Circumcision and Promise

Circumcision and Promise October 29, 2014

Douglas Campbell suggests (Deliverance of God, 739-40) that Genesis 17:5 creates a problem for Paul. There, God promises that Abraham will be the father of many nations, but ties that promise to circumcision. 

Campbell writes, the birth of Isaac, though whom this promise is realized, “creates a difficult for Paul because it occurred well after the events of Genesis 15:6, while the covenant of circumcision, established in chapter 17, now stands between them. So a powerful possible counterargument to Paul’s content’s in Romans 4:2b-16a becomes apparent – that Abraham’s paternity of Isaac, and through him his paternity ultimately of ‘many nations’ . . . in fact occurred only after the covenant of circumcision was established and accepted in Genesis 17, and hence the latter ritual is still a critical precondition for the realization of the former promises.”

Paul deals with this, Campbell argues, by surrounding his reference to Genesis 17:5 “with statements that speak of another story, a story extrapolated from Genesis 15:6.” Thus, Paul implies that “the promise to Abraham of fatherhood in the context of circumcision in Genesis 17:5 is best understood in terms of the two crucial dynamics set in motion by Genesis 15:6, namely, Abraham’s unbending trust in God’s promise of an heir and God’s later life-creating response in terms of Isaac’s miraculous conception” (744).

Campbell doesn’t find Paul’s handling of the issue particularly compelling, but that’s because he doesn’t grapple with the significance of circumcision itself. In Galatians 4, Paul simply ignores the issue of circumcision, but not because it is too troubling to take up. It confirms Paul’s point about the difference between flesh and Spirit because circumcision cuts away the flesh. 

In Romans, the point is the same. Paul can insert Genesis 17:5 in a narrative about trusting God for life from the dead because that is what circumcision means: It’s a ritual confession of the impotence of flesh; it’s a ritual confession of trust in the God who raises life death dead bodies, from dead wombs, the God who makes the castrated fruitful.


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