My attention has been drawn to a comment made about my interpretation of “the circumcision made without hands” of Philippians 3:3. Here is the verse with verse 2 giving context:
Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation! For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh… – Philippians 3:2-3.
The following is a comment from a listener of Dr Peter Goeman’s excellent Bible Sojourner podcast from when he had me on to chat about Biblical Covenantalism. What I said in answer to Peter’s question about the text was that 1. it is a metaphor, and 2. there is a real spiritual circumcision.
Here is the comment pushing back on what I said. The comment is long but I felt I needed to let the objector say his peace here.
“Paul [Henebury] holds to a consistent literal grammatical historical hermeneutic. And yet he interprets Phil. 3:3 in a spiritual and metaphorical (or symbolic) manner – the very thing dispensationalists criticise non-dispensationalists of doing. (Non-dispensationalists believe that the Bible should be interpreted according to the intent of the author, and that such intent can be either literal or symbolic. If the author’s intent is symbolic, the symbolic language always refers to a literal underlying reality, which can be either physical or spiritual. Whether the author’s intent is literal or symbolic must be determined from the genre and context of the writing.) Essentially, Paul (Henebury) states (1) that physical circumcision signified ethic Israel’s consecration to God; and (2) that the description of the Philippians as the true circumcision in Phil. 3:3 therefore metaphorically (or symbolically) refers to their consecration to God as believers in the church age. But Paul’s symbolic or metaphorical interpretation of Phil. 3:3 is not supported by Scripture. Israelites who were circumcised were only consecrated to God IF their physical circumcision was accompanied by the heart circumcision of true faith. In this regard, refer to Romans 4:9-12, which states that Abraham received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. Without, justifying faith, circumcision is not a sign of “consecration”, but a sign of being cut off from God and his blessings (which only accrue to believers of all ages through union with Christ who, in his human nature, was the only one who perfectly obeyed God and therefore truly deserved God’s blessing).
I believe that a more satisfying interpretation of the phrase “true circumcision” in Phil. 3:3 is as as follows: “Circumcision” is a metaphorical reference to “Israel” so that “true circumcision ” refers to “true Israel”. This is the same “true Israel” described by Paul (the apostle) in Romans 9. Note that true Israel is not only the believing remnant of ethnic Israelites described in Romans 9:6-23, but but also believing Gentiles in Romans 9:24 (with “vessels of mercy” being a synonym for “true Israel” or “children of promise” in Romans 9:8). This is consistent with the metaphor of the olive tree in Romans 11:16-24. The olive tree in its final form represents true Israel. It starts of as a cultivated or natural olive tree with all its natural branches, which represents ethnic Israel. Once certain natural branches are broken off, it represents that portion of true Israel consisting of ethnic Jews (Romans 9:6-23). And the wild olive branches that are grafted into the natural olive tree represent the addition (and not replacement) of believing Gentiles to the community of Israelites with true faith. Note that there is one olive tree, instead of two olive trees (one cultivated/natural and one wild). All members of true Israel (whether believing Jews or Gentiles) have circumcised hearts and are therefore the true circumcision.”
Let me point out some relevant matters here:
- No dispensationalist I know of denies metaphor. How could they? Anyone who knows anything about communication is aware of the fact that metaphors are central to language (see e.g., Zoltan Kovecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction). But metaphorical does not equate to spiritual. And because a metaphor is a symbol does not mean it stands for something non-literal.
- My objector states, “Israelites who were circumcised were only consecrated to God IF their physical circumcision was accompanied by the heart circumcision of true faith.” But the second half of the sentence is not a scriptural truth. “True faith” is required (post-Calvary) for spiritual circumcision, but it is not the same as it.
- He states that circumcision without faith became “a sign of being cut off from God” since they through faith were not united to Christ. Naturally there is no scriptural support for the assertion. Circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Abrahamic covenant does not promise salvation, it promises blessing to Israel. I do not hold that circumcision consecrated Israelites to God. I hold that it held Jews to the Abrahamic covenant. That is not the same thing. A Jew who did not fear God could be included as a child of Israel (i.e. consecrated in the outward sense) within the provisions of the Abrahamic covenant while being personally unconsecrated. This would eventually mean that he would not be saved, since salvation is always by grace through faith and such a person would not be a man of faith. Not every Israelite will receive the blessing. One must have faith. But you will be hard pressed to find union with Christ in the OT. Since the cross anyone, Jew or Gentile, must be saved by faith in Christ, but that was not the case in the OT.
