All you need is love

    Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents is one of the great works of modern literature. His premises and conclusions contain more truth than a “fast food” and “fast sex” culture like ours can assimilate. Civilization is, according to Freud, a space of conflict in which conflicting instincts struggle to find expression. Neuroses and pathologies a psychoanalyst seeks to treat in the individual play themselves out, writ large, in society. A society no less than an individual is a house divided against itself, an organism subject to fits of “cutting,” bulimia, and, to use one of Freud’s root metaphors, narcissism. Christopher Lasch argued that the culture of narcissism is the mother of all American pathologies. Philip Slater suggested “the pursuit of loneliness.” The social pathologies of contemporary civilization continue to be a focus of social-science research. Clearly, Freud was on to something.

    Freud was aware that the very possibility of coexistence depends on the suppression of instincts which are connatural to the human species. The “pleasure principle” has to be held in check by the “reality principle.” The task of instinct suppression, instinct redirection, and instinct sublimation is, historically and anthropologically speaking, part and parcel of the job description of a set of interlocking frameworks: the state, religious organizations, and the family. Both “state” and “church” have always had plenty to say about what goes on in the bedroom and within the family. To differing degrees, such was the case in Sparta and Athens. Such is the case today in the United States no less than in Pakistan or China. Such was also the case in ancient Israel and early Christianity.

   It is not surprising that the prohibition of inappropriate behavior – however “inappropriate” was defined - is undergirded by the authority of God in the Bible. Since God is the principle of goodness, truth, and beauty for those who wrote the Bible, it could not have been otherwise. In fact, if inappropriate behavior is not defined in relation to a “thick” principle, definition is arbitrary at best and self-serving at worst.

    In light of the above, the biblical Song of Songs stands out for its celebration of love without guilt.

    The adolescent girl and boy who sing each other’s praise and delight in making love revision the world in light of the love that unites them. As Jasmine sings to Aladdin of Disney fame, “Now I'm in a whole new world with you / Unbelievable sights / Indescribable feeling”; “A new fantastic point of view / No one to tell us no / Or where to go / Or say we're only dreaming.“

    Song of Songs is saturated with desire. The eros which finds expression is playful, joyful, and hopeful. The banter takes premarital sex for granted, not sex without commitment, but sex which symbolizes a passionate love stronger than death itself. The adolescents look forward to the day when their love will receive the blessing of family.

    This Song entered the literature of the synagogue and the church because its expression of playful, joyful, hopeful love came to be interpreted as an allegory of the love between Israel (the “she”) and God (the “he”); later, between the church and Christ; even Mary and God. Read as an allegory, the Song has deeply enriched the self-understanding of Jews and Christians. The difference between eros (need-based love) and agape (self-sacrificing love), furthermore, is easily overdrawn. The adolescents of the Song, precisely because they are in love, “believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things” (1 Cor 13).  

    Here is a session outline for a class on “The Bible and Current Events” on the topic referred to.

All You Need is Love

                          Love Poetry in the Bible
                          Song of Songs 1:2-14
                          All is fair in love and war
                          Victoria Beckham’s Hebrew Tattoo
                          Four Kinds of Love
                          Four Kinds of Love in C. S. Lewis

                          Eros and Agape
                          Love as a motor of knowledge

                          Clips: All You Need is Love
                          Assigned Texts: Song of Songs; 1 Corinthians 13: 1 John 3:11-24; 4:7-21

                          Essay Topic: Four Kinds of Love in the Bible

Short Bibliography on the Song of Songs

Ariel and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs with an Introduction and Commentary (New York: Random House, 1995); J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs. A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox – London: SCM, 2005); Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001); Roland E. Murphy, The Song of Songs (Hermeneia Commentary Series; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1990)

 

Comments

[C. Stirling Bartholomew]

John,

A post praising Sigmund Freud? Wonders never cease on Ancient Hebrew Poetry. I should follow up with a post praising Ezra Pound but I don't have the stomach for it. I was looking for some way to read your comments on Freud as scathing irony but didn't find it.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a neopagan feminist colleague 25 years ago. Her name was Cathy, she was PhD dropout in English Lit. Somehow the conversation drifted to Freud at which point Cathy called him a bad joke on the academy, I suspect she was referring to Freudian readings of literature, literature being the substance of our frequent conversations.

A Freudian reading of Song of Songs does possess a certain sort of internal logic but it requires adopting a hermeneutic which wouldn't appeal to some people.

Referring anything written by Freud as "one of the great works of modern literature" certainly sounds like irony. But there are no other signals in your post that indicate irony was intended.

[JohnFH]

I am not proposing a Freudian reading of SoS. That has been done, there are hooks, with the dream-like episodes.

Rather, I was using one of F's fundamental insights - Freud and the psychoanalytical school(s) have plenty to teach for those who have ears to hear - as a foil for a non-Freudian interpretation of SoS.

That is, it seems to me that SoS is a pathology-free and neurosis-free zone. It is not about rebellion against norms either.

I hope this clarifies.

[Angela Erisman]

John, I teach The Four Loves in my freshman class at Xavier. For many students, the fact that there are different kinds of love (and that you could experience more than one of them in a single relationship) is completely eye-opening, and perhaps one of the most useful things I teach them, based on the feedback some have given.

