What Solomon's Song Of Songs Is Not

#SongofSongs #TremperLongman #BiblicalInterpretation #IntroductionToTheOldTestament #Music

Music is one of the many wonderful gifts of God. It is able to move people, and even animals, in a way that nothing else can. Since the fall of our first parents, through which sin and death entered this world, the use of music has been corrupted by the heart of sinful man from its original purpose, which was to give glory to God. Further, a case could be made that Satan in some way orchestrates, or at least actively instigates, this perversion of music. Satan may have been God's most glorious angel, created with an incredible gift for music, and responsible for leading the worship of God, before his fall. In any case, what is most distinctive about secular music seems to be its focus on man and this world, rather than on the glorious Being who created all things.

Spend only a little time listening to the latest popular songs, more or less irrespective of genre (e.g., top-40, country, rap), and it will be observed that the particular focus is on romantic and erotic themes. Secular music is about romantic love, sexual desire and attraction, heartbreak due to the breaking apart of a romantic relationship, and so forth. The focus of secular music is upon the things of this world and especially upon sexual or romantic relationships. It is only in the church of the redeemed where music is used to extol, glorify, and pour out thanksgiving to God. When human hearts are renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit, on account of the sanctifying blood of Jesus Christ, worship is restored to its original purpose, and even exalted beyond its original purpose, because unlike among the company of unfallen angels, and unlike any singing that may have taken place in the Garden of Eden prior to Adam's fall, worship of God now includes thanksgiving and the giving of glory to him for his marvelous work of redemption.

Tremper Longman, an Old Testament scholar who has taught at multiple institutions including Westminster Theological Seminary and Westmont College, asserts that Solomon's Song of Songs, one of the sixty-six books of the Bible, "is a collection of poetry that extols the love that a man and a woman have for each other." He rejects the notion that this book, which is situated between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah in most contemporary Bibles, and which is almost never preached on in the church, should be interpreted allegorically or figuratively. Based largely on a comparison of the book with secular Near Eastern poetry and literature, Longman believes that the "primary aim" of Solomon's Song of Songs "is not to portray the relationship between God and his people, but rather to extol sexual love between a man and a woman." He detects multiple erotic references in the book, believes that the book serves as a reminder that the act of lovemaking, physical sex, is a gift of God, and that despite being (as he believes) a collection of human love poems with no reference to God or Jesus Christ, the book provides "divine insight and instruction about an important area of human experience: sexuality." Longman also concedes that there is no reference to marriage in the book. All of the quotations I am citing are drawn from An Introduction To the Old Testament, which Longman coauthored with Raymond Dillard.

What shall we say about all of this? First, if the book is a mere collection of poems about romantic love or sex, with no mention of marriage, it is difficult to understand how it provides "divine insight and instruction" about sexuality. Longman tells us that the book "reminds us that sex is good and pleasurable," but do we really need an entire book in Holy Scripture to remind us of that? With the important exception of those who have experienced some form of sexual abuse, it is not clear to me that men and women really need to be reminded that sex is pleasurable. Why would so many people engage in it, within and (especially nowadays) outside of marriage, if they didn't already know that it was pleasurable? Why would so many secular songs and poems make romance and sex their theme, if it were not pleasurable? Further, would a canonical book that is merely about the human experience of sex really leave out the institution of marriage? I agree with Longman that sex is a good gift of God. It was created by God for the exclusive context of marriage between a man and a woman. However, in addition to containing no reference to marriage, the book provides no guidance about the source or origin of sex itself. If Song of Songs is a mere collection of love poems, with no mention of the marriage covenant, or of the fact that God created sex, what "divine instruction" can it possibly give us? I think the question answers itself.

Second, in his attempt to understand Scripture, Longman seems to spend more of his energy comparing Scripture with extrabiblical Near Eastern literature than he does comparing Scripture with Scripture. In the chapter on Song of Songs in An Introduction To The Old Testament, there is not a single reference to or comparison with Psalm 45, which closely parallels and almost seems to be a compendium of Song of Songs. In the chapter on the Psalms in An Introduction To The Old Testament, Psalm 45 is said to be "a royal marriage psalm" and to bear "a number of similarities to the love poems of the Song of Songs," yet no mention of these similarities is mentioned in the genre analysis of the Song of Songs itself.

Third, for anyone who is somewhat familiar with Tremper Longman's overall body of work, it is noteworthy that he disparages a "literalistic" approach to understanding the early chapters of Genesis, even expressing a willingness to entertain the notion that Adam was not a historical figure, yet takes the "literalistic" approach to understanding Solomon's Song of Songs. In both cases, the driving force seems to be the weight Longman gives to extrabiblical literature, which he seems to consider a crucial tool for a proper understanding Scripture.

