and others judge inconclusive.⁷

Assessment

Weak — as a support for infant baptism. The distinction matters: the pericope soundly establishes that Christ receives and blesses infants and refuses to shut them out of the kingdom, and that much is not in serious doubt. But every step from there to the font is contested or absent: the text contains no baptism; its lone patristic afterlife as a continuing custom (Cyril) is infant blessing; the “of such is the kingdom” plank is read by the fathers themselves — paedobaptist ones included — as childlike character rather than literal infancy; the first interpreter of “forbid them not” (Tertullian) turned it against infant baptism; and the philological bridge that might carry a baptismal sense — the kōlyō formula — is a minority conjecture that even its framer granted was not on the surface of the text. So on its best available case the passage does not reach the baptismal conclusion. Its real and undiminished force is toward infant inclusion and blessing — the scriptural taproot of infant dedication and presentation — and it functions, at most, as a distant atmospheric support within a cumulative paedobaptist case whose load is borne elsewhere (original sin, received tradition, the covenant sign). Where a proponent presents “forbid them not” as itself commanding or proving the baptism of infants, that overreads a blessing-narrative into a baptismal one.

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