Systematic Theology -- Church

Circumcision

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Circumcision

Genre: Speech

Track: 03

Dictation Name: 03 Circumcision

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

O Lord, our God, upon whose shoulders are the government of all things, who dost make all things, dost govern all things, and who shall bring all things to their destined end. We thank thee that thou art on the throne. Give us joy in thy government, confidence in thy victory, and make us, through Jesus Christ, ever faithful, filled with a holy boldness, that we may be more than conquerors through Jesus Christ, our Lord. In his name we pray. Amen.

Our text this morning is from Genesis 17:1-14. We have been studying the doctrine of the church, beginning at the beginning of scripture, and we come now to the subject of circumcision, very important in the doctrine of the church. “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.

And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

All human covenants throughout history have been marked by some external sign, by some insignia worn by the members thereof to signify that they are set apart in a particular covenant. The covenant can even involve a difference in dress. For example, in Scotland, clansmen were covenanted one to another. As a result, they began to distinguish themselves in one way after another to make their covenant visible, and finally it developed even into their garb, so that each clan had its own tartan.

Now, circumcision is the sign of the covenant. It is external but not normally visible. It is a sign to God. Only the act of circumcision is public. Circumcision is common to various cultures in various parts of history, but with a dramatic difference. No where has any anthropologist been able to find any evidence of infant circumcision. The Bible stipulates that it is to be on the eighth day. In every other culture where circumcision appears, it is performed on adults. This is an important fact, because in all these cultures where circumcision appears as a covenantal sign for a tribe, or a race, or a people, it is a voluntary sign, but infant circumcision denies the voluntary nature of man’s salvation. It is God who establishes the covenant with man. It is God who chooses us. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, says the Lord.” A babe of eight days cannot make a choice. Thus, salvation and the covenant both are all of grace.

We are further told at the time of the making of this covenant, that Abraham’s name was given to him. Previously, it was Abram. Before that, when God called him, we do not know his name. The Bible does not tell us. I have pointed out on other occasions, that in the Bible, names normally were identifications. They described a man. So that a man’s name could change more than once during his lifetime. The parents might give him a name, but other people might give him another name by which he would be known if his character did not fit the parental name. Before God’s calling, what Abram’s name was, we do not know, but God called him and named him Abram, a strange name, because it means “A father of many,” and Abram was childless. It took a great deal of courage for Abram to bear that name. It took faith. After all, if he called himself Abram and introduced himself to people as he went into Palestine, people would say, “Oh Abram, father of many. How many children to you have?”

“Well, none yet.”

They surely must have smiled at that, and laughed behind his back, the fact that Abram could field a few hundred fighting men kept them from being too vocal about their amusement, and now, God says, “I am changing your name. You are going to be called Abraham, father of a great multitude.” So that Abraham was asked, when he was called, to walk by faith. Faith in God and faith in the promises of God, and now, that faith is stepped up. He is to be a father of a great multitude. He is given a prophetic name, a name that is going to describe his future, and the covenant is made inclusive of his seed.

With Noah, when God established a covenant with him, the covenant sign was a different one. Now, with Abraham, it is circumcision. With Noah, it was the rainbow, because, as scripture tells us very plainly, the covenant with Noah was not with Noah personally. It was with the earth, with the whole of the globe, the animals, the human beings, and all, and God says in Genesis 9:11-13, “And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.”

In other words, the earth is to be spared total judgment until the end, until the Second Coming. So, the covenant sign with Noah is a reminder to the earth of God’s covenant. It is a sign, but the covenant with Abraham is limited to a people. It is a covenant of a different sort. It could very easily lead, as indeed it did, to a racial pride. We are Abraham’s seed, and so God gave to them a sign to indicate what the covenant was about. It was circumcision. This sign strikes at all confidence in generation. What it says is that it is not in generation, but in re-generation alone that there is any hope for man, and therefore, with circumcision, which was in a sense, a symbolic castration, man had to confess there was no hope in himself nor in his progeny, in his seed. The hope was only in God.

As a couple of generations or so ago, Gerhardis Vos commented, “Human nature is unclean and disqualified in its very source. Sin consequently is a matter of the race, and not of the individual only. Circumcision teaches that physical descent from Abraham is not sufficient to make true Israelites. The uncleanness and disqualification of nature must be taken away. Dogmatically speaking, therefore, circumcision stands for justification and regeneration, plus sanctification.” Vos stated it very, very aptly and ably. This is the meaning of circumcision. It is the sign of the covenant. It is a sign that we trust not in ourselves for salvation, but in God himself.

