Songs of Songs is difficult to understand. It’s a musical and love song that’s been interpreted in very different ways. Some interpret Songs of Songs to be only figurative, which describes a spiritual intimacy with God, not a physical intimacy with people. Others interpret it literally to mean sexual intimacy.

In Songs of Songs it talks about three types of love:
1) Rayah - friendship love
2) Ahabah - love that is seen in commitment
3) Dowd - is the physically intimate love

Dowd is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek Eros. The New Testament never mentions Eros. Instead the NT uses agape, storge and philia for specific reasons. You can read my blog entry on this at http://www.interconnectedness.net/2006/07/31/agape-eros-storge-and-philein/ .
(Rayah is the similiar of Philia. Ahabah is sort-of similiar to Agape.) If we interpret Dowd to mean Eros in a physical sense, then it would contradict the NT writers. Hence, if a completely literal understanding of dowd/eros was possible before Christ, Christ updated this teaching in the same way he updated other teachings, such as the verses in Matthew 5 saying, "You have heard that it was said … But I tell you …", since the use of Eros was abandoned.

Pope Benedict XVI recently addressed this issue in Songs of Songs by stating that Eros is not destroyed, but purified, by Agape, so the body and soul can live peacefully with each other. This means the NT purifies the OT. The OT serves to lay out a set of laws, which inevitably condemns humanity. Christ purifies us of this sin. Hence, the OT gives an apparent set (i.e. Torah) of unideal rules (i.e. "You have heard that it was said … But I tell you") which the Pharisees perfectly obeyed, while the OT unapparently giving a much greater path (i.e. the basis of the Greatest Commandment) that was only apparently revealed by Christ (i.e. sermon on the mount, etc.). In the NT, Christ dwells in us, so we should be perfect as God is. In the OT, the law dwells in us (i.e. Deuteronomy 6:4-9), so we should be as perfect as the law requires. Therefore, the Songs of Songs allowed eros from the Law, but was inundated by the perfection of agape from the Holy Spirit.

An interesting rebuttal to my interpretation is presented at http://www.spiritualityandsexuality.com/SnS-ViewsArticles.html . It argues against Greek/Roman stoic and epicurean teachings, and proposes we follow OT Hebrew teachings instead. This boils down to ignoring Paul’s letters [Paul was a big fan of Socrates/Plato (Jesus was like the Gadfly) and stoicism (indifference to pleasure or pain, as shown through holy joy in suffering)] and ignoring the ascetic nature of Jesus’ discipleship. There’s a lot of truth in Greek/Roman stoic and epicurean (fyi, John Piper’s Christian hedonism is Christian epicureanism) philosophy. There’s also a lot of truth in OT teaching, but some of it was updated, such as in this case. The main argument against Greek/Roman stoic and epicurean philosophy tries to tie dishonoring women with dishonoring Eros, which is a weak connection and need not be the case.

P.S. This was a response to an entry by Lisa Treumuth at http://agape720.livejournal.com/208768.html.

Songs of Songs

This entry was originally published at Interconnectedness by Mikhail (Misha) Lomize