Distinguished biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman certainly thinks so.

On the question of human sexuality (and homosexual practice in particular) he finds ‘texts of rigor’ such as Leviticus 18:22, 20:13 and Deuteronomy 23:1 to be incompatible with ‘texts of welcome’ such as Isaiah 56, Matthew 11:28–30, Galatians 3:28 and Acts 10.

One of the problems with Brueggemann’s position, as Ian Paul has pointed out, is that the supposed contradictions are not only between disparate parts of Scripture and different authors.  Rather, apparent tensions can be found within the writings of a single biblical author.

As Ian Paul observes:

‘It is the same Paul who wrote the text of ‘welcome’ in Gal 3.28 who also wrote the text of ‘rigor’ in 1 Cor 6.9, in which the term arsenokoites (otherwise unknown prior to Paul) is effectively a quotation of the Greek of Lev 20.13. The same Jesus who says ‘Come to me, all who are weary…’ also says ‘The road to life is hard and the gate is narrow, and those who find it are few’. And this continues to the final words of Scripture: the words of radically inclusive invitation in Rev 22.17 (‘Let anyone who is thirsty come and drink…’) follow on immediately from words of radical exclusion in Rev 22.15 (‘Outside are the dogs and the sexually immoral…’).’

Brueggemann’s answer is to postulate a sort of ‘canon within a canon’: to judge biblical texts by their faithfulness to ‘the gospel’.

It is not difficult to see that, in this approach, Scripture becomes subject to the tyrrany of the modern interpreter.  S/he defines ‘the gospel’, and includes or excludes biblical texts on the basis of this judgement, accepting or overruling as seems fit.  There then becomes an authority higher than that of Scripture – the authority of the modern reader.

I am reminded of the striking words of A.W. Tozer:

‘Let a man question the inspiration of the Scriptures and a curious, even monstrous, inversion takes place: thereafter he judges the Word instead of letting the Word judge him; he determines what the Word should teach instead of permitting it to determine what he should believe; he edits, amends, strikes out, adds at his pleasure; but always he sits above the Word and makes it amenable to him instead of kneeling before God and becoming amenable to the Word.’