Now, baptism is the successor to circumcision as the sign of the covenant, and so baptism also signified not that we save ourselves, but that it is God who saves us. Abraham was named at his calling. He was renamed at the time of his circumcision, and there is no doubt that God explained to him what circumcision meant, even though we are not told here, because we find immediately throughout the rest of scripture that there is an understanding of the meaning of circumcision. Moses, for example, speaks of it repeatedly, making clear that it signified the salvation of God, and how it is not man who can save himself, but only the Lord. In a number of texts, for example, Leviticus 26:41, Deuteronomy 10:16, Deuteronomy 36. This meaning is set forth, as well as in Jeremiah and in Ezekiel, and certainly Paul makes extensive use of the meaning of circumcision.

It is interesting to note, by the way, that circumcision was practiced on the eighth day. In the early church until the time of Cyprian in the 4th century, baptism was on the eighth day, because they saw it as related integrally with circumcision, and it was only at the Counsel of Carthage in Cyprian’s day that churchmen struck down the eighth day provision, partly because of their hostility to the Jews.

At any rate, the doctrine of baptismal regeneration revives an ancient Israelite heresy which gives power to the rite, to the ceremony, rather than to the Lord. The covenant act does not save us. It indicates that we trust in God’s salvation. The presentation of the child for circumcision, and subsequently of baptism, is a confession of the priority of God in salvation, that salvation is by sovereign grace. It is entirely by God. To present a child is to affirm that God only can save a man. It is an affirmation of the sovereignty of God in election.

Moreover, it is also a confession, that what we are, all that we have, tithing and our children, belong to the Lord. Hanna expressed this faith clearly in taking the child Samuel to the sanctuary and saying, “For this lad I prayed, and the Lord has granted me what I prayed him for. I have therefore handed him (Samuel) back to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is returned to the Lord.” Now, this is what circumcision is about. It is what infant baptism is about. It is also a promise to rear our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It is a declaration that God’s gracious covenant with us is binding upon us and upon all our household, including our children. We bind ourselves in this covenant act, and our infants to obedience to God’s law word.

Then, furthermore, circumcision, we as well as baptism in the early church, was and should always be a family act. The family is a covenant institution. It is the basic covenant institution, and God’s calling was to Abraham, not to an institution. The church was established out of a family, to become the family of God and the basic unit in the church must always be the family. It is significant that some churches which still have an old fashioned character do number their membership, not in terms of individuals, but in terms of families. This is in line with the ancient practice of Israel and the Christian church. Today, we have made baptism a church rite and some groups forbid it outside of the church, and this is a sad fact. It is not surprising, as a result, that the Christian training of the child has been left to the church, when it should be primarily the responsibility of the family, so that we have seen a transgression here on the primacy of the family in this act. No less than the Old, the New Testament stresses the covenantal teaching duty of all parents.

One of the sad facts of the last century, or more, almost two centuries, is that the evolutionary doctrine first formulated by Hegel in philosophy, and then by Darwin in biology, has crept into our thinking even where we do not believe in it. As a result, the family is so commonly seen as though it were something primitive on the stage of history, a lower level, and we have advanced above the family and we have now the state and other institutions. This kind of thinking is altogether wrong. The family is still God’s basic institution.

Now, to sum up some of the implications of what circumcision tells us, one of the things that we need to stress is that because circumcision was a covenant act and because the covenant act was initiated by God, who came to Abraham and said, “I make a covenant with thee. I called you. I now establish, in greater fullness, my covenant with thee,” the initiative was entirely of God.

As a result, this plainly speaks of the doctrine of sovereign grace. It is God that saves us, not we ourselves. It indicates moreover that, for any relationship to God, there must be a covenant, and it is given by God. The church is a covenant institution. It is, as people in the Old Testament and the early church saw, a necessary institution. Today, people see the state as a necessary institution, but the church? Well, you can take it or leave it, so that we no longer see the church as a necessary institution. Now, one of the tragedies of the history of the church is that seeing the church as a necessary institution, people were led step by step to see it as a coercive institution. You had to belong to the church. Now, there’s a difference between the church being a necessary institution because God so declares it, and being a coercive institution. Medicine may be good for me, but I may not choose to take it. If I refuse, I pay the consequence if that medicine is necessary for my health. The church is a necessary institution, but not a coercive one. When it became a coercive institution, you had what you had in the Medieval church. You had to be a member of the church. You had the same thing in many of the Reformation churched. In England, for example, if you were an Englishman, you were automatically a citizen or a subject of the king of England, and you were a member of the Church of England whether you liked it or not. That was a coercive, not a necessary relationship.