Fourth, and finally, can we for a moment think that a book in the Bible entitled "Song of Songs", which means "the most superlative or preeminent of all songs," is devoted to no higher end than to exalt physical lovemaking between a man and a woman? Think about it. There are songs throughout the Old and New Testaments that extol the glory of God, including his various attributes and extraordinary works. Look at the songs found in the Book of Revelation. They all have their focus on God and his Son Jesus Christ. To cite just one example, in Revelation chapter five, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fall down before the Lamb and sing, "You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for you were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth" (Revelation 5:9–10). The words of the song in chapter fifteen of the same book go like this, "Great and marvelous are your works; Lord God Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O king of the saints! Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. For all nations shall come and worship before you, for your judgments have been manifested" (Revelation 15:3–4).

Does Longman believe that a mere collection of poems about human sexuality is greater and more exalted in theme than the songs just cited from the Book of Revelation? Are we to believe that a collection of erotic poems is more superlative than any of the 150 songs found in the Book of Psalms? Surely, the very title "Song of Songs" is determinative of the fact that whatever may be its genre, this book of the Bible is certainly not a collection of poems put together "to extol the love that a man and a woman have for each other." That would be akin to dubbing the head of China or the head of any other country the "King of kings," which would be blasphemy in light of our knowledge of Jesus Christ.

The great 19th-century German Old Testament scholar Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenburg (1802–1869), someone contemporary Old Testament scholars would do well to become acquainted with, says the following in a monograph on the Song of Songs:

Even [Albertus] Magnus cannot avoid finding in the name given in the superscription to the work—"The Song of Songs"—a proof that the writer of the superscription, who, as we have shown previously, can be no other than the author of the poem itself, intended the whole to be interpreted allegorically. "For," he says, "had he really regarded his book in the light of an ordinary love-song, the title given to it would have been a thorough lampoon of all the other writings of the Old Testament. What Israelite could dare to consider a worldly song as more excellent than the many divine compositions of a Moses, a Miriam, a Deborah, a Hannah, and a David—or even than the God-inspired discourses of the prophets, which may, after all, be styled שירים ?" A correspondence may be traced between the superscription—"The Song of Songs"—here, and the expression, "thou art the fairest amongst the children of men," in Psalm 45:3;—and with the greater right, as the reason assigned in the superscription for the exaltedness of the poem is, that it relates to the most glorious of all subjects, namely, the heavenly Solomon, (chap. 1:1).

A detailed interpretation of Solomon's Song of Songs is for another study. However, we can be sure of one thing as we enter such a study. This book of the Bible is certainly not a mere collection of poems about human sexuality.

My Comfort Part of Speech

Almost everyone has at least one comfort food. Food that makes a person happy or provides some consolation, especially after a difficult or trying day. It's the gastronomic equivalent of the happy place. My happy place is Hawaii and I personally have more than one comfort food, though all my comfort foods seem to have at least two things in common — they are high in calories and include some sort of carbohydrate. If your comfort food is a certain kind of fruit or vegetable, consider that a blessing. My favorite comfort food is probably spaghetti and meatballs, which provides heightened consolation when accompanied with garlic bread.

When reading German or Latin, two highly inflected languages, I have noticed that a warm feeling or sense of comfort comes over me whenever I come across an adverb. It is certainly subtle, but tangible nonetheless. The adverb somehow has the effect of making me happy. Is it possible that a part of speech can give a person a sense of consolation in way akin to a comfort food like a very cheesy bowl of macaroni and cheese, especially one containing meat? Is there such a thing as a comfort part of speech? Though it doesn't provide quite the same level of satisfaction as a comfort food, I think the answer, at least in my case, is yes.

Since I have become aware that the adverb brings a sense of comfort to me, I have reflected a little on why. Why the adverb and not the noun or verb, for example? It seems to come down to three things. Three traits of the adverb which give me a sense of comfort. First, and perhaps foremost, with the exception of comparatives, the form of the adverb does not change in German or Latin. The adjective in these languages changes form depending on the noun it is modifying. The adjective must match the noun it modifies in gender, number, and case. Nouns themselves, verbs, and participles also change form. Not so with the adverb, which makes it somehow a welcome part of speech when reading these languages. The Latin word pulchre, for example, is always spelled pulchre no matter where it is found in a sentence, and always means something like "beautifully." The adjective for "beautiful," on the other hand, has three forms in the nominative singular alone -- pulcher, pulchra, and pulchrum -- and a whopping total of fifteen different forms that it can appear in depending on its role in a sentence and the gender and number of the noun it modifies. The situation is a little more complicated in German because the same word can sometimes double as both an adverb and an adjective. However, as an adverb such words will (again, with the exception of comparatives) never change form. For example, while schnell as an adjective, meaning something like "fast," can change form (e.g., to schnelles, schnelle, etc.), schnell as an adverb, meaning something like "quickly," will always look the same in a German sentence. In highly inflected languages, it is nice to have a part of speech that is steady or fixed in form no matter where it is found in a sentence. Perhaps this simply relieves the brain for a moment from the intensity of processing required for comprehending written or spoken German and Latin.

