Anticircumcision Texts in Paul
For two
thousand years Christians have almost universally understood Paul to be dismissing
circumcision as a mere physical rite that has no value—that is the common
understanding of the anti-legalistic, anti-ethnocentric, and apocalyptic
readings of Paul. And such an understanding implies or explicitly promotes the
idea that Paul rejects Genesis 17 (and Lev. 12) because he has abandoned the Jewish
law (and Judaism). Consequently, gentile Messiah followers should not practice the
rite, and Jewish Messiah followers should stop circumcising their sins. For
evidence of this interpretation, they point to texts like Philippians 3:2, where
Paul refers to his opponents, who are promoting circumcision, as “the mutilation”
(katatomē). The implication seems to be that Paul thinks circumcision is
nothing other than a rite that disfigures one’s body, using language from
Leviticus that condemns the mutilation of the flesh (Lev. 21:5). Or they point
to Romans, where Paul supposedly claims that physical circumcision is nothing
and that real circumcision is the metaphorical or spiritual circumcision of the
heart. Such a statement seems clear from the NRSV translation of Romans
2:28-29:
For a
person is not a Jewish who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something
external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real
circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and literal. Such a
person receives praise not from others but from God.
But this
rendering of the Greek, despite how commonly variations of it occur in both translation
and in commentaries, is a considerable overinterpretation of Paul’s actual
words. A rough translation of the Greek here is as follows:
For it is
not the visible Jew, nor it is the visible in-flesh circumcision, but the
hidden Jew, and the circumcision of the heart by the pneuma, not the
letter, whose praise is from God, not from a human.
Contrary to
virtually every English translation of these verses, not once does Paul use a
word that means something like a real or true here. The point is
not that one form of circumcision is real and the other is false, but that God requires
more than being a visible Jew or being physically circumcised. Being a Jew or
being genitally circumcised does not in itself automatically qualify one for God’s
praise. Rather, a person with a circumcised heart merits God’s praise.
If this
sounds like a radical thought, one that undermines or abandons the Jewish law,
it is not. Rather, it was a widespread Jewish belief that God desired Jews to
be circumcised in the heart, not just in the flesh. One can see this in
Deuteronomy, where being circumcised in the heart means to be complaint and
obedient (Deut. 10:16; cf. Lev. 26:41) and results in love toward God (Deut.
30:6). For ancient Jews, this was not an either-or-matter. Faithful Jews (well,
male ones) were physically circumcised and circumcised in their hearts.
The prophet Jeremiah seems to make precisely the same point Paul does in Roans 2,
condemning Israel along with a bunch of other circumcised nations. Though
Israel is rightly circumcised in the flesh (unlike other circumcised nations who
are wrongly circumcised in the flesh), Israel is uncircumcised in their hearts
(Jer. 9:25-26).
What is
more, Paul also explicitly states the opposite of what Chrisitan readers frequently
claim he says. Immediately after these verses, which suggest God’s praise is
for those who are circumcised of heart, he ensures his readers that his claims
are no denunciation of physical circumcision. His literary questioner asks, “[If
this is so], what then is the value of being a Jew or of circumcision?” (Rom.
3:1). Perhaps, one might conclude, physical circumcision has no value. Paul rejects
this conclusion as false: “Much in every way!” (Rom. 3:2).
Unfortunately,
many of Paul’s interpreters have not taken him at his word here. If there is
indeed value to circumcision, why does Paul refer to his
circumcision-encouraging opponents as the mutilation (Phil. 3:2)? The
answer can be found in remembering as Paul’s intended audience in Philippi: a
group of gentile Messiah followers. Any gentile who undergoes circumcision;
rather, they are undergoing a rite that mutilates the flesh and brings them no
salvific benefit. Paul’s identification of circumcision as mutilation is not
a universal statement about the value of circumcision, only a condemnation of
gentile circumcision efforts: for Jews, circumcision is of value (Rom. 3:1-2);
for gentiles, circumcision is a detrimental bodily mutilation. It is a ritual
that fails to bring any benefit and instead causes harm.
We see
similar logic at play in Romans 4, where Paul discusses Abraham at some length.
Paul beings by asking what Abraham discovered with regard to the flesh (sarx)—in
other words, circumcision. (This is how the early Chrisitan interpreter known
as Ambrosiaster understood the text in his Commentary on Romans 4:1. So
too Pelagius, Commentary on Romans 4;1. In contrast, the NRSVue translation
“our ancestor according to the flesh” is, simply put, impossible. Given that
Paul addresses non-Jewish readers, he could not have described Abraham as their
ancestor by flesh. By pistis and pneuma, yes. By sarx,
never.) That is, if Paul’s gentile readers are seeking to emulate Abraham,
perhaps it would be of value to determine what Abraham discovered about the
circumcision of the flesh. Paul provides a brief reading of the Abraham
narrative, suggesting that the episodes are chronologically ordered and this
chronology matter for his gentile readers. In summary, Paul argues that since
Genesis 15 occurs before Genesis 17, Abraham was reckoned as righteous prior to
his circumcision. In this way, Abraham’s life demonstrates that God forgives the
sins of the foreskinned just as he does the sins of the circumcised. God’s
blessing of forgiveness is available, then, both to circumcised and to
foreskinned, both the Jews and to gentiles. But this raises an important question.
If God had already blessed Abraham and forgiven him, why did Abraham need to
undergo circumcision in Genesis 17? Paul’s answer is quite surprising. He
claims that God called Abraham to undergo circumcision so that he would
then become the father to all who trust, both the foreskinned gentile and the
circumcised Jew. It sounds like Pual believers that had Abraham trusted God’s
promises in Genesis 15 but then not undergone circumcision, he could only be the
father of gentile Messiah followers—since both he and they were foreskinned.
Consequently, he needed to undergo circumcision so that he could also be the
father of Jewish Messiah followers. This is a startling claim. But Pual’s point
is that Abraham’s circumcision had value in that it became a means for God
first to create a distinct people of Israel and then to demonstrate that circumcised
Jewish Messiah followers are also included in God’s deliverance. (Matthew
Thiessen, A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2023], 91-94)
