Last time, we considered the sacramental economy in the period of the so-called “Law of Nature.” It is now our task to take up how that economy changed at the time of God’s covenant of circumcision with Abraham and then how it was once more changed by the promulgation of the Mosaic Law, which kept the covenant of circumcision but added other rites and ceremonies.
At the ratification of God’s covenant with Abraham, the “sacrament of nature” gave way to circumcision, but only partly so. It was not abrogated, for,
It is to be noted that for the heathen and the female children of the Israelites the economy of grace which existed in the status legis naturae [state of the law of nature] remained in force even after the proclamation of the law of circumcision.1
Why only heathen and female Israelites? For the “heathen” — by which Msgr. Pohle means believing non-Abrahamites who had true faith but were not bound to the covenant of circumcision — there was no other remedy for Original Sin. Female Israelites are deserving of special mention, too, because they were not to be circumcised. “Female circumcision” is a barbarism that never existed among the People of God, but was instituted among certain Muslims and others, predominantly, as I understand it, in Africa, but also in the Middle East and Asia. (It is not called for in the Koran and is far from universal among Muslims.) Because the Abrahamite faithful, bound to the rite of circumcision for their boys, would want also to sanctify their girls, the “sacrament of nature” would have continued among them, while the boys were now consecrated to God by the divinely instituted sacrament of the Abrahamic covenant.
Here are God’s words to Abraham:
Again God said to Abraham: And thou therefore shalt keep my covenant, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant which you shall observe, between me and you, and thy seed after thee: All the male kind of you shall be circumcised: And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, that it may be for a sign of the covenant between me and you. An infant of eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations: he that is born in the house, as well as the bought servant shall be circumcised, and whosoever is not of your stock: And my covenant shall be in your flesh for a perpetual covenant. The male, whose flesh of his foreskin shall not be circumcised, that soul shall be destroyed out of his people: because he hath broken my covenant. (Gen. 17:9-14)
Two things should be mentioned about the rite God gave to Abraham. (1) It is not the same as the procedure practiced by modern Jews, who, after Our Lord’s time, invented a more invasive procedure than what God gave our father, Abraham; and (2) it is not to be practiced by Christians. For Christians, to practice it for religious reasons is strictly forbidden as this is an implicit denial of Jesus Christ and His New Law, which fulfilled the covenant with Abraham and the Mosaic Law. Baptism is superior to circumcision as Jesus the Mediator of the New Law is superior to Abraham and Moses. As a medical procedure, circumcision is only rarely necessary, and is never necessary for prophylactic purposes on an infant. I would argue, for this reason, that elective neonatal circumcision constitutes the sin of mutilation. (These matters, admittedly controversial, are considered in my piece, Circumcision: An Acceptable Practice?)
Pope Innocent III taught that “…original sin was remitted by the mystery of circumcision, and the danger of damnation was avoided” (Denz. 410). While some older Church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers (St. Justin, St. Irenaeus of Lyon, Tertullian) saw circumcision only as an image of Baptism and a sign of the covenant and not a remedy for sin, other Fathers, like Saint Augustine and Saint Gregory the Great, taught what later scholastics held, namely, the identical doctrine taught by Pope Innocent III.2
The excellent Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology by Parente, Piolanti, and Garofalo, provides some useful information in its entry under “Circumcision”:
… After having required the patriarch to pledge a perfect life and complete adherence to Him, God established a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, in which Abraham obligated himself to offer exclusive cult to God, to be faithful in His service, and to bear the symbol of this covenant in his flesh: circumcision. On His part, God pledged to protect the patriarch, to give him a numerous offspring, to reserve to him the Messianic blessing and to give him the land of Canaan (Palestine) as his possession. Thus Abraham became “the friend” of God. This friendship aimed at re-establishing communion of man with God, broken by Adam’s guilt, and at a return to grace, which involves the remission of original sin. Circumcision in the Old Testament had an effect analogous to baptism in the organization established by Christ.
The efficacy of circumcision did not lie in the rite considered as a material action, but in its symbolism; and so, even in the ancient law, insistence was placed on the “circumcision of the heart,” i.e., on purity of intention and docility to the will of God (Deut. 10:16; 30:6). Circumcision was practiced on the infant after birth — eight days after, according to the custom — and the infant received its name on that occasion (Luke 2:21).
Circumcision with its relative moral obligations was necessary to be able to share in the blessing and promises made to Abraham. Carnal descent from the patriarch was not sufficient.3
As Genesis 17 relates, Abraham was ninety years old when he received the covenant and was himself circumcised (v. 24). His son, Ismael, was thirteen (v. 25), which likely explains why, among Muslims, circumcision is a puberty rite and is not performed on infants. The Arabs, be it recalled, are descended from Abraham through Ismael. The first child to be circumcised on the eighth day was Abraham’s child of election, Isaac. In modern times, the claim is often made that Vitamin K, which is essential for normal blood clotting, is at its height on the eighth day after a child’s birth. (Here it is on the page of a Maryland-based mohel — not that I’m recommending his services!) If this claim is true, which I am inclined to believe, it is an indication of God’s great mercy in instituting this Old-Testament sacrament to be performed on that day, to which Saint Thomas assigns mystical symbolism. Either way, vitamin K is often injected into newborns to assure that they do not bleed too much from the procedure.4
As noted by Parente, et alia, the most important effect of this sacrament of the Old Law was to establish “friendship” and “communion” between God and man, returning the circumcised to the grace that was lost in the Fall. While the rite was primarily a profession of faith (including, according to Aquinas, that the Christ would be born of Abraham’s seed), there was also a fitting moral reason that was peculiar to the affected organ. As Saint Thomas explained, circumcision “was ordained as a remedy for carnal concupiscence, which thrives principally in those members, by reason of the abundance of venereal pleasure” (ST IIIa, Q. 70, A. 3 ad 1).
