How closely should one adhere to scripture? To the letter or the essence?

Question

I refer to any scripture of anyone's faith, I would like to know the opinions of other faiths, is this not what this forum is for?

Answer 1

There is two parts to the Law of Moses or Gospel or any religion or belief system.

The Letter of the Law = Doing what is written down and not straying from it.
The Spirit of the Law = Staying within the guidelines but still the freedom to think for oneself.

Both = Letting the Letter of the give you instruction needed, and letting the spirit help you make proper choices.

Answer 2

One should adhere to the essence. Scripture is man's attempt to record his experiences with the Divine. In the case of the Bible, it has been taken through several different languages by translators who may or may not have known what they were doing, copied and recopied (each time with possible typos) before the printing press, and subjected to direct editing several times by those who thought they knew best for all of us.

Besides, Jesus himself condemned those who obeyed the letter but not the intent of the Law. Made some priests really unhappy. :)

Philosophically, one cannot write laws to cover every eventuality. But the essence can cover every situation because it is not rigid or static. Neither is life, so it works out well!

Answer 3

If you don't understand the essence, is it worth adhering to the letter?

Answer: YES! If you act obediently because of faith, that is a good deed and good deeds keep evil at bay in this world.

Answer 4

The Bible is full of metaphors. It seems that many haven't grasped this concept and adhere to the letter literally, which then devalues the essence.

Answer 5

I would guess that you are refering to The Bible when you say scripture... which Bible are you refering to?... there are many "translations" of the existing older texts... and hundereds of different "bibles" being published... and most of them have differences with the others...If you believe that The Bible is inerrant... which one is it?...I am of The True Christian Faith and I can not tell you which one is "inerrant"... I know that God led me to the King James that I use... but I also know that it is not inerrant....The Bible will not prove The Faith... nor will it prove God... but God will Prove His Word to all who honestly seek and are open to His leading through The Holy Spirit.

Answer 6

The letter kills, but the Spirit revives. We need to eat the Word of God as a bread, so that it becomes our essence. We always must to see if the light that is within us is not darkness.

Answer 7

in reality, this question is asking, should one adhere to the written word, or to how it has been revealed in the heart.

The way of the letter, is the way of the organized church, the way of laws and controlled dogma. The main goal of this path isn't the divine, but control of the human spirit.

The way of the heart, is the path of the mystic, to one who seeks to hear the voice of the divine in the heart. This path of the mystic is, to the path of the letter, the law, the way to losing control of their vassals.

When mystics seek truth, then the law gathers firewood, and oil.

Answer 8

Protestants claim the Bible is the only rule of faith, meaning that it contains all of the material one needs for theology and that this material is sufficiently clear that one does not need apostolic tradition or the Church’s magisterium (teaching authority) to help one understand it. In the Protestant view, the whole of Christian truth is found within the Bible’s pages. Anything extraneous to the Bible is simply non-authoritative, unnecessary, or wrong—and may well hinder one in coming to God.

Catholics, on the other hand, recognize that the Bible does not endorse this view and that, in fact, it is repudiated in Scripture. The true "rule of faith"—as expressed in the Bible itself—is Scripture plus apostolic tradition, as manifested in the living teaching authority of the Catholic Church, to which were entrusted the oral teachings of Jesus and the apostles, along with the authority to interpret Scripture correctly.

Paul illustrated what tradition is: "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. . . . Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed" (1 Cor. 15:3,11). The apostle praised those who followed Tradition: "I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you" (1 Cor. 11:2).

The first Christians "devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching" (Acts 2:42) long before there was a New Testament. From the very beginning, the fullness of Christian teaching was found in the Church as the living embodiment of Christ, not in a book. The teaching Church, with its oral, apostolic tradition, was authoritative. Paul himself gives a quotation from Jesus that was handed down orally to him: "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35).

This saying is not recorded in the Gospels and must have been passed on to Paul. Indeed, even the Gospels themselves are oral tradition which has been written down (Luke 1:1–4). What’s more, Paul does not quote Jesus only. He also quotes from early Christian hymns, as in Ephesians 5:14. These and other things have been given to Christians "through the Lord Jesus" (1 Thess. 4:2).

Fundamentalists say Jesus condemned tradition. They note that Jesus said, "And why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?" (Matt. 15:3). Paul warned, "See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ" (Col. 2:8). But these verses merely condemn erroneous human traditions, not truths which were handed down orally and entrusted to the Church by the apostles. These latter truths are part of what is known as apostolic tradition, which is to be distinguished from human traditions or customs.

What Fundamentalists and Evangelicals often do, unfortunately, is see the word "tradition" in Matthew 15:3 or Colossians 2:8 or elsewhere and conclude that anything termed a "tradition" is to be rejected. They forget that the term is used in a different sense, as in 1 Corinthians 11:2 and 2 Thessalonians 2:15, to describe what should be believed. Jesus did not condemn all traditions; he condemned only erroneous traditions, whether doctrines or practices, that undermined Christian truths. The rest, as the apostles taught, were to be obeyed. Paul commanded the Thessalonians to adhere to all the traditions he had given them, whether oral or written.


Without the Catholic Church’s teaching authority, we would not know with certainty which purported books of Scripture are authentic. If the Church revealed to us the canon of Scripture, it can also reveal to us the "canon of Tradition" by establishing which traditions have been passed down from the apostles. After all, Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church (Matt. 16:18) and the New Testament itself declares the Church to be "the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).

Answer 9

To the letter caused death... even the bible says so. That's the problem with fundies... they try to insist it be kept to the letter.

Answer 10

depends on the topic. if you can live to the essence on everything, then you should still be in pretty good shape.