Quaker writings (eg Penington) often speaks of "forms" and how things once "of the Spirit" degenerate into hollow or rigid forms.  The Balby letter, after laying out what seem to be some fairly rigid rules about how to do things warns Friends about accepting these as "forms" although apparently exhorting them to accept these as something else.  Mostly we understand this talk of forms in terms of ritual, empty ritual, the going through the motions, even with the best of intentions, rather than living the experience that the ritual (the form) is intended to be.

 

I found an intereting example of this in regared to the meaning of "The Law" as that phrase is used in Psalm 1.

                               ²But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

"the law," in my Hebrew-Greek Key Word Bible, is designated with the number 8451 and is, in the Hebrew, Torah.  And exerpt from the discussion of this word is:

                "So Torah was much more than a law or set of rules.  It was not to be perceived as restrictions but the very means by  which one could reach a spiritual ideal.  If Israel would keep the Torah, then Israel would be kept safe.  However, the people came to understand it as something which was imposed for its own sake rather than what God intended them to become."

The Law, once seen as a spirit filled way, becomes the form that Jesus condemns in his day.  He does not condemn the law, but the way it is responded to, the practice it has become.  For in the sermon on the mount he says:

¹⁷Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 

    
   ¹⁸For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.  

   
   ¹⁹Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but

whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 

    
   ²⁰For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom

of heaven.

 

It is not the observance of the Parisees, the going through the motions, the adherance to the form, that would lead to the entrance into heaven.  It was the righteousness, the product of the The Law, the product of actually living The Way. This is what he came to fulfill.

 

5:13:57 AM