{"id":1026,"date":"2019-11-21T15:04:41","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T21:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2019-11-21T15:04:41","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T21:04:41","slug":"on-circumcision-and-baptism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/11\/21\/on-circumcision-and-baptism\/","title":{"rendered":"On Circumcision and Baptism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Contrary to modern misperception, every element of the Torah, the law of God, is still in force and relevant to the life of the Christian faithful today.\u00a0 There can be no clearer or more authoritative testimony to this fact than the word of Christ himself (eg. Matt 5:17-19).\u00a0 Despite its contemporary caricature, the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15<\/a> represents a strict reading and application of the Torah to the situation of Gentiles entering into the assembly, the Church, of Christ.\u00a0 St. Paul fiercely defended himself against the charge of seeking to abolish the Torah or promote its violation throughout his missionary journeys as described in the Acts of the Apostles and in his own epistles (eg. Acts 21:20-21; Rom 3:31).\u00a0 Over against these clear statements of the New Testament authors, there is a general impression that at least some of the commandments of the old covenant have been set aside.\u00a0 The greatest source of this impression comes from the language used in the controversy over circumcision.<\/p>\n

Circumcision occupied a position of centrality in the old covenant equivalent to Baptism in the new.\u00a0 It was the marker of membership in the people of God.\u00a0 It’s ritual establishment and significance preceded the giving of the old covenant to Moses by centuries.\u00a0 It constituted the people of Israel not as a national entity but as a family, the family of God.\u00a0 Moses’ failure to follow this most basic of Yahweh’s commandments nearly led to his own death (Ex 4:24-26) and resulted in his loss of the priesthood to Aaron and his line.\u00a0 It was nearly inconceivable, then, to the greater body of the faithful in Judea, that someone could come to be a member of the people of God and partake of Christ as the new Passover without first being circumcised (Ex 12:48).\u00a0 St. Paul argues fiercely against the necessity of circumcision for those who were coming from the nations into the people of God.\u00a0 This argument is not only the major focus of his Epistle to the Galatians, but it also sets the stage for the council of Acts 15.\u00a0 While there seems to be a clear connection in function between Baptism and circumcision, surely the significance of circumcision, along with its necessity, has been set aside in the new covenant?\u00a0 A surface reading would seem to indicate so.\u00a0 While the intuitive connection between Baptism and circumcision is a correct instinct and important to the understanding of the propriety of infant Baptism, to merely say that Baptism has replaced circumcision is to move too quickly and pass over the ways in which St. Paul, above all New Testament writers, continues to utilize the language and commandments regarding circumcision.<\/p>\n

Circumcision as a sign was first given to Abraham (Gen 17:1-14).\u00a0 In the wake of the rebellion at Babel, Yahweh had dispersed the nations, assigning them to the governance of angelic beings.\u00a0 He is going to use a nation that will serve collectively as priests for all of the nations of the world until that nation brings forth Christ as the culmination of its ministry.\u00a0 Rather than choosing one of the 70 nations which already existed to favor over the others, Yahweh creates one which previously did not exist.\u00a0 He creates it from one man of Ur named Abram.\u00a0 At the giving of his initial covenant with Abram, he changes his name to Abraham, promising to make him the father of many nations, to bless all the nations of the world through him and his descendant.\u00a0 The way in which someone was made a part of this people was through circumcision.\u00a0 Circumcision not only or even primarily of one’s self, but of all the males of one’s household, including even slaves.\u00a0 In a deliberate wordplay, anyone not circumcised was cut off from this covenant and the people whom it created.<\/p>\n

The covenant, as St. Paul would later strongly argue, was therefore not based on biological ethnic descent.\u00a0 Rather, it was based on faithfulness in keeping the commandment of circumcision and “walking before the Lord in righteousness” (Gen 17:1).\u00a0 For St. Paul, this righteousness is a function of this faithfulness.\u00a0 The faithful one is the one reckoned to be righteous. \u00a0\u00a0 Righteousness comes by faithfulness.\u00a0 It was therefore always those who were faithful, like Abraham, who were his children (Gal 3:7).\u00a0 Abram of Ur was a Chaldean (Gen 11:28, 31).\u00a0 This anachronistic term is used to describe him in order to connect him to Babylon, the place of the tower of Babel.\u00a0 Abram is called out of Babylon, the capital of the world in all of its negative connotations, to become the foundation of a new nation and so circumcision enacts him cutting himself off from the world, under the sway of the power of darkness, from which he came.\u00a0 He is given a new name, Abraham, and this is done on the eighth day for his progeny to communicate that he is now a new creation, as are they (Gal 6:15).<\/p>\n

This cutting off takes place in relation to the genitals because it is not primarily an individual act of devotion or a pledge made by an individual.\u00a0 Rather, it is constitutive of community and therefore involves not only the male but his spouse and his progeny.\u00a0 The broader community of Israel was a family, the family of God.\u00a0 It began with the family of Abraham and was always composed of tribes and clans, family units.\u00a0 These units always included strong elements of adoption, of incorporation of outsiders into family and clan.\u00a0 Newcomers, both by birth and adoption, shared in this cutting off as the ritual means of integration.\u00a0 Women and female children were integrated through their family bonds to the circumcised male who was the head of the household as only males were circumcised.\u00a0 The circumcised male cut the family unit off from the world, setting apart and therefore definitionally making it holy.\u00a0 It was the responsibility of the women of the household to maintain the purity and holiness of the household in both a physical and spiritual sense while it was the responsibility of the males who ventured out into the world to not yield to its impurity and bring sin and impurity back into the home.\u00a0 The circumcision of the flesh was to embody the circumcision of the heart, which needed to be cut off from the world and its desires and temptations (Deut 10:12-17; 30:6; Jer 4:4; 9:26).<\/p>\n

