Christianity and Circumcision

Last updated on 23rd June 2002

It is, perhaps, surprising that circumcision is not required of Christian men. Christianity sprang, after all, out of the Judaic tradition, where ritual circumcision had been practised for about a thousand years before Christ. The traditional origin of Jewish circumcision is found in Genesis 17, where God says to Abraham: 'Every male among you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He that is eight days old among you shall be circumcised'

Jesus himself was circumcised according to Jewish tradition (Luke 2, 21). His Apostles were also all Jewish men and would have been circumcised.

In The Acts of the Apostles we read that St Paul and St Peter started converting Gentiles to Christianity. This then gave rise to a dispute about the need for circumcision of these converts. Acts 15,1 reads 'Some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved."

Following this a debate among the early Christians took place in Jerusalem. Acts 15,5-11 reads: 'But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up, and said, "It is necessary to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep the law of Moses." The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter, and after there had been much debate, Peter rose up and said to them, "Brethren, you know that in the early days God made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us; and he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith. Now therefore why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we shall be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will."

Evidently the debate went on for some time, and in the end St James sums up the outcome (v. 19) "My judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God."

It is interesting that St Peter describes circumcision as a yoke which they and their forefathers found hard to bear, indicating that there were at that time some Jews opposed to circumcision. He clearly realised that it would be an impediment to the conversion of adults who had not been circumcised. Nevertheless, in the following chapter we read of the unfortunate Timothy whom St Paul circumcised before taking him on a mission to preach Christianity. Timothy's father was a Greek though his mother was Jewish, and St Paul feared his preaching would not be acceptable to Jews unless he was circumcised. In his Epistles St Paul develops the idea of a metaphorical or spiritual circumcision, rather than a literal, physical circumcision.

Since then circumcision was never required of Christians until some American 20th century believers were influenced by SI McMillen, who published a book called "None of these Diseases" in 1963, claiming that the laws of Moses were a medical prescription handed down from God for the preservation of health. There is in fact no evidence that Jewish circumcision was ever intended to be carried out for health reasons, nor any evidence that circumcision promotes health. McMillan's book fitted in nicely, however, with the increasing medical ritual circumcision practised in USA in the 20th century.

Dr John Warren is chairman of NORM-UK and a consultant physician at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex