Last time in this series on Paul’s letter to the Romans, we saw how after laying out a well-known story about how sin works in the world, Paul turned the table on his readers: Anyone who judges others, whether from a sense of moral, theological, or ethnic superiority, stands condemned, because we all end up breaking faith in the same ways. This destabilizes the Jewish/Gentile division (rightly from a Christian perspective), but puts a discomforting question in the back of the reader’s mind: What does it even mean then for God to have chosen Israel? Is there any value at all in being God’s chosen people? In today’s passage, Paul attempts to find a nuanced answer to that question.
Text
[25] For circumcision is of value if indeed you do what the law says; but if you break the law, your circumcision has become foreskin. [26] By the same logic, if foreskin keeps the law’s just precepts, is not one’s foreskin considered as circumcision? [27] And so the one who has foreskin by nature and keeps the law will judge you, who break the law despite having it written on paper and in your circumcision. [28] For it is neither the one who is Jewish in appearance, nor circumcision in appearance in the flesh, [29] but the one who is Jewish in the hidden parts and circumcision of the heart, in the spirit not in letters, whose praise is not from people but from God.
[3.1] This being the case, is there any advantage in being Jewish? Or, any value in circumcision? [2] Much and in every way! First, they have been entrusted with the oracles of God. [3] What then. if some were unfaithful, will their bad faith counteract God’s good faith? [4] Absolutely not! Let God be shown to be true even if everyone is false, as it is written, “so that You may be justified in Your words and prevail in Your judgment.” [5] But what should we say since our injustice confirms God’s justice: that God is unjust to act on God’s wrath? (I speak here in human terms. [6] Absolutely not! For how then would God judge the cosmos? [7] But if God’s truth abounds in my falsehood to God’s glory, why would I still be judged as a sinner? [8] And why not blaspheme (as some of us so speak) and say “Let us do what is wrong so that good things might come?” Their condemnation is just!
Experience & Encounter
The obvious thing reading this as an English reader is the direct (and even crude) way Paul talks about circumcision. For all its purported enlightened freedom, our culture still has a lot of hangups around the human body, especially the genitals. So this directness is a bit jarring. We must ask, then, what did circumcision mean in Paul’s context to make him speak of it as he does?
The latter part of the text is both easy and hard to understand. The words and eventual answer are straightforward, but the argument isn’t, and the answers to his rhetorical questions don’t seem particularly convincing. Again I have to ask what it might have all meant.
Explore
Two main questions have arisen in the preliminary sections of the study:
- What meaning did circumcision carry in the first century context?
- What is Paul trying to accomplish through his rhetorical Q&A?
Circumcision and Identity
After marginalizing the role of the Law, Paul launches into a discussion of circumcision. This was not an unusual theme for him (see 1 Corinthians 7.19; Galatians 6.15; and Philippians 3.3). But it’s interesting that he treats it differently from other aspects of Jewish devotion; whereas something like as food laws he considers to be a matter of personal conscience (Romans 14), he seems pretty harsh on circumcision. Why?
Circumcision is the ritual removal of a male’s foreskin. Within Judaism, it marked a man’s belonging to the covenant God established with Abraham (Genesis 17). However, since most other peoples in the region also practised circumcision, it didn’t really set Jews apart from their neighbours and therefore wasn’t a major part of Jewish identity in much of the Bible. It’s telling that circumcision is not mentioned in the books of Samuel and Kings and the Prophets (apart from a couple references in Jeremiah (4.4, 9.25), which both emphasize its insufficiency). This began to change when Judahites came into contact with socio-politically dominant cultures who did not practise circumcision, first in the Babylonian Exile, and then especially during the Hellenistic period (Eberhart).* During this latter period, not only did the culturally Greek elites not practise circumcision, but public male nudity also played a role in civic life (i.e., at the gymnasium, an educational facility whose name literally means ‘naked place’). This effectively put upwardly mobile Jewish men on display. In this context, circumcision became a huge cultural signifier, with Jews considering foreskin to be disgraceful and even demonic, and Greeks ridiculing Jews for their ‘mutilated’ genitals (Jewett (2013) 38f; Eberhart). All this means that circumcision was an emotionally charged issue, and I think that’s why Paul speaks of it so crassly here. (While I tried to capture this in my translation, I could have gone even further, since Paul more literally speaks of “Jews on display [en phanero], which I rendered “in appearance”).
