NOTES for Sol 1:1-2:17

The commentators of the Bible for already several centuries discuss about how to understand the Song of Solomon: literally or in an allegorical way. On one hand, we have in front of us an exceptional hymn of love, a high and pure love. But others object, the Bible is a spiritual book, and therefore is there place inside for lyric love, even if it is really about high and pure love? Indeed, this feeling is all the same purely human, it is the love of a man to a woman, not at all celestial, but totally earthly, having no relation to spiritual heights.

And, probably, if we were not human beings, but rather angels, immaterial spirits, for whom all natural is foreign by definition; it would have come for us to agree with the objections of the rigorists. But we are not angels, we are human beings. It does not mean that we are better or worse. We are just others. What’s natural is an integral part of our life, it is not any misunderstanding and not the consequence of the fall, it is God's initial plan for us, as for men. And this means that even the nature can be part of the spiritual world. Including our own nature.

Particularly in such its demonstrations, as a high and pure love between man and woman. Love, in which the natural is so much, than the spiritual. Love which does not profane the spirit, by reducing it only to the nature, but transforms the nature by the spirit. Love in which God is present not less than the lovers themselves. The love that belongs to the Kingdom, quite as every gift of God.

In both Jewish and Christian tradition, the Song of Songs is most often interpreted as an allegorical poem about the love between God and His people—Israel or the Church. It is sometimes said to be a song of love between God and the human soul. Although the literal understanding of the Song of Songs as a poem about human love remains valid, its symbolic meaning is what matters particularly in the Church's readings. Now, at the end of Advent, we read a passage in which the bride hears the bridegroom's voice. The soul hears the voice of God. And He calls her to awaken and arise. Wintertime—the time of waiting—is ending. The Lord is near. And the soul recognizes His voice, a voice that cannot be confused with any other.

Throughout the history of both the Synagogue and the Church, the Song of Songs has been interpreted in very different ways. The bridegroom was seen as God or the Messiah, and the bride as God's people or the Church. Allegory became the basis for interpreting the Song of Songs. Of course, everyone understood that this was one of the most beautiful examples of love poetry, but hardly anyone would even entertain the thought that such poetry belonged in the Bible, especially in the Middle Ages. Nor was it much better in the modern era, particularly where strict Puritan traditions, with their sometimes excessive moralism, played a decisive role. For the moralist, if love is permissible at all, it can only be something lofty and disembodied. There must be nothing bodily in it, or such love will not please God.

Yet God commanded people to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ even before the Fall, apparently seeing nothing wrong with bodily love in itself. On one condition, admittedly: it must be part of the fullness of the relationship that binds the spouses to each other. And by no means the determining part. But there is nothing peculiar to this case: in God's design, the natural component was not meant to determine the quality of human life at all. That was to be determined by God's ‘breath of life’, which He breathes into the human being's nostrils at creation. Nature was to be merely one element of this life God gave to humanity.

An important element, but by no means the principal one. It is hardly surprising, then, that in God's design human nature was also meant to play a part in the beginning of a new human life. To play a part to precisely the same extent as it does in human life generally. No more and no less. But certainly not to dominate that life, determining it and overshadowing everything else.

If the relationship between a man and a woman is indeed like this, then it really can serve as a model for the relationship between a human being and God, between His people and Him, or between Christ and the Church. For love is one; its spiritual space is one. And if it is the spiritual component that proves decisive, then nature too ceases to be base. It can become base if it comes to dominate the lives of the two, turning them into animals.

Animals that they can never actually become, because God did not intend them to be such. And whose beauty, like their naturalness, will therefore remain beyond their reach. By allowing nature to triumph over the spirit, a person does not become an animal but a sinful human being. Yet the relationship as such is not to blame: it merely creates a space for communion. A space that can be filled with anything, from God's breath to animal impulses. And it is only what fills it that determines whether the relationship becomes an image of a brothel or a foreshadowing of the Kingdom.

Many of those who read the Book of Solomon wondered of the fact, that such a work was included in the biblical canon: because it is obviously about love lyrics, absolutely high and pure, but apparently having no relation with the religious and spiritual life. As regards to the religious life, one could probably agree with such an opinion. If to talk about the spiritual life, the situation is far from being unambiguous. Of course there is nothing in the book about religion; it is about lovers, looking for each other, dreaming about each other, admiring the one another. It is commonly thought that the Bible does not make reference to such love, that it is there about the brotherly love, about the love of the neighbor, about the love of man in general. And in Decalogue however there is a special commandment dedicated to the not brotherly, but conjugal love, the violation of which is for the spiritual life as destructive, as the violation of any other commandment. But if that was the case, then we can consider as well the love between man and woman, the conjugal love as an element of the spiritual life, not less important, as any other love. In fact: can we divide love into parts?

And if the answer is no, then it can turn out that certain types of love - "spiritual" is raised, and the other - "carnal" are low? That one love is from God, and another, as thought and think many, - from the devil? Perhaps, if the devil was capable of loving or of being creative, such a question would have been possible. But he is in reality capable neither of one, nor the other; he can only spoil or corrupt what he did not create. And sometimes, if we allow him to damage the love which was given to us by God, he can do it. And all the same there is no love not coming from God. Of course, it is different, connecting people differently, revealing them one of another differently.

But if everything takes place in the idea and the will of God, love will never become either "vulgar", or "carnal". Any love has a physical measure, more or less obvious: we are not angels, but people, and the natural life is also appropriate for us, as the spiritual life. The problem is only in the fact that, what is going to prevail in these relations, what connect us with the loving and the loved: the spirit or the nature. The predominance of the nature will distort any love, whether it is the love between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters. And the predominance of the spirit over the nature will make any love blessed: because God is love, and it is in particular this love that is necessary to consider as God's real blessing.