Clobbering back with the Clobber texts:
Taking the Bible Seriously - Are There Clobber Texts in the Bible?
Rev. Dr. Thomas Hanks

Part 3:  
The New Testament:  Beginning With Jesus, Not Paul

Jesus and Paul
JESUS AND PAUL

    In the last two centuries many scholars have sought to drive a wedge between Jesus and
    Paul. Often Paul has been portrayed as betraying Jesus' radical teaching about liberation,
    justice and love, and turning Christianity into a narrow, dogmatic sect characterized by bigotry
    against women, slaves and people of color. Most recently traditionalists find themselves as
    strange "bedfellows" with certain critics of Paul: each seeks to prove that Paul condemns
    "homosexuals." But traditionalists do so to justify their own bigotry, while some extreme critics
    of Paul seek to discredit the apostle. The fundamental question, then, is whether Paul stands
    in basic continuity with Moses' and Jesus' proclamation of liberation for the oppressed -- or
    must we really lay at the Apostle's door the blame for centuries of faggot-burning, gay
    bashing, suicides of homosexual adolescents, etc.

    Paul, in fact, is the New Testament figure whose lifestyle most closely approximates that of
    Jesus himself: each abstained from wealth and marriage, was noted for close male
    friendships, and promoted mission work mainly by means of same-sex pairs. The major
    modern study on pauline psychology concludes that Paul was in fact a repressed homosexual
    -- for which conclusion psychological studies find much in support and nothing against, except
    traditional prejudices (Gerd Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology;
    Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987:26).

    In the pauline letters we find an entire half chapter arguing strenuously that women must
    always have their heads covered in a Christian worship service (1 Corinthians 11:1-16), as
    well as a command that women remain silent in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35) and never
    have authority over men or teach them (1 Timothy 2:11-14). Slave owners in the last century
    could seize on the entire book of Philemon, plus apparently explicit commands in Ephesians,
    Colossians and 1 Peter, to rationalize their cruel racism. However, to clobber homosexuals,
    traditionalists can find in Paul only two verses in Romans and a couple of obscure/ambiguous
    words in two vice lists. As in the case of the Hebrew Scriptures (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13), this is
    an exceedingly slender basis for such a bloated modern prejudice.

    More moderate traditionalists, who now oppose slavery and accept equality and ordination for
    women, may be commended for their belated enlightenment in these areas, but hardly for
    their coherence in interpreting Paul's teaching: the pauline texts regarding women (and
    slavery) have required far more interpretive ingenuity and breathtaking hermeneutical
    acrobatics than anything gay apologists have ever attempted in their efforts to exorcise the
    purported demon of Paul's homophobia. Like those who use Leviticus to promote the death
    penalty for gay males (but not lesbians), traditionalists who cite Paul in order to oppose
    liberation for oppressed slaves, women and homosexuals are consistent--but consistently
    opposed to the liberating message of Moses, Jesus and Paul. If God has indeed in some way
    inspired the Biblical texts, it was to open our minds not to close them, as Jesus himself made
    clear (Luke 24:45). There is no virtue in being "consistent" in cruelty and bigotry!
 
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