I suppose that a second reason why I like adverbs in German and Latin is that their range of meaning seems, in general, to be less broad than other parts of speech. Verbs, nouns, and adjectives seem, in general, to have a relatively wide range of meaning in German and Latin. For example, in one of my Latin dictionaries, there are a daunting thirty-five possible meanings listed for the verb agere and an even larger number for the noun res. Among the possible significations of agere are "to drive," "to lead," "to hold (an office)," and "to construct." Res can mean many things, including "thing," "subject matter," "operation," and "government." The German adjective geistig can signify "mental," "intellectual," "spiritual," or "alcoholic." However, when it comes to adverbs, the list of possible meanings tends to be much shorter. Eleganter in Latin simply means "elegantly" or "tastefully." Pulchre usually means something like "beautifully," though it can also mean "thoroughly." The German adverb kaum always means something like "hardly" or "scarcely." Certainly, there are exceptions to this point, and it can be overstated. Would be learners of Latin should not be intimidated by the range of meaning of agere and res, as these are admittedly two worst case examples, and do not represent the norm. However, my perception is that, in the main, it is much easier to pick up the meaning of adverbs when reading Latin or German, because it tends to be less dependent on context than the meaning of verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

The third thing that I think appeals to me about the adverb is that it is, so to speak, close to the action in a sentence. It modifies or qualifies the action word, that is, the verb. When the Latin word pulchre [beautifully] is added to the statement homo caecus scripsit [the blind man wrote], we learn how the blind man wrote. Homo caecus pulchre scripsit [the blind man wrote beautifully]. The adverb here not only provides additional information to the reader, but adds punch to the sentence. That's thanks to the adverb.

If I had to choose between a patty melt with Swiss cheese and coming across an adverb in a Latin or German sentence, I suppose I would choose the patty melt. However, within the context of reading Latin or German, I can say that for me that adverb is a sort of comfort part of speech. It deserves more credit and appreciation than it normally receives.

An Unfinished Bridge Is a Poor Metaphor for Saving Faith

by Stephen M. Cunha | February 22, 2023

It is difficult to imagine the creation of a Christian Gospel tract in which the way to receive Jesus Christ for salvation is depicted by an unfinished bridge—the finished part representing an as yet unliving or incomplete faith, but the unfinished part representing the good works necessary to render faith complete and living. This would convey the erroneous message that Jesus Christ is received for salvation through faith and good works; or, to put it in theological terms, that justification is by (the instrument of) faith and good works. Given the nature of our fallen condition, that would not be particularly good news. Although no doubt unintentionally, the exegesis of James White on James 2:17, in his book The God Who Justifies: The Doctrine of Justification, is the top of a slippery slope that leads to just such a conception.

The New King James Version translation of James 2:17 reads, "Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." Certainly, as White correctly indicates in his book, there is no contradiction between James and Paul on the subject of salvation. He is correct that the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers taught that we are justified by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. He correctly explains that true faith will prove or show itself by good works. Most of his exegesis in The God Who Justifies: The Doctrine of Justification, including his treatment on James, is helpful and solid. However, he makes one assertion that has significant negative implications, which perhaps he himself has not considered.

On pages 338 and 339, White states [the italicized emphasis is his]: "Saving faith, by nature, will ἔχῃ ἔργα, possess deeds. Dead faith, by nature, is useless due to the fact that it lacks a constituent part of saving faith, that being evidence of its existence in the form of deeds." My initial reaction to this statement was that it is perhaps the closest one can come to compromising the Gospel truth that justification is by faith alone, χωρὶς ἔργων [apart from deeds], without crossing the line. However, upon further reflection, and despite the fact that White makes the evidence of faith's existence in the form of works or deeds, and not the works or deeds themselves, "a constituent part of saving faith," I think that White's statement here does indeed cross the line and needs to be rejected. The problem is that this formulation makes good works produced through faith a part of what faith itself is, which leads to a distorted, unbiblical understanding of the doctrine of salvation.

