September 11, 2012, here on slacktivist: The clobber verses vs. ‘the only thing that counts’
Paul, in particular, dealt extensively with the question of Bible-as-rulebook and found himself embroiled in some very contentious arguments with those who wielded clobber-verses against him, accusing him of violating the authori-tah of scripture. That passage quoted at the top of this post summarizes Paul’s response: “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
You may recognize that maneuver. It’s the same duplicitous, weaselly trick I’ve constantly employed here as an explanation for why “love your neighbor as yourself” trumps a half-dozen context-deprived clobber verses. I don’t regard it as duplicitous or weaselly myself, anymore than Paul did, but that’s how it always gets characterized by Team Authoritah — as a dodge, an evasion, a way of “playing fast-and-loose” with the Bible. Paul was quite familiar with that criticism because he was well acquainted with that team.
Actually, Paul was up against a much more formidable incarnation of Team Authoritah. The six-verse case against homosexuality is nowhere near as robust as the massive scriptural case for mandatory circumcision, but this modern reprise of the same clobber-verse argument takes the same form. The contemporary anti-gay argument is just a paler, thinner version of the anti-Gentile argument wielded by Paul’s sparring partners in the early proto-church.
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