C. Stirling: Freud was brilliant. There is no two ways about it. His insights may not all have been spot on (and certainly the ways in which scholars sometimes use his ideas to read literature has not always been spot on), but we ask different questions about ourselves and the world because of his insights. And, as John notes, they're good questions and important ones too.

[JohnFH]

Hi Angela,

I plan to do more in class with the Four Loves the next time I teach it. It is eye-opening.

This time around, I spent almost the whole 90 minute session giving the class a good strong taste of SoS as erotic love poetry, breaking it up with the funny Beatles clip.

Some students will write an essay based on the session, and will then need to interact with the Four Loves taxonomy and identify examples of each in the Bible.

[Ben Smith]

So in light of Song of Songs, do you think pre-marital sex is okay as long as it's leading to commitment?

[JohnFH]

If you are asking, Ben, about what constitutes sexual wisdom and sexual character in this day and age, I mostly wonder whether there are cultural models today that embody those virtues.

They exist, but they are well nigh invisible.

There are young people who seek the gift of celibacy for extended periods of time in which their bodies are more than ready for sexual activity. The gift is given less often than one might wish; it is sought after in the first place rather rarely.

I have noticed that when it has been sought and it has been given, it is a beautiful thing to behold.

If Jesus' approach to sexual ethics is chosen as a guide, it would be wrong to conclude from Song of Songs that pre-marital sex is a practice to embrace. It might be more logical to conclude that pre-marital sex in the sense of SoS was a concession under the Old Covenant, like the ease with which a man was allowed to divorce his wife.

The practical advice I give is certainly rather different than the advice I received as a teenager. I was raised in a standard liberal household. The one and only movie my father took me to see as a teenager was "Woodstock."

The sexual freedom and (false) innocence that film hypes continue to cause in practice grave disillusionment, broken relationships, mistreatment of women - and now women of wome, men of men, and men of women - not to mention sickness and even death.

I have seen too many lives destroyed by sex divorced from commitment. If I look back and think about the occasions on which I tried to separate commitment and sexual activity, or I fooled myself on that score, I am painfully aware of negative and unintended consequences that followed.

Most parents I know with children in their teens and twenties, no matter how "sexually liberated" they were at that age, do not suggest to their children to go thou and do likewise.

On the contrary. We may have a point.

I think any decent model of sexual wisdom in today's world will inevitably be counter-cultural. On the other hand, it is harder to be counter-cultural than many think. It is not just a thought process. It is situating oneself in a counter-culture. Besides the Amish, is there a counter-culture in the West? I exaggerate, but you will get my point.

[Ben Smith]

Good thoughts. Part of the problem for my generation (I'm 20) is that we're not in the right circumstances to get married at the time when, biologically, we're more than ready to get it on. Has been a big struggle for me... but at the end of the day, as you say, I can see no better model than life-long commitment, so I'll keep on struggling with the Spirit's help.

[Breaker Morant 2]

I also was curious about Ben’s question about sex which also led me to wonder about how today’s society so greatly differs from society even 10 years ago. What was seen as “against the church” back then is probably not so strict in today’s society; especially when dealing with the topic of sex and even birth control. I thought this post was interesting, especially the part about Sigmund Freud in the beginning. I enjoyed the correlation between Song of Songs and also 1Cor 13. I consider myself a romantic so I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post and covering this topic!

[JohnFH]

Hi Breaker Morant 2,

Long live romantics! But do marriage and romance go together?

Sometimes it does. The combination is about the most beautiful thing eyes can behold.

Yet it is rare and even dangerous, because unstable. In some Asian cultures, the combination of love and marriage is frowned upon. In my experience, I would say that a marriage that is blessed with love in the sense of romantic love is blessed indeed, but a marriage built on shared fundamental goals is a far stronger foundation.

Paul, the same author who wrote 1 Corinthians 13, was convinced that there are many advantages to being single if one's greatest love centers, not on another human being, but on truth and goodness and God. See 1 Cor 7:28: "those who are married should live as though they were not."

Some "loveless" marriages turn out to be more civil and long lasting and friendly than romantic relationships full of storms. It's hard to strike a balance. Life is complicated.

[Lior A]

It’s so intriguing to compare what the Bible has to say about romantic love to what humans think of and how they act upon it in this day and age. Premarital sexual activity seems to be something that has always been condoned in the Christian church, so I find it interesting to read passages from Song of Songs in the Old Testament to find that it was not seen as a behavior deserving of punishment or damnation.
This brings up a few questions that I have about this topic. Could the fact that premarital sex was understood in the times of the Old Testament be because love was more revered and sacred? I feel that many of today’s relationships are purely based on sexuality and lust, thus making love something less pure. Don’t get me wrong, I am a hopeless romantic, but it seems that a lot of the reason why premarital sex is looked down upon by the Christian church is because it has turned into something that cuts God out of the picture.

[Chariots of Fire 5]

I have never heard of the “Four Loves,” What are they? And how is it possible to break down something as complicated as love into categories?

[Chariots Of Fire 1]

When I was still a kid probably around the age of 7 I thought love was just something that you show to others that you do love them. But after reading the Songs of Songs there's so much more than just loving someone. Love is so deep. Love is like faith where we can't see it but we know its there. God is also like love because we might not physically see or feel God, we can spiritually see and feel God's presents around us.