- My objector then proceeds to rip through Romans 9-11 ignoring Paul’s argument. He claims “The olive tree in its final form represents true Israel.” True Israel in his mind is the Church (he doesn’t say that outright but I’ll state it for him). But Romans 11 does not identify the olive tree with Israel, true or false. The natural branches are Israelites, not the tree itself. If I decide to cut off all the branches on my apple tree it does not cease to be a tree! Trace Paul’s argument. The olive tree is not Israel!
Interpreting Philippians 3:3
This passage mentions circumcision in Phil. 3:5 where Paul relates his circumcision on the eighth day. He had referred to “the mutilation” in verse 2, which is probably a reference to Judaizers similar to those who caused problems in the churches in Galatia (the nature of the Letter means they are not directly identified).
Everybody agrees, that it is extremely unlikely that all the Church in the Gentile city were physically circumcised. To make “we are the circumcision” in Philippians 3:3 refer to the physical act is the least believable position. Another possibility might be that “circumcision” in verse 3 is a synonym for “Israel.” That is the standard view of Covenant Theology and Progressive Covenantalism and is where my objector lands. But there is a third position. Here we must remind ourselves of the occasional nature of Paul’s correspondence. Although we must resist the temptation to cross-reference before we have examined the context of any passage, we will sometimes find that what Paul wrote in one place will have light thrown on it from another. In the case of Philippians 3:3 an obvious cross-reference is Colossians 2:11:
In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ…
This text clearly does not speak to physical circumcision with a knife (N.B… “without hands”). But it could refer to a “literal” circumcision if one allows for a form of dichotomy like in Romans 7:21-25. We are told elsewhere in Paul that the body of a Christian is not saved until Christ’s return (1 Cor. 15:23, 35-57; Rom. 8:11; 1 Jn. 3:2). Since our present bodies are tied to death (Rom. 7:24), we must continue in these mortal bodies until “the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23). This means that while our inner man (let’s call it the soul) is saved, the outer man is not (hence 2 Cor. 4:16!). It could well be then that a separation or “circumcision” of the soul from the body occurred when the Holy Spirit came into us and sealed us after we exercised faith in Jesus (Gal. 3:2, 14; Eph. 1:3). This would explain Paul’s language at the end of Romans 7. We could call this “spiritual circumcision,” which is a term J. B. Lightfoot used when commenting on Philippians 3:3 (See J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, 145). But it would be a real thing, not just a metaphor. In some mysterious way our soul is saved and is regenerated by a real action of the Spirit within us. Just as we are actually taken out of Adam and put into Christ (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:22). The Spirit will eventually “give life to [our] mortal bodies” through His great power (Rom. 8:11). But when we trusted in Christ He literally did something with our inner man, and this is something that continues (Eph. 3:14-16). So our souls are connected to the risen Christ while our bodies await that connection; which is why our outward man perishes while the inner man is renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). Thus, we may understand such assertions as the following in that light:
And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. – Romans 8:13.
Returning to Philippians 3:3 the point to be stressed here is that the “circumcision made without hands” is a literal operation performed by the Holy Spirit. As a literal action it retains some metaphorical value because the inner circumcision might be understood as a New covenant sign needed to all included in “the people of God” in the Church era (See Douglas J. Moo, A Theology of Paul and His Letters, 311).. A metaphorical use of peritome (circumcision) may well be evident here since the action of the Spirit in the inner man may only be a figure for the operation itself. For Jews this spiritual circumcision would be a necessary addition to the “genealogical” sign of the Abrahamic covenant (and the New covenant is related to the Abrahamic covenant). But that takes us too far afield.
My critic, who is a progressive covenantalist, is employing a deductive strategy to get the apostle to teach what he wants him to teach. Some Christians actively look for a way out of plain-sense interpretation so that they can keep their non-literal positions. His mangling of the olive tree metaphor (oh, the irony) aptly demonstrates why he mistook my position. I don’t wish to be mean, but the fact is that CT’s and PC’s plow their way through the Bible turning any text which resists them into a metaphor or symbol to be spiritualized. There can be friendly disagreement and mutual respect between us, but there can never be rapprochement.
