Here We Go Again
You can't get long in seriously teaching the New Testament, especially Acts and some of the epistles, without running into my favorite subject (not) circumcision.
Let me add that a Bible teacher also has to address the issue of eunuchs.
It does make one wonder about the fascination and meaning with that body part in the Jewish culture, with one of the big obstacles for the early Christian being those who wanted to mess everything about grace up with this insistence on the circumcision rite being performed on grown men.
Thus, again, (as I post below) I was teaching Acts 16 this morning and we read that Paul circumcised Timothy (a grown man, and technically Jewish) but not others. (He does something similar in Acts 21 to appease some Jews, but it doesn't work and ends badly.) I questioned why Paul would do this after the Acts 15 council drew a line in the sand, but John Piper points out that Paul was not appeasing Jewish Christians (who would need to know better now) and that Timothy was Jewish. It also seems to me that Timothy was an adult and could have said no, but we don't know what kind of authority apostles had at this time.
This controversy about circumcision seems to go on for a while, probably until the fall of the temple in 70 A.D., when the Jewish centrality of Christianity started to wane. Unfortunately, anti-Jewish feeling grew in some circles because the church became more Gentile and then more secularized, to the point that Constantine (how much we have to be thankful to him, NOT) divorced Easter from Passover so that it wouldn't have anything to do with Jews.
All that said, it just seems uncomfortable today to talk about this subject--the look of a man's sexual organ--so much. Not to be a prude, but I don't find find the subject of penises funny or appropriate for public conversations. We don't get that option, though. The hard thing is finding any equivalent today to draw a parallel. I have used "forced plastic surgery" or "skin whitening" to look like a dominant culture, but that is not a good alternative. Circumcision is done TO the Jewish infant and is not natural, really (although there are health benefits). Thankfully, the lesson of the New Testament is not to perform these rites; we just have to talk about it to make that point.
Paul was led by the Spirit and fully truthful when he wrote Scripture. Otherwise, I think he made mistakes, and I'm not in the camp that says he made no mistakes. Neither is Acts meant to be normative in everything we find there.
Let me add that a Bible teacher also has to address the issue of eunuchs.
It does make one wonder about the fascination and meaning with that body part in the Jewish culture, with one of the big obstacles for the early Christian being those who wanted to mess everything about grace up with this insistence on the circumcision rite being performed on grown men.
Thus, again, (as I post below) I was teaching Acts 16 this morning and we read that Paul circumcised Timothy (a grown man, and technically Jewish) but not others. (He does something similar in Acts 21 to appease some Jews, but it doesn't work and ends badly.) I questioned why Paul would do this after the Acts 15 council drew a line in the sand, but John Piper points out that Paul was not appeasing Jewish Christians (who would need to know better now) and that Timothy was Jewish. It also seems to me that Timothy was an adult and could have said no, but we don't know what kind of authority apostles had at this time.
This controversy about circumcision seems to go on for a while, probably until the fall of the temple in 70 A.D., when the Jewish centrality of Christianity started to wane. Unfortunately, anti-Jewish feeling grew in some circles because the church became more Gentile and then more secularized, to the point that Constantine (how much we have to be thankful to him, NOT) divorced Easter from Passover so that it wouldn't have anything to do with Jews.
All that said, it just seems uncomfortable today to talk about this subject--the look of a man's sexual organ--so much. Not to be a prude, but I don't find find the subject of penises funny or appropriate for public conversations. We don't get that option, though. The hard thing is finding any equivalent today to draw a parallel. I have used "forced plastic surgery" or "skin whitening" to look like a dominant culture, but that is not a good alternative. Circumcision is done TO the Jewish infant and is not natural, really (although there are health benefits). Thankfully, the lesson of the New Testament is not to perform these rites; we just have to talk about it to make that point.
Paul was led by the Spirit and fully truthful when he wrote Scripture. Otherwise, I think he made mistakes, and I'm not in the camp that says he made no mistakes. Neither is Acts meant to be normative in everything we find there.
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