Status Updates From Dialogue with Trypho (Selec...

The first parts were more interesting, but still, not a bad book at all.

"Moreover, the fact that females cannot receive circumcision of the flesh shows that circumcision was given as a sign, not as an act of justification. For God also bestowed on women the capability of performing every good and virtuous act."
How, then, did circumcision single the Jews out for destruction?

The way out, of course, is that salvation is not to be regarded as mechanistic. God can save the unbaptised and the uncircumcised if He wants. Sertillanges talked about the necessity of baptism for salvation, and he made it clear that while God desires it, He is not bound by it.

"For if, as you claim, circumcision had been necessary for salvation, God would not have created Adam uncircumcised; nor would he have looked with favor upon the sacrifice of the uncircumcised Abel, nor would he have been pleased with the uncircumcised Enoch, who was seen no more, because God took him."
The same argument might be applied to baptism, in a sense, but can be refuted then. Overall, it is good.

"“As I already explained,” I answered, “it is because circumcision is not essential for all men, but only for you Jews, to mark you off for the suffering you now so deservedly endure."
Doubtful. The suffering could be inflicted without the circumcision. It makes more sense from a historical perspective, given that the circumcised were not allowed to enter Jerusalem. But Justin Martyr extrapolates too much from that.

"We, too, would observe your circumcision of the flesh, your Sabbath days, and, in a word, all your festivals, if we were not aware of the reason why they were imposed upon you, namely, because of your sins and your hardness of heart."
Quite different from Origen, who said that the Jews used to be a virtuous people.

"The soul itself either is life or it possesses life. If it is life, it would cause something else to exist, not itself, just as motion causes something other than itself to move. Now, no one would deny that the soul lives; and if it lives, it does not live as life itself, but as a partaker of life. But, that which partakes of anything is different from that of which it partakes."