Very, very rightly, a movement began in rebellion against this, spearheaded especially in this country by Isaac Backus, one of the great figures in American history and too little appreciated, the real father of the Baptist churches, although very few Baptists know about his now. Isaac Backus was a very great man, and he attacked this whole concept of a coercive church, as hostile to the very idea of the faith, and his influence has prevailed with every church in the United States, even though Isaac Backus has been largely forgotten, although in a very real sense, he is one of the founding fathers of this country, very, very important in the 1760’s and 1770’s.

However, a mistake that people have made now has been to swing from the doctrine of a coercive church to a voluntary church, which means you can take it or leave it, that man’s free will is going to determine whether there is a church or not, and man, by his act, chooses Christ when Christ says, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.”

Circumcision is a witness against this, a witness to sovereign grace. It is interesting that we have no history of Abraham before his calling. We are not told anything about Abraham except where God found him and called him, so we know nothing about Abraham before that day. Our standing, like Abraham, is in terms of God’s calling, God’s choosing, God’s love, God’s grace to us, and circumcision witnesses to this fact. It does not mean that we do nothing. We do. When our salvation is of God, it is his sovereign grace that does it. We respond to it. We rejoice in it. We believe in him and we obey him, but while conversion can involve man’s responsive act, the work of a pastor or an evangelist, regeneration is entirely the work of God. Circumcision is a witness to this fact. Let us pray.

We thank thee, our Father, that thou, having saved us will do yet more and care for us. We therefore come to cast our every care upon thee who carest for us. Give us grace day by day to come to thee, to confess all our needs, our fears, our cares and troubles, and to walk away knowing thy love, thy sufficiency, and thy sovereign care{?}. We pray for everyone here, those of our number who are absent, for all our loved ones, and we commit unto thee all our burdens, our hopes, and our fears. Work in us that which is well pleasing in thy sight. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] You mentioned that the baptism {?} circumcision was really family-oriented. How does that take effect practically speaking? Who should baptism be performed by and so on?

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good question. Today, baptism is normally performed by a pastor, which is well and good, because it puts it in terms of the covenant family, the church, which we have to see first and foremost as a family, not as an institution, you see. Our view had become institutionalized, so that we see the church in terms of officers, and we have people, for example, who will say, “If there are no elders and deacons, an organized body, there is no church,” and our Lord says, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” and where Christ is, there is the church, his body. Now, we have to see the church primarily as a family rather than an institution. It is also an institution, but it is first a family. Hence, in the scriptures, the need of caring one for another is specified. We are told that anyone who does not care for his own, does not provide for them, and so on, has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. So says Paul.

So, a family supports itself and takes care of its needy members, its sick members. The church must do so, and the early church did, and they were less equipped to do it than the church is today. So, in one way or another, the church was to be a family. Now, we need to restore the family emphasis to the church as a body, and then work to strengthen the family within the church, the blood family. This means that (we’ll come to this very shortly) every man must see himself and be trained to see himself as an elder, with a governmental function, the key governmental function in God’s plan, so that when he presents his child for baptism, he does not say, “Okay, my child is baptized. Now let the Sunday School take care of his Christian upbringing.” That’s a denial of the baptismal vows. The family must see itself as the primary teaching institution. So, it is the parents who take the vows. Therefore, it’s the parents’ responsibility, and we need to stress that aspect of it.

Now, what I have said today has been said also from the Baptist perspective very powerfully by David Kingdon. David Kingdon, in his book, I believe, Children of Abraham is the title, has also dealt with the issue of baptism in terms of the covenant, and it is the best study of the subject in our time. Now, there are points where I disagree with Kingdon, but it is a classic work. Does that help explain the meaning? Another question or comment? Yes?

[Audience] Is there the same feeling, like baptism, that communion should also not be held except in a church, or connected to a church?

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are many who say there should be no communion service outside of the church. Others feel that it is entirely proper, for example, to take communion to the sick or the dying, so there is a disagreement there, too. Others say it can only be done if there are others present. For example, an elder, or a church officer, or some of the members are also present when it is served. So, that’s another subject but we won’t go into that now. Yes?

[Audience] What I hear you saying is Roger Williams has gotten so much recognition that the Baptists.

