There is no doubt in my mind that Paul was not always talking about literal circumcision every time he used the word 'circumcision' (the same with 'uncircumcision').
@rockfox mentions one of these passages . . .
This is not just about the issue of penile tissue removal. It's also writ larger about the issue of Torah following and what was a scourge during his time period: judaizing, which was the practice of insisting that new Christian converts also effectively convert retroactively to Judaism, which was to include not only getting circumcised but following all Jewish practices and traditions in order to be 'full' followers of Christ.
One of the things that Paul is pointing toward in the above passage, though, gets at the heart of what many of you are batting about: two strong subcultures were in operation at the time of Paul, and he referred to them as The Circumcision and The Uncircumcision. In point of very definite fact, Paul was the sole Apostle (with a capital A) assigned to bring the somewhat distinct Gospel entrusted to him by Christ to the Gentiles, or the Uncircumcision. Peter and James headed up the post-Christ ministry to the Messianic Jews. Distinct differences existed not only in the messages to those two groups but as far as promoted personal practices were concerned.
It is to that distinction that Paul was speaking in I Corinthians 7:17-20. How much more clear could he be than to say that either circumcision or uncircumcision was
nothing? Nothing. As in, it just had no significance in the eyes of our Father. And not just the penis nipping but every other aspect of the cultural traditions -- or even whether one eats or doesn't eat meat or does or doesn't baptize or does or doesn't believe that one can speak in tongues. His advice, thus, was to remain in one's tradition. If Circumcision (Jewish) do your Jewish things, because they don't have any bearing on your standing with God or your faith in Christ. If Uncircumcision (Gentile) do your non-Jewish things, because they don't have any bearing on your standing with God or your faith in Christ.
Personally, I like being circumcised, and I've gotten good feedback about it.
But I was circumcised at birth, so I know nothing else, and I suspect had I not been circumcised I would have gotten some good feedback about that as well!
I've been reading all this with great interest, as I see arguments on both sides. I'm wondering, though, to what extent this discussion is simply an intellectual exercise and to what extent it's reflective of very personal impressions in a way that participants haven't made transparent/obvious. Is, for example, there anyone among us who has chosen to be circumcised as an adult in order to comply with a newly-found spiritual conviction?
P.S. Addendum: remember, it's always essential to keep in mind that context is key (to whom was something written in Scripture; for whom; about whom; when; why; among what other lessons?). In I Cor. 7:17-20, Paul is clearly setting the context of the distinction between the Messianic Jews (a better title for 'Hebrews,' in fact) and the Gentile Christians. Paul himself was a Pharisaical Jew prior to his conversion, so he wasn't a Gentile despite ultimately being assigned to preach to them. Christ, on the other hand, while having some contact with Gentiles,
only preached to Jews; the same is true for Peter and James, and it's unlikely that Paul wrote Hebrews. Paul may or may not have continued throughout his entire ministry to follow Torah, but what he did
not do is demand that all Gentile converts do so. He very clearly, in fact, did the opposite by preaching
against judaizing. Contemporaneously, Peter and James did exhort Messianic Jews to continue their adherence to Jewish customs, including adherence to Torah. This, of course, doesn't mean that Paul preached that converts should behave
in opposition to Torah, but it simply wasn't portrayed as some type of spiritual imperative to them. One can't simply point back to a First Covenant scripture like one of the Proverbs and insist that it applies for all time to all people; any exhortation in Proverbs or Psalms related to Torah would have been, in context, applicable to the Israelites of the times during which those Psalms or Proverbs were written.
P.S.S. Please don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm condemning
anyone for keeping Torah. I am thoroughly of the belief that doing so is well within the freedom each of us has to decide how best to design and follow one's own individual spiritual path. At the very least, the body of guidelines known as the Torah is a corpus of common-sense, demonstrably efficacious boundaries for living life in a manner that not only glorifies God but promotes good health and proper treatment of one's fellow human beings. My only point is to assert that in total the Torah was a collective admonition for the Chosen People: the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob up until the time of Messiah.
That was the First Covenant (a better moniker than the Old Testament), and it was an agreement between our God and a particular set of people. The rest of us can emulate what those people attempted to do, but that no more makes us part of them than it would make me Evil Knievel simply because I followed his motorcycle stunts down to the letter.
Everyone has the right to follow or not follow Torah (with the exception of those commandments Christ distilled into the Two), but within the context of the imperative we've all been given to refrain from judging our fellow brothers none of us has the right to insist that anyone else follow or not follow Torah.
