Reveling in romance - Song of Songs 2:8-13; Living by the Word - Column

Christian Century, August 10, 1994 by Martin Copenhaver

NESTLED BETWEEN the ponderous pronouncements of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah's ringing calls to repentance is a little book that just won't behave. The Song of Songs (also known as the Song of Solomon) is an ode to the joys of erotic love. It is so giddy with the intoxicating charms of sensual love that, like young lovers kissing in a public place, it seems not to care who else is around or what they might think of such carrying on. The Song is composed of the love songs sung by a man and a woman who can see only each other.

But see each other they do. The lovers linger over every inch of each other in voluptuous celebration, savoring all the physical characteristics of the beloved. It is almost enough to get the Bible banned from public libraries. If young adolescents ever happened upon this torrid little book, they might begin to read the Bible with flashlights under their covers at night.

It is little wonder, then, that the Song of Songs almost didn't make it into the canon. Elsewhere in the Bible human sexuality is viewed as something that must be carefully governed. But here the cup of love overflows. There is no indication in the verses of these love songs that the rapturous lovers are married, although some interpreters have conjectured that they are engaged, just to make an honest man and woman of them.

The Song of Songs doesn't even have the decency to mention God. Not once. So some interpreters, stuck with this book that could melt a Puritan winter, have tried to make of it an allegory, the most pedantic of all literary forms, just to bring it back in line. Many through the centuries have read it as an allegory for Christ's love for the church or for the individual Christian. St. Bernard of Clairvaux followed this line of interpretation in 86 sermons on the Song of Songs, a series that covered only two chapters and three verses. Eighty-six sermons can take the joy out of any subject, but one can't help wondering if the saint protesteth too much. Even after such thorough allegorization one cannot escape the impression that the author of the Song of Songs actually was doing what he appeared to be doing, and what more straitlaced interpreters seem loath to admit he was doing--namely, celebrating human love with poetry, reveling in romance and sexuality.

Those who are aware of the ways our culture makes an idol of romantic love and celebrates lust (which is romance's cruder expression) may be uncomfortable with the Song of Songs. But in its context as scripture this book is not permitted to roam through the imagination unchaperoned. This unbridled expression of romantic love is flanked by the likes of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah and surrounded by other scriptural witnesses that, when considered together, remind us that romance is wonderful but not the only game in town.

Were it not for the Song of Songs we might conclude that we have to choose between a culture that understands only romance and a faith that leaves no room for romance. The presence of the Song of Songs in the Bible reminds us that we can have God, fidelity, all the higher expressions of love, and still have our romance too.

Encountering these love songs in the pages of the Bible reminds me of the time when, as a teenager, I discovered ardent letters written by my grandparents when they were in the throes of young love. The discovery completed my picture of them. They were real people after all, animated by the kind of impulses and yearnings I knew quite well. These dignified and upright people--who before my discovery I could only imagine going to bed fully clothed--also had a love for one another that was as hungry and tumultuous as the sea. And as their lives demonstrated, passionate love for another person need not eclipse God but can enlarge a life in ways that make room for God to be manifest--something I might have missed if those letters had remained undiscovered and my picture of my grandparents had remained incomplete.

We are often reminded that the Greeks had a number of words for the single English word love. There is the eros of lovers, the philia of friends, the agape of self-giving. From this we might assume that the Greeks knew more about love than we do. But there are other times when we can see that all forms of love spring from the same source. Perhaps that is why love poetry was never purely secular for Israel and why Jewish and Christian interpreters found God looming in the midst of this romantic revelry. So even though God is not mentioned in the Song of Songs and even though we should resist making it a strict allegory, the presence of God does seem to pulse through the songs' romantic imagery. The ebullient springs of romantic love can be traced back to their source in God, even if not all lovers are inclined to do so.

To be in love with someone is to find your whole being tied up with the beloved, to want to be wherever the beloved is, to want good things for him or her. You can no more forget the one you love than you could forget your own name or forget that you are alive. No one else will do. You want to share yourself, all of yourself, with the beloved, and you want all of him or her in return. Separation is restless sorrow. In reunion the world seems complete again.