So strongly did circumcision become associated with Jewish identity during the Second Temple period that some believed that circumcision, as the sign of the covenant of Abraham, had saving power, as seen in such sayings as “Circumcised men do not descend into Gehenna [a place of eternal judgment]” and “Circumcision will deliver Israel from Gehenna” (quoted in Stott 92). Paul rejects this idea completely. Circumcision, and the Jewish identity it represents, does not exempt one from judgment. Paul goes so far as to say that the uncircumcised Gentile who nonetheless does what the Law says is reckoned as a Jew — an idea that would have been completely scandalous (Matera 76; Eberhart).
What matters is the “circumcision of the heart.” This is not a new idea, but comes from Deuteronomy 10.16: “Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer” (cf. 30.6; Leviticus 26.41; Jeremiah 4.4 and 6.10; it is also found in Second Temple literature (see Jubilees 1.23; 1QpHab 11.13; Philo’s De Migratione Abrahami 92). The ‘heart’ in the Old Testament is an organ not of feeling but of discernment (Eberhart). So the idea is of a “holistic personal transformation of the human being that would result in an intimate connection with God” (Eberhart; cf. Schreiner 143). Paul equates this inner circumcision with knowing the Law “in spirit not in letter,” an apparent allusion to Jeremiah 31:33, where God promises that on the Day of the LORD, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” Again the idea is an inner renewal that will allow people to faithfully live out the just spirit of the Law rather than struggle to fulfill its written stipulations (Eberhart; Matera 77; Jewett (2013) 39; Witherington 90). This focus on inner transformation and motivation for just behaviours rather than public religious performance is deeply connected to Jesus’ teachings and priorities, most especially his radicalization of the Law.
In evaluating these ideas we need a bit of nuance. The idea of the circumcision of the heart, and an inner Law taking priority over the written Law had a long pedigree in Judaism by Paul’s time. But he also radically shifts the narrative in claiming first that the Apocalyptic age where this would be in reality has come, and second that it applies to uncircumcised Gentiles as much as circumcised Jews. The outward symbol doesn’t matter provided the inner reality it is supposed to represent is operational, as revealed in one’s attitudes towards others, lack of hypocrisy, and faithfully living out God’s ways.
Paul’s Rhetorical Q&A
But if this deconstruction of the Jew/Gentile division is true, one has to wonder: What’s the point then in being Jewish? It’s a tricky question for Paul, and as he notes here in 3.8 and again in chapters 5 and 6, one that’s plagued his ministry. To head off these objections, he again deploys the diatribe (Kruse 162; SBL; Eberhart). As Kruse rightly points out, the way these increasingly heightened questions are worded in the Greek expects a negative answer (Kruse 160). So, these are rhetorical questions in the literal sense of the term, and not to be taken seriously as theological propositions (Nanos 320).
Q1: Is there any value in circumcision and being Jewish? A1. There is much value, most especially being entrusted with God’s oracles:
The Jewish people have had the great advantage of not having to rely on the divine fingerprint present in nature (cf. 1.18ff) to know God, but have known God in a direct way throughout their national story, in the words of the prophets, and in their long history of reflection on God’s wisdom. Of note, in the Greek, the word translated as ‘entrusted’ here, is formed around the pist- (‘faith, faithfulness’) lexical root that’s so present in Romans. Access to the divine words is part of Israel’s good-faith relationship with God (Eberhart).
Q2. Does Jewish unfaithfulness counteract God’s faithfulness? A2. Not at all. Even if everyone else is false, God remains true:
Paul’s basic answer is that Israel’s lack of faithfulness in no way undermines God’s faithfulness. But what does Jewish unfaithfulness mean in this context? The traditional Protestant answer to this has been that this refers to Jewish rejection of Jesus (e.g., Kruse 160). This stems from the more belief-oriented interpretation they bring to the idea of ‘faith’. This interpretation asks what it means that, from a Christian perspective, they did not recognize their own messiah. While Paul will reflect on this question later on in the book, I think it’s out of place here. For if Jesus is the sole stumbling block, it completely undermines Paul’s larger argument in 1.18-3.20 that everyone is in the same boat before God. Instead, it’s better to interpret this as describing a general inability to follow the Law. This works better with the previous argument about those who teach the Law without following it. It also works better with the quote here from Psalm 51.4 (right before the part Paul cites the psalmist confesses: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.”) (Eberhart). And, it works better with where Paul takes the argument starting in 3.9.