While it is certainly true that good works will flow from genuine saving faith, it is not true that those good works are in any sense integral to or a part of what faith itself is. True faith is a complete, self-contained entity or thing. It is actually rather difficult to define. It is certainly supernatural, springs from a renewed heart, and, using the (biblically-informed) Augustinian formula, consists of knowledge (you have to know what or whom you are putting your faith in), assent (which includes a volitional element), and trust. Saving faith is also extraspective. That is, it looks away from itself to lean or rest on the person and work of another, Jesus Christ. This extraspective quality makes faith an appropriate instrument (or "hand") to receive God's gift of salvation. That salvation is all of God. Since all of us are sinners, who fall short of the perfection required for God's legal acceptance, we can only be legally accepted through the sacrificial atoning death (which fully washes away the guilt of all our sins) and perfect record of obedience under the law (which merits eternal life) of another, Jesus Christ. The combination of his perfect life of obedience under the law and his propitiatory death on the cross for sin is a righteousness that is made available to anyone who comes to him in faith. Receiving the perfect, all-sufficient righteousness of Jesus Christ by faith, and not by our works, gives all the glory to God, and highlights the reality that salvation is 100% accomplished through Jesus's work—that we are not able to offer anything of our own to obtain salvation. Faith is simply the instrument or hand by which we take hold of this inestimable gift. In this way, salvation is by grace alone.

I am sure that White would affirm in the strongest terms possible that the meritorious basis for the believer's justification is the work of Jesus Christ. Further, I am sure that White would strongly affirm that faith is the alone instrument by which we receive Christ's righteousness and are justified. However, calling "the evidence of its existence in the form of deeds" a "constituent part of saving faith" undercuts the truth that faith is the alone instrument by which we are justified. Although White carefully qualifies his statement, making "evidence in the form of deeds" and not simply "deeds" a "constituent part of saving faith," is there really much of a difference between "evidence of its existence in the form of deeds" and "deeds done or performed through faith"? I would argue that there is not. Even if there were a substantive difference between the two expressions, from a pastoral standpoint, is seems likely that the distinction would be lost on most people. To say that "evidence in the form of deeds" is a "constituent part of saving faith" is, in effect, to say that deeds or good works produced through faith are integral to saving faith.

If we say that the good deeds which flow from faith are part of what faith itself is, does that not compromise the alone instrumentality of faith in justification? The qualifier "alone" has always set faith over against all works in appropriating the salvation that has been vicariously worked out by Jesus Christ. If works produced by faith are incorporated into the definition of what faith itself is, the result is a new doctrine of justification. The logical consequence is a teaching that justification is by (the instrumentality of) faith and the good works that come from faith. Given the natural pride of fallen man's heart, and his strong proclivity to want to contribute something of his own for his acceptance with God, it is not inconceivable to think, that if such a conception were embraced, the good works which flow from faith would eventually migrate from being considered a partial, even if perhaps a secondary or subordinate, instrument for receiving salvation, to becoming a partial ground of salvation. Isn't this exactly the downward pull that has repeated itself throughout the history of the church? To be clear, I'm not saying that White is teaching any of this, nor am I saying that he has thought through the implications of his use of the words "constituent part." However, I am saying that his making "evidence of [faith's] existence in the form of deeds" an integral component of faith is a dangerous formulation that should be rejected.

James uses language that sometimes must be taken metaphorically, just like ours. When he says, for example, that faith will "possess deeds," he is not saying that faith is a person who can hold or possess things. In the same way, when James says at the end of chapter 2, "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead," he cannot be saying that a lifeless faith must be combined with works or deeds in order to make up a living, saving faith. Such a notion would contradict other portions of Scripture, which is an impossibility, since we know that all Scripture is God-breathed, and perfectly and entirely self-consistent. James is simply making the point in the second half of chapter two of his book, in perhaps the strongest way possible, that true faith will show itself by good deeds. In other words, that good works are an evidence of true faith. Mere profession of Christian faith, or even mere profession of Christian faith coupled with some sort of emotional experience, are no sure indicators that a person has the true faith which saves.

As I said, we also are prone to speak metaphorically. When I say that faith is extraspective or looks away from itself, I do not mean to suggest that faith is a person with eyes or an entity with intellect and volition. Technically, it is the believer, a human being, who, through faith, looks away from himself or herself, and away from anything he or she can offer or contribute for acceptance with God, and, through the same faith, looks to and trusts in Jesus Christ and his work alone for salvation. By the same token, when one says that good works flow from true faith, we must not think that somehow, magically, good deeds come out of true faith as if faith were a container of these deeds or an organism that generates works. If we want to speak more technically, the believer, by faith, does good works or deeds. The believer demonstrates that his faith is genuine by producing good fruit. The good fruit is not a part of the saving faith, but a fruit or product of it. The wonderful deeds highlighted in chapter eleven of Hebrews are attributed to the various Old Testament saints. They are said to have accomplished these deeds "by faith."

We must vigilantly guard against in any way compromising the superlatively good news that justification is by faith alone, apart from all works. By faith, Christ's perfect record of righteousness is imputed or credited to us, so that we possess the righteousness requisite for irrevocable, permanent legal acceptance before God, and title to an eternity in Heaven. "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known to which the Law and Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe" (Romans 3:21,22; NIV) This is the heart of the Gospel. Jesus has accomplished all that is necessary for salvation. With respect to justification, our part is simply to receive what he has accomplished through faith. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Romans 10:13, NIV). This is truly good news!