St. Paul reveals that every element of circumcision finds its fulfillment in Christ.\u00a0 This does not mean that it is done away with.\u00a0 Rather, every element is filled to overflowing in such a way that Christ represents the truth and reality which stood behind the shadow of the ordinance of circumcision (Col 2:17).\u00a0 To return to the circumcision of the flesh, then, is to forsake reality and fulness for image and shadow and remove one’s self from Christ, if not outright deny that Jesus, the Christ, has come as that fulness.\u00a0 Basic to St. Paul’s understanding of the crucifixion of Christ is that it represents an inversion of the curse of the Torah (Gal 3:13).\u00a0 In his suffering and death, Christ was cut off from among the people.\u00a0 Christ’s receipt of the curse, however, did not cut him off from life.\u00a0 Rather, being God, his cutting off was the final cutting off of the world and its prince, the dark powers and the passions and wickedness which had infested the creation, from God.\u00a0 It is, therefore, the world as a system, as represented by its capital, Babylon, that is judged and dies (Rev 17:1-18:8).\u00a0 The person then, who is in Christ has been cut off from the world and the world from him (Gal 6:14).\u00a0 That person is a new creation (2 Cor 5:17).<\/p>\n

Participation in Christ’s death and resurrection and the reality of this cutting off and new creation takes place in the mystery of Baptism.\u00a0 To be baptized is to be baptized into Christ and thereby to put on Christ (Gal 3:27).\u00a0 To be baptized into Christ is to be integrated into the family of God (v. 26).\u00a0 It is to leave behind whatever characterized life in the world and its system of relationships to become a part of a new people created by God (v. 28).\u00a0 That new people is new to the one baptized but is the same family, the same people, created by Yahweh through Abraham to exist eternally (v. 29).\u00a0 Before his death, his cutting off, Christ sanctified himself (John 17:19).\u00a0 Those who are baptized into Christ are set apart and made holy by him through participation in his family (Heb 2:11).\u00a0 St. Paul can, therefore, say that we have all been circumcised with Christ’s circumcision in baptism (Col 2:8-12).\u00a0 Christ has therefore established the spiritual and material holiness of his house and his household members.\u00a0 It is the responsibility of the Church to protect and maintain that holiness because she is his bride.\u00a0 It is in precisely this sense that the Church is spoken of in feminine terms.<\/p>\n

St. Paul applies this theological understanding of the deep connections between circumcision and Baptism found in Christ’s fulfillment practically in ways that stem directly from the understanding of circumcision.\u00a0 In addressing faithful Christians married to non-Christians, he applies the principle that the circumcised father sanctifies, renders holy, mother and children (1 Cor 7:12-16).\u00a0 He applies it, however, in both directions.\u00a0 A faithful wife renders husband and children holy in the same sense as a believing husband would.\u00a0 This is because the holiness which comes to believing families is not the holiness of a human man who has set himself apart in the flesh or even in his heart.\u00a0 It is the holiness of Christ himself in whom the faithful, baptized Christian participates whether male or female.\u00a0 That this still holds true reveals that Baptism, like circumcision before it, was never an individual act or pledge.\u00a0 Rather, it has always been, from the very beginning, a communal act of family, clan, tribe, and nation; the new nation which is called by Christ’s name, the Church.\u00a0 The Church integrates new members, both by birth and from outside, through the ritual means of Baptism.\u00a0 This renders them co-heirs of the promises with Christ (Rom 8:17), members of the family of God, a people holy and set apart from the world which is perishing (1 Pet 3:20-21), and a new creation in Christ.\u00a0 Circumcision, in the Church, is not abolished but fulfilled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contrary to modern misperception, every element of the Torah, the law of God, is still in force and relevant to the life of the Christian faithful today.\u00a0 There can be no clearer or more authoritative testimony to this fact than the word of Christ himself (eg. Matt 5:17-19).\u00a0 Despite its contemporary caricature, the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 represents a strict reading and application of the Torah to the situation of Gentiles entering into the assembly, the Church, of Christ.\u00a0 St. Paul fiercely defended himself against the charge of seeking to abolish the Torah or promote its violation throughout his missionary journeys as described in the Acts of the Apostles and in his own epistles (eg. Acts 21:20-21; Rom 3:31).\u00a0\u2026 <\/i> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"On Circumcision and Baptism - The Whole Counsel Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/11\/21\/on-circumcision-and-baptism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On Circumcision and Baptism - The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Contrary to modern misperception, every element of the Torah, the law of God, is still in force and relevant to the life of the Christian faithful today.\u00a0 There can be no clearer or more authoritative testimony to this fact than the word of Christ himself (eg. 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