***
A: Given that Jesus makes a claim to our lives, asking us to enter into a love relationship with him, what we see in Song of Songs is that initially, the Beloved is unready to accept her Lover - she fails to open the door. This isn't a matter of opening the door to a one night stand, but to a lifelong relationship. The result of the Beloved not opening the door to the Lover is she is lost, looking for him, and receives a good beating. The stakes are higher if we reject Jesus: he says that "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." (John 3:36)
But why is this the case? Why does God's wrath fall on anyone if He really is a loving God? Can't he just allow us to get along as we deem fit? Shouldn't the Lover sort himself out if the Beloved wants to go solo? The answer is that crimes deserve punishment - and we have committed crimes against God by rejecting his rightful authority over our lives, whether we resent this statement or not. And that God is just, and cannot let these crimes go unpunished. In His mercy, however, we are given a choice - between either:
1) following Jesus, and being made acceptable to God by Jesus' paying for our crimes dearly - his death on a cross - or
2) rejecting Jesus, and rejecting God.
Coming back to Song of Songs, it is clear that if we seek Jesus he will rescue us from paying the penalty for our crimes against God, even as the Lover arrives in splendour in Chapter 6 - no matter how many times we turn away or are too hesitant, if we seek Him He will save us.
On a final note, and returning to the earlier mentioned issue of erotic love, some recurring themes in the book should be noted. In chapters 2:7, 3:5, and again in 8:4, there is this warning:
"Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires."
> I trust I do not need to elaborate on the symbolism of the
...passage here (there is none). Rather, this is a clear warning that erotic love is not something to be entered into lightly; this Song is no longer a hedonistic celebration of 'love' - we are not told to lay off "until WE so desire" but rather, until love does.
So: What does God have to do with sex? It is easy to believe 'Nothing' is the answer, that God is too Holy and Pure for sex, and man should make up his or her own mind to celebrate it or not as they deem fit, but the truth seems otherwise - as the Bible shows us (and not only in Song of Songs) - it has its rightful place, and can even be celebrated.
What does God have to do with love? Everything: Jesus, the Lover, stands at the door for each of us, and waits for our response.
A
P.S. for answers to questions such as:
"How can love - an abstract concept? - desire anything?"
"What do you mean, 'Christianity is the only truth'?"
and "Who was Jesus anyways?",
feel free to email me
B: Oh dear, you have taken an allegorical interpretation of SoS. Most scholars no longer take this view since there is nothing in the text which invites one to take such a reading. There are symbols, yes, but there is nothing at all to suggest that the whole thing is a code for some sort of evangelical outburst. (Though may puritan writers in the past have had an obsession with making this poem allegorical, for obvious reasons.)
On the contrary, this is merely a very nice little poem about two loverly/horny young persons who defy social convention, showing that "love is stronger than death, [...] many waters cannot quench love, etc etc". So, sort of like an ancient Romeo and Juliet. And why is their love not socially conventional? Note that:
1. The beloved is not conventionally attractive
2. THEY ARE UNMARRIED
Let me dwell on the second point which was my intention in bringing up SoS. It is clear that the couple are unmarried. The lover searches for the beloved in the middle of the night, then disappears for some reason. When the beloved searches for him in the streets, she is beaten up by the nightwatchmen.
If they were married, they would be a *most* unconventional couple. Furthermore, it is (quite) clear that they have sex, albeit hidden in the fields and in some spice garden (though this spice garden/mountain may be a euphemism for the female body, no consensus on this point).
Therefore, this poem celebrates the socially unconventional and consummated erotic love of an unmarried couple. (Although admittedly they seem to intend to get married but in any case they are unmarried at the time of having sex). This is why I suggested it might provide a different perspective from that expressed by other Christians, whose thoughts on the subject tend to be dominated by Augustine and his synthesis between pagan and gnostic positions on sex.
Oh and another thing, as for:
> "Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you:
> Do not arouse or awaken love
> until it so desires."
This is *not* about waiting till marriage at all. She is having her fun with her lover at night (and it must be at night since it is clandestine since they are not married). Hence:
6 Until the day breaks
and the shadows flee,
I will go to the mountain of myrrh
and to the hill of incense.
7 All beautiful you are, my darling;
there is no flaw in you.
So, she tells them not to awake "love" (i.e. the couple) until they are done with their fun. The "love" here is a metaphor for their conjoined bodies.
If you are in any doubt that they have sex, pls refer to the other quote I provided, where the lover describes his beloved as a palm tree and her breasts as clusters of fruit. He then says he will climb the tree and take hold of its fruit. This is an obvious allusion to sex:
7 Your stature is like that of the palm,
and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
8 I said, "I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit."
May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples,
9 and your mouth like the best wine.
