Schaeffer writes:
“Every time Jesus mentioned the equivalent of a church tradition, the Torah, he qualified it with something like this: “The scriptures say thus and so, but I say . . .””
That’s not how it works. What Jesus actually says is, “You have heard it said... but I say...” — and the “you have heard it said” part is *tradition*, not scripture. Jesus is demanding that people pay more attention to what God actually said rather what some “important person” said about what God actually said. Often as not, he is challenging tradition that excused people from God’s clear command.
Jesus was urging people to go “back to the source” of the original scriptures, pretty much the exact opposite of what Schaeffer claims.
Let's take a look at your statement through the actual experience of one of the earliest christians.
By what principle ought one to read and interpret the Scriptures? It is a fact that a number of errors have had their origin in an inability to understand a sacred text in the right way.For example, many Jews have not believed in our Savior, because they have been attached to the literal meaning of the prophecies made about him and have not sen them physically fulfilled. They have not seen the prisoners set free, (Isa. 61:1) nor the city of God built in the way they imagined it, (Ezek. 48) nor the chariot cut off from Ephraim, nor the warhorse from Jerusalem, (Zech. 9:10) nor butter and honey being eaten and the good chosen without prior knowledge of evil or preference for it (Isa. 7:15).
So then the reason for so many mistaken ideas about God consists solely in the inability to interpret Scripture in a spiritual sense. It has been taken in its literal sense only.
Those who receive the Word, even the most literal-minded, know that some truths revealed in the sacred Books are full of mysteries. Wise and humble people recognize that they cannot explain them. What do we say, for instance, about the prophecies? They are packed full of obscure words. And who has not been struck by the unspeakable mysteries contained in the revelation made to John?
The literal-minded person finds edification in the sacred Books. He finds the bare bones, so to say of the Scriptures. But the person who has made some progress attains to the soul of the Scriptures. The one who is perfect, then, discovers the spiritual law.
Origen, c. 185-254