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{"id":18452,"date":"2016-10-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=198"},"modified":"2016-10-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T00:00:00","slug":"the-trap-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/10\/the-trap-of-law\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trap of Law"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

M<\/span>arjorie Garber (Shakespeare After All<\/em><\/a>, 300\u20132) nicely captures the Pauline resonances of the trial scene in Merchant of Venice<\/em>: \u201cShylock will provide a scale to weigh the pound of flesh, but not a surgeon to staunch the wound. He will, that is, provide the emblem of justice, the balances, or scales, but not the emblem of mercy. If Saint Paul\u2019s celebrated dictum \u2018the letter kills, but the spirit gives life\u2019 is seen to underpin this tension between Shylock and Portia, justice and mercy, it is all the more pertinent when restored to its context in 2 Corinthians, where Paul distinguishes between the New Testament and the Old Testament. God, he says, has made him and the other apostles \u2018ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life (2 Corinthians 3:6). By contrast, Moses \u2018put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished,\u2019 and \u2018until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament, which veil is done away with in Christ\u2019 (2 Corinthians 3:13\u201314).\u201d<\/p>\n

She notes the connection between the pound of flesh \u201cnearest to the heart,\u201d and Paul\u2019s \u201cfleshly tables of the heart.\u201d Ironically, Shylock insists \u201con literalizing what Paul, equally insistently, asserts to be a matter of figure.\u201d This means that \u201cShylock . . . is a bad reader; he reads the letter, not the spirit.\u201d Shakespeare could have footnoted Augustine\u2019s de doctrina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Shylock\u2019s literalistic insistence on the letter is a trap. The letter does indeed kill. The life of Shylock the Jew ends. For Shakespeare\u2019s original audience, though, this death by the letter would be seen as a step toward new life. Shylock the Jew dies in order to be raised as Shylock the Christian, as the old covenant killed in order to be raised up into a ministry of reconciliation. Bassanio chooses death voluntarily when he chooses the lead casket. Like Paul, Shylock is killed by the law. For both, death is the path to life.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"