In another passage there is another explicit allusion to sex, though this time the beloved plans a dirty weekend of sorts -- running away to the countryside at night to frolic in the moonlight:
11 Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside,
let us spend the night in the villages. [b]
12 Let us go early to the vineyards
to see if the vines have budded,
if their blossoms have opened,
and if the pomegranates are in bloom-
there I will give you my love.
So, let's see: they are unmarried, they meet each other mostly at night, they like going into secret spice gardens and orchards alone at night, and at one point the beloved says "our bed is verdant". Hmmm, *what* could they be doing?
C: B's interpretation of the Songs of Solomon (if I understood B correctly, that is) shows how dangerous it is to read only one segment of the Bible and attempt to come to a conclusion regarding God's general will on something (in this case, premarital sex).
God's moral principle with regards to sex is clearly spelt out in the Bible: sex is meant only for a man and a woman, and only in a marriage. The author of Hebrews puts forth this principle plainly in verse 4 of chapter 13:
"Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge." (NASB)
Fornication is the biblical term for pre-marital sex. It happens when two unmarried persons engage in sex. There isn't a shred of doubt that the Bible forbids this. Adultery refers to a married person having sex with somebody other than his or her spouse.
Here, the Bible does not intend to leave us guessing. "God will judge" these two groups of people, for they have neither held marriage in honor, nor left the marriage bed undefiled.
That God hates homosexual sex (note, I say here, homosexual sex and not homosexuals) is even clearer.
In the Old Testament, Leviticus 18:22 says (here the listener is assumed to be a man), "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a women; that is detestable." (NIV)
In the New Testament, Romans 1:26-27 reads, "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." (NIV)
Homosexual sex, the Bible unequivocally states, is a sin, detested by God.
Sex, according to the Bible, is meant only between a man and a woman, and only in a marriage. Anything outside of this boundary is sin.
I do not wish to be accused of imposing my morals on anyone. What I merely seek to do, is to declare the moral standards of God, for this is the standard by which we will be judged on the day of wrath, whether or not you choose to believe it.
And when that day comes, only those who have Christ have hope.
C.
Me (You just knew this was coming, didn't you?): "*lengthy apologetics by A*"
If you want to do textual analysis, we can do textual analysis :) You may not like what you find, though - Paul's purely spiritual resurrection, for example.
"A good place to look for an explanation might be elsewhere in the Bible: "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." (Revelation 3:20, NIV)
Anyone can spot the uncanny parallel between the two passages."
Considering the fact that Song of Songs was written before 930 BC and Revelation was written almost a millennium later, and that the pothead who wrote it surely had access to Song of Songs, I find that no surprise. This is just like how the author of Luke had a (mistranslated) copy of Isaiah and misinterpreted it, which was how a young woman bearing a child during King Ahaz's reign was transmogrified into a virgin bearing a child who would becoming the Messiah...
"That God hates homosexual sex (note, I say here, homosexual sex and not homosexuals) is even clearer."
It is as clear, if not clearer, that the Christian god hates dogs, believes women to be inferior, and condemns non-believers to eternal torment in hell.
`When /I/ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you /can/ make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.'
--- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
I do not mind being accused of offending anyone (Cthulhu knows we have enough of that going on on this list). What I merely seek to do is to get people thinking about things that they might never have thought about before, and to represent a different view from one that gets ample representation here.
Belief doth not change objective reality, no matter how strong it might be.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." - 1 Corinthians 13:11
P.S. for answers to questions such as:
"Is it valid to reason: 'I think Evolution is bullshit because I've misunderstood and misrepresented it, and therefore I conclude that the Christian god must exist, though even if Evolution is bullshit, life on earth could have been seeded by aliens, warped in from an alternate dimension or been started by one of the tens of thousands of gods from the other religions, or even the deistic God'?"
"Why would an omnibenevolent god make imperfect humans, blame them for his own mistakes and then condemn all who did not believe in him to infinite punishment for finite sin (if indeed such can be said to be sin at all)""
"Why do people interpret literally the fanciful writings of ancient Hebrews looking at the sky and the world and coming up with 'just so' stories, including the world being flat and there being a firmament in the sky from which rain falls, even when they're plainly ridiculous?"
"What do you mean, 'Gods don't exist'?"
and "Why do some non-Christians get so pissed off by Christians",
feel free to email me (or for the last, you can read 'Christianity and its Discontents' -
[http://gssq.blogspot.com/2005/03/christianity-and-its-discontents-also.html])
P.P.S: For reference: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
