Augustine’s allegorical reading redirected Jesus’ child sayings away from actual children for fifteen centuries

Evidence

The Augustinian turn comes in the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE. Augustine, in his sermons on the Gospels and in scattered passages throughout his anti-Pelagian writings, develops a Christological-allegorical reading of the child-passages in which the primary referent shifts from actual children to spiritual children — meaning, in the Augustinian framework, adult disciples who have adopted a posture of childlike receptivity to grace. … The Augustinian re-reading reconciles the two pictures by allegorizing the child-passages. “Become like a little child” means, in the Augustinian reading, become like an adult disciple in a posture of receptive humility — not literally become like a small child. “Welcome one of these children” means welcome the adult convert who has come to faith with childlike trust — not literally welcome the small Galilean child Jesus was holding. The passages remain in the Christian canon, are still read in liturgy, are still cited in homiletics — but their operational meaning has shifted from being about actual children to being about adult spiritual disposition. — , The Rod and the Child, 2068

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the season’s recurring ‘selective reception’ pattern — Plato, Aristotle, Tertullian — that earlier episodes documented. — connects to: Interpretive tradition weakened the Gospels’ practical constraint on harming children for fifteen centuries — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 2042
• SEED: A ‘how a text’s plain meaning gets theologically drained’ essay comparing the allegorization of children to other interpretive displacements.

Related

• Interpretive tradition weakened the Gospels’ practical constraint on harming children for fifteen centuries (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Interpretive tradition weakened the Gospels’ practical constraint on harming children for fifteen centuries #expands (0.75) — , The Rod and the Child, 2042