Society & Culture

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In the latter half of Romans 2, the apostle Paul discussed the nature of true Jewishness. He stated that people were not to be reckoned as Jews on the basis of outward conditions such as circumcision. Instead, Paul spoke of a circumcision of the heart that made them Jews inwardly. He actually went further and stated that an uncircumcised person who fulfilled the righteousness of the law could be reckoned as circumcised.

In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul also wrote along these lines. Chapter 3 is devoted to a warning against false teachers that Paul labeled as dogs, evil workers, and the “mutilation” (3:2). The last term is a pun: mutilation (katatomē) plays on the word circumcision (peritomē). It is an insulting way of referring to teachers who tried to persuade Christian Gentiles that circumcision was essential to their Christian lives. In order to bring out the force of this pun, the New American Standard Bible translates katatomē as false circumcision. But Paul went even further: with ironic flair, he referred to these Judaistic teachers as dogs, a term that was typically applied to Gentiles by Jews. Clearly, Paul did not think much of these teachers or their Judaizing teachings.

Paul insisted that if anyone could have confidence in the flesh, he could. He even recounted his qualifications: he, too, was circumcised, an Israelite, a Benjamite, a Hebrew, a Pharisee, a persecutor of the church, and a blameless man as far as the law was concerned (3:3-6). These external qualifications, however, were exactly what Paul had to abandon for the sake of Christ.