We know that the sacraments of the New Law of Christ work ex opere operato (by the work performed) whereas our own prayers and meritorious good acts work ex opere operantis (by the work of the worker). (See Distinguishing Channels of Grace for more on this.) How did circumcision work? Rev. Dr. Ludwig Ott’s explanation is compelling:
Circumcision performed on young infants effected the inner sanctification neither ex opere operato as in Baptism nor merely ex opere operantis, i.e., not merely by reason of the faith of the representative of the recipient, but quasi ex opere operato. As an objective confession of faith in the coming Redeemer, it was for God the occasion of regularly bestowing the grace of sanctification. Cf. S. th. III 70, 4: “In circumcision grace was bestowed not in the power of the circumcision, but in the power of faith in the Passion of Christ, Whose sign circumcision was.”
Interestingly, the Scotists hold that circumcision worked ex opere operato, like a Christian sacrament. Msgr. Pohle contends that this contradicts Saint Paul’s express teaching in Sacred Writ as well as the consensus on the Fathers concerning the general inefficacy of the ceremonies of the Old Law. For his part, Msgr. Pohle agrees with Ott by placing between ex opere operato and ex opere operantis a “middle term” which he thus explains: “the rite of circumcision [is] merely … a “sign of faith,” to which regeneration is outwardly attached but which lacks the intrinsic power of effecting it.”5
What needs to be kept in mind amid these distinctions is that, aside from their being instituted directly by Our Lord Jesus Christ, what sets Christian sacraments off from their Old-Testament predessors is that the sacraments of the New Law are efficacious signs — that is, signs that effect (“make happen”) what they signify. By contrast, the sacraments of the Old Law did not have that “intrinsic power,” to use Msgr. Pohle’s words.
An important note needs to be made when considering circumcision in these days of hyper-ecumenism and religious indifferentism. Being a sacrament of the Old Law, it has expired. It is no longer of any effect, having been fulfilled in the greater reality of Baptism, which Saint Paul calls “the circumcision of Christ” (cf. Col. 2:11-12). Not only does circumcision not avail Christians unto grace and salvation; it does not avail Jews, either — nor anyone else, for that matter. The rites of the Old Law being prefigurative of Christ — that is, professing the supernaturally revealed faith suitable to those days that the Christ is yet to come — they cannot any more be valid, for He has come. The “faith” now expressed by circumcision is a merely human faith that is, moreover, false. The same applies to all the sacraments of the Old Law once these others were instituted in the days of Moses, who was the mediator of that Law.
And speaking of other sacraments of the Old Law of Moses, how many were there? Msgr. Pohle says “it is impossible to ascertain” that, but, he continues,
St. Thomas, with special reference to their character as types and patterns of the Sacraments of the New Testament, divides them into four categories: (a) Circumcision as the first and most necessary, and a pattern of Baptism; (b) Sacraments designed for the preservation and perfection of righteousness and to serve as figures of the Holy Eucharist, e.g., the eating of the Paschal lamb, the consumption of the loaves of proposition, and the so-called Eucharistic sacrifices [thanksgiving-offering (todah)], which were at the same time types of the Mass; (c) Sacraments instituted for the expiation of sins and the cure of legal uncleanness, such as the various purifications prescribed for the laity, the washing of hands and feet imposed on the Levites, etc. These were types of the Sacrament of Penance. (d) A fourth and last group had for its object the perpetuation of the Levitic priesthood and consisted of certain consecratory rites which typified the Sacrament of Holy Orders.6
Following Saint Thomas, Msgr. Pohle goes on to say that neither Confirmation, Extreme Unction, nor Matrimony have any equivalent in the Old Law. Why? Let us see how the Angelic Doctor answers that:
To the sacrament of Confirmation, which is the sacrament of the fulness of grace, there would be no corresponding sacrament of the Old Law, because the time of fulness had not yet come, since “the Law brought no man [Vulgate: ‘nothing’] to perfection” (Hebrews 7:19). The same applies to the sacrament of Extreme Unction, which is an immediate preparation for entrance into glory, to which the way was not yet opened out in the Old Law, since the price had not yet been paid. Matrimony did indeed exist under the Old Law, as a function of nature, but not as th76e sacrament of the union of Christ with the Church, for that union was not as yet brought about. Hence under the Old Law it was allowable to give a bill of divorce, which is contrary to the nature of the sacrament.7
The sacraments of the Old Law were “weak and needy elements” (Gal. 4:9), which “brought nothing to perfection” (Heb. 7:19), yet they had an important place in salvation history — pointing the way to faith in Jesus Christ and preparing the People of God for His blessed advent. Though we are those “upon whom the ends of the world are come” (I Cor. 10:11), we must not boast against the branches who were broken off that we might be grafted in (cf. Rom 11:18-19). We who live in the grace of the new and everlasting testament in Christ’s Precious Blood must look on those who practiced these anticipatory sacraments in the Old Testament truly as our elder brothers in the faith, for we are children of Abraham.
— Footnotes —
1. The Sacraments, a Dogmatic Treatise, Vol I. by the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Joseph Pohle, Ph.D., D.D., adapted and edited by Arthur Preuss, p. 22.
2. This paragraph is a summary of information found in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, by Rev. Dr. Ludwig Ott, p. 347.
3. Parente, Pietro; Piolanti, Antonio; and Garofalo, Salvatore, Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology, translated by Emmanuel Doronzo, O.M.I., S.T.D., Ph.D. (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1951) p. 50.
4. It seems that modern American medicine loves to stick lots of needles into newborns and perform other unnecessary procedures on them — especially little boys.
5. Op cit., p. 26.
6. Ibid., p. 27.
