Attending to the question of interpretation, I will be trying to tease out some of the relations between theology and law through the phrase, “letter and spirit.” The phrase was used most notably by Paul in II Corinthians 3:6 where he says “the letter kills but the spirit giveth life.” This became the proof-text for over 1200 years, from Origen to Luther, to ground biblical hermeneutics. The “letter” signified scripture and the “spirit” signified how to interpret it. The same phrase became the key to Pauline theology on the Law: for Luther, the “letter” means the law and the “spirit” means faith. So then the phrase plunges us into the deepest controversy for the last four hundred years on what Paul thinks about the law: questions about works-righteousness, faith-spirit, Judaism and Christianity. But that isn’t all, because ever since E. P. Sanders’ work in the 1970s on the first-century Jewish Palestinians, the whole question of Paul on the Law has been radically revised; Judaism in Paul’s day is now understood as covenanted, and obedience to the covenant is only a condition of entering the covenant rather than earning one that status. Now the gift of the covenant, grace, spirit is understood to be as much a part of Judaism as Christianity. How does the phrase inform law beyond religious law? Now when we distinguish the letter of the law from the spirit of the law, we typically refer to the distinction between a narrow application of rules—the letter, and an effort to reconstruct the intention behind those laws and to apply them to a specific circumstance—the spirit. And so the phrase from Paul can seem almost synonymous with the impulses of equity in law. How the “spirit and the letter” are deployed by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice demonstrates in surprising ways how the letter kills and the spirit gives life.