Q3. If Jewish injustice confirms God’s justice, isn’t it unfair for God to judge the unjust? A3. Not at all. Divine wrath is part-and-parcel with divine justice, so God is absolute just in judging the cosmos:
This is hard to follow, not because of the answer, but because of the question. As Eberhart notes, it depends on a rather postmodern, poststructuralist logic: If human injustice reveals God’s justice that suggests that God’s justice is dependent on human injustice. And if that’s the case, it’s hypocritical for God to condemn the very injustice that proves God’s justice. This argument is so out there that even Paul feels to need to let his readers know he’s not serious about it. But he makes it clear: Just because God’s faithfulness in stark contrast to human unfaithfulness doesn’t mean that God’s faithfulness is dependent on it.
Q4. But if sin demonstrates God’s goodness, why should I be condemned as a sinner? A4. Sin — including the bad-faith argumentation that the question represents — is justly condemned:
This seems to be the main point of this diatribe. The accusations that Paul’s marginalization of the Law is a license to sin have dogged his whole ministry (Kruse 162; Eberhart). But as we’ve seen, he remains firmly committed to the idea that we will be judged based on our actions. By marginalizing the Law, he’s actually radicalizing it, as Jesus did before him, insisting that being a true, good-faith moral agent in the world honours the Law more than a rigid adherence to its letter.
Challenge
Paul is treading a very thin line here: simultaneously wanting to marginalize the trappings of Jewish identity so as to fully welcome Gentiles within ‘God’s people’, and insisting that Jewish heritage is valuable. And by highlighting the value of Jewish heritage, he “shows that the connection that he envisages between different cultural and religious groups does not erase the individual identity of each group” (Eberhart). For Paul, genuine diversity can exist within unity, and unity within diversity. Of course, as history showed, this was not to be. Gentile Christianity quickly lost any real sense of Jewish identity and more explicitly Jewish Christian communities (such as the one in which Melito of Sardis operated), were made to conform to the majority expression as questions of uniformity took precedence in the second and third centuries. Paul was trying to fight the good fight here, and we would do well to take up his cause as questions of uniformity and diversity continue to be relevant in the Church today.
We should also note here that there is also a feminist reading of the first part of this text. It should be obvious that as a primary marker of Jewish identity, circumcision only works for 48% of Jews. By shifting the primary locus of religious identity towards faithfulness, Paul has effectively brought women in from the margins (Eberhart). While the overall discourse is destabilizing “Jew” and “Gentile” as religiously meaningful categories, here he has implicitly done the same with biological sex and gender (Eberhart). To be as plain about it as Paul is, penises are of no salvific value. As Eberhart notes, both aspects of this would be of particular meaning to Phoebe, the Gentile woman he has chosen as his stand-in in Rome.
Expand
As I read Romans, I’m consistently fascinated by how relevant so much of it remains for us today. His arguments about Jews and Gentiles apply to any kind of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ dynamic. If he were writing today, I’m sure he’d be just as happy to talk about baptism in the same way he talks about circumcision here. It’s all about how we live in the world, what we might call the ‘ecology’ of our actions. Being an ‘insider’ (no matter how we define that) provides lots of advantages and opportunities, for it means we’ve been shaped and formed by the gospel from childhood and don’t have to adapt to it from start. (Honestly, a big part of why I ended up returning to Christianity after my ‘dark night’ was because so much of my identity and values had been shaped by the gospel; it just made more sense to stay with it. Talk about an ‘insider’ advantage!) But that same status also bears a lot of responsibility, and we can’t have the advantages without that responsibility.
Summary & Conclusions
Paul rounds out his tour of human sinfulness by looking at the value of Jewish identity. Here, as before, he rejects hypocrisy: being Jewish, or really being an ‘insider’ of any kind, is of real value*, if* you take advantage of the opportunities it provides. Otherwise, what’s the point? As Paul has pointed out over and over again since 1.18, everyone, both insiders and outsiders, is going to be judged on the same single criterion: How one has lived.
* For full references, please see the series bibliography.
Matthew Root 