Gospel of the Foreskin

Gospel of the Foreskin September 17, 2015

In his recent Paul & the Gift, John Barclay arrestingly translates the Greek phrase to euaggelion tes akrobustias (Galatians 2:7) as “the good news of the foreskin.”

He elaborates, “Modern Gentile readers, who have never been socialized to consider the foreskin a sign of inferior otherness or repulsive disgrace, generally fail to register the shock of this oxymoronic expression: the ‘good news of the foreskin’ constitutes a stunning challenge to the system of valuation operative in Jewish culture. A central token of cultural capital within the Jewish tradition is here acknowledged to be disposable in the mission to the Gentiles—certainly not because that mission is of less significance, or the status of Gentile converts lower than that of Jews, but because God is at work as much in one form of mission as in the other (2:8)” (363).

This is one of the ways that Paul’s “Gentile mission not only embodied but also shaped his thought. Theology and practice reinforced one another in a protracted dialectical relationship that made his apostolic calling to the Gentiles central to his version of the ‘good news’” (361).

This does not mean that Paul disparages the gospel to the circumcision. The Jewish and Gentile missions must both carry on, and must acknowledge each other. Only that can “relativize” the differences between them and unite them as one people formed by the gift of God in Christ and led by the gospel. According to Barclay, “It matters greatly to Paul that there is a successful mission to Jews. What he desires is not the formation of a Gentile church, independent of Jewish believers, but an interdependent fellowship of Jews and non-Jews in Christ.” Paul doesn’t reject either circumcision or non-circumcision, but “he relativizes the value of both, and gives this relativization the motive label ‘freedom’” (2:4) (363-4).

The good news of the foreskin is good news only if Christ is also good news to the circumcision.


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