We continue with Part II in our series of reflections on the Song of Songs based on John Paul II’s theology of the body.

In light of various misunderstandings and controversies surrounding the “erotic” nature of this biblical book, how are we to understand it? We might begin with a passage from St. Paul: “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16).

Unfortunately, some churchmen throughout history have seemed to think these words of the Apostle do not apply to the erotic poetry of Solomon’s Song. As John Paul observes, to many this book has seemed “profane.” Its reading has often been discouraged and even forbidden (see TOB 108:2). Such a perspective seems to stem from what the Pope called the “interpretation of suspicion” (see TOB 46). By that he meant an obstinate inability to see the body through the prism of anything but lust.

The Song’s unabashed celebration of erotic love should be seen as the precise biblical antidote to such suspicion. The Song of Songs teaches us to love human love with the original good of God’s vision. Remember God looked at everything he made and called it “very good” (Gen 1:31)? With just such a love, the greatest mystics have drawn lasting inspiration from this sacred, erotic poetry and the Church has inserted its verses into her liturgy (see TOB 108:2).

We must understand that this mystical and liturgical tradition – rather than the parallel history of suspicion – reflects the authentic mind of the Church regarding the Song of Songs. For as the Church prays, so does she believe.

John Paul observes that the marital love of the Song is connected in some way with the whole biblical tradition of the great spousal analogy. It certainly serves to illuminate the prophets’ description of God’s spousal love for Israel. In turn, the Song of Songs also sheds light on Christ’s union with the Church, as St. Paul describes in Ephesians 5. However, the Pope immediately adds that the “theme of spousal love in this singular biblical ‘poem’ lies outside that great analogy. The love of bridegroom and bride in the Song of Songs is a theme by itself, and in this lies the singularity and originality of that book” (TOB 108:1).

Quoting from various biblical scholars, the Holy Father is critical of those who rush to disembody the Song, seeing it only as an allegory of God’s “spiritual” love. It is “the conviction of a growing number of exegetes,” the Pope maintains, that the Song of Songs is “to be taken simply as what it manifestly is: a song of human love” (TOB 108: note 95). For “human love, created and blessed by God, can be the theme of an inspired biblical book” (TOB 108: note 97).

John Paul seems to agree with the view of one scholar who writes that those who have “forgotten the lovers” or “petrified them into pretense” have not interpreted the Song correctly. “‘He who does not believe in the human love of the spouses, he who must ask forgiveness for the body, does not have the right to rise higher....With the affirmation of human love, by contrast, it is possible to discover the revelation of God in it’” (TOB 108: note 96).

This confirms an essential element of incarnational/sacramental reality. Grace – the mystery of God’s life and covenant love – is communicated through the “stuff” of our humanity, not despite it. Quoting another scholar, John Paul says that “a faithful and happy human love reveals to human beings the attributes of divine love.” This means “that the content of the Song of Songs is at the same time sexual and sacred.” When we ignore the sacred, we see the Song merely as a secular erotic poem. But when we ignore the sexual, we fall into allegorism. “It is only by putting these two aspects together that one can read the book in the right way” (TOB 108: note 97).

We will continue our attempt to read this book “in the right way” in the next column.