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good question. Roger Williams has been widely regarded as the founder of the Baptist church in this country, and Williams was not properly a Baptist. In fact, he called himself at the end a seeker, but Roger Williams, in some respects, is a person who is more agreeable to modern liberals, because of a few points of agreement with him. He agreed with the Baptist position on his hostility to a coercive church. At that point there is a coincidence, but I think the determining force in the development and growth of the Baptist churches was really Isaac Backus. Yale University Press has brought out his works, and he is beginning to be recognized now by scholars. Alan Heimert, previously in his study that, I believe, Harvard University Press published, The American Mind, called attention to the importance of Heimert at the critical period of American history, in the 60’s and 70’s, of the 1700’s. Yes?

[Audience] On another subject if I may, you’ve spoken of the government based on tears, or triangle of sevens. Seven people {?} a leader, and so on, on up. That sounds like a republic to me, but yet, looking back at the Jewish history as we have it in the book, they had kings, and typical of dictatorships, I think is at about 135 kings, something like that, and I think that only three or four of them were good kings. The rest of them hurt, of course, their own people.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The biblical pattern of government is by tens, and elders over tens, fifties, hundreds, and so on. Now, this pattern was too seldom observed by Israel and subsequently Judah. When they decided to go into a monarchy, God said to Samuel, who was very upset by it and saw it as a rejection of his leadership, “Samuel, they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me that I should not rule over them.” The monarchy was a disaster for both Israel and Judah. However, the rule by elders persisted, except on the top level, so that the eldership took care of local rule, predominantly, all through the period of the kings, and was responsible for what stability there was in Israel and in Judah, most of the time. So, we see the monarchy coming in at the top, but the older and more, we would say, republican type of government persisting on the local and tribal level.

[Audience] I have in mind seven, and you say ten. I wonder where that came from.

[Rushdoony] Well, there was a counsel of seventy at the top, later known as the Sanhedrin, but it was in terms of one head over ten families, then another over fifty, hundred, thousand, and so on up until you had seventy at the top. That pattern persisted into Christian Europe for some centuries, and originally, as I have pointed out, the College of Cardinals was made up of seventy elders, laymen, but that lost its power centuries ago, although the cardinals were still laymen up until the last couple of centuries. Cardinal Rishlu{?}, for example, was not a priest, as I recall it. Is that right, Douglas? Yes. And that was true of Mazaran{?}, was it not? Yes.

[Audience] Never really under {?} control.

[Rushdoony] They were civilians controlling vast segments of the country and of the church.

[Audience] {?} the Baptists and the Backus in the United States, I don’t know whether I’ve just forgotten this, but was the root of that still back into the Anabaptists of the Reformation, or was it a break from it?

[Rushdoony] At the time of the Reformation, you had three groups in Europe. You had Catholics, you had Protestants, and you had Anabaptists. The Anabaptists were, in part, a people with deep roots in the Middle Ages. They were, in part, heavily influenced by the Reformation. They covered a great variety of movements which are lumped together in that one term. For example, one of the Anabaptist groups still surviving is the Quaker group. Now, the Quakers believed that everyone had an inner light, a piece of God, some inner deity, or divinity, and all you had to do was to be quiet and let that come out, or sometimes as it came out, you started to shake and go into the jerks, or whatever, and that’s why they got the name “Quakers.” Now, they were clearly heretical. They were not within the orbit of either the Reformation or Catholicism. You had a number of groups at the time that were far out, off-beat groups. You had others like the Mennonites who strongly advocated a non-coercive church, and were one of the first groups to do so. The Mennonites, in this respect, have had an influence on this country, and on the Baptists and others. The Baptist movement, however, in this country, was less related to the Anabaptists than it was to the Puritans. It was a break-away from the Puritan groups.

Any more questions or comments?

[Audience] {?} on the nature of circumcision was that it was really {?} sanctification which {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, Vos’s quotation, “Dogmatically speaking,” Vos said, “therefore, circumcision stands for justification and regeneration, plus sanctification.” Now, what it represents, according to Vos, is that it represents first, the sovereignty of God in regeneration. It is entirely of God. It also represents the fact that our justification is of God, so that both of these are by sovereign grace. The third, sanctification, that the beginning of sanctification in us is God’s work through the indwelling Spirit. So that circumcision does not necessarily do these things, but it stands for the sovereignty of God in all these things.

Well, let us bow our heads now for prayer as we conclude.

Dismiss us, our Father, with thy blessing, prosper us in thy service and make us ever joyful in thee. In Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape