Fulfillment and Deferral: ADo Not Awaken Love Too Soon@

Postcritical Fulfillment and Deferral: ADo Not Awaken Love Too Soon@

William Wesley Elkins

The Thological School

The Casperson School of Graduate Studies

Drew University

Madison, New Jersey

Paul Ricoeur, in dialog with Andre= LaCocque=s interpretation of the Song of Songs, concludes that the meanings of the Song are constituted by a history of reading derived from the use of this scripture to interpret different religious practices. This conclusion is the result of an argument against the thesis, shared by historical-critical and allegorical interpretations that there is one proper meaning to this text. In addition Ricoeur suggests that a search for the original meaning by historical-critical interpreters and the gap, in allegorical interpretations, between the context of the interpreter and any religious practice, makes obscures the ways that the Song of Songs is a biblical hermeneutics. Simply stated, Ricoeur argues that the Song functions like a metaphor: it creates meaning by connecting different conceptual fields through a complex interpretative matrix that gives meaning to that which, outside the Song, is uninterpreted. ^{^[i]}

The value of introducing Ricoeur=s hermeneutic of the Song of Songs in the context of Davis= and Goshen-Gottstein=s interpretations is the possibility it offers of productively correlating interpretations.

First, one of the important trajectories of Davis= article is her use of the interpretation of Andre= LaCocque. They both agree that the Song is am erotic work of poetic imagination. They disagree, however, on the implications of this perspective. LaCocque argues that the language of the Song is an iconoclastic critique of the covenant tradition and of martial love. The Song use of religious language to represent the erotic desacralizes and delegitimates the traditions of Israel. Davis, however, interprets the erotic language of the Song religiously. The Song, through adoration and praise, return us to Eden Awith the intent of imaginatively the ruptures that occurred there between mend and woman, between humanity and God, between human and non-human creation.@ The images that repair the breaks introduced by disobedience and distrust is the relations of intimacy of the lovers in the garden. In the garden of the Song, creation is restored through an intimacy and trust between God and humanity, an intimacy between men and woman beyond the structures and ideologies and power, and through a flourishing of nature beyond the deprivations introduced into creation as a consequence of God=s judgement against sin. Although the symbolism of the Song is erotic, its purpose is soteriological. The erotic, when read liturgically, is transformed but not suppressed. The natural remains natural, yet it functions mystically: in reading the Song the reader is repaired and recreated in the image of God. Finally, for Davis the Song functions like an icon. It reveals the natural in the light of the divine. In addition, the icon draws the reader, the way an icon draws those who pray with them, into a transformative religious practice.

What then is the connection between Ricoeur=s philosophical perspective on the Song of Songs and Davis= interpretation? Davis= has exemplified the way a particular religious use of the Song activates the hermeneutic function of the Song. Used, for example, in a Christian baptismal liturgy, the Song connects a sense of fallen creation to a liturgical space that reenacts the recreation of humanity. Moreover, Davis= interpretation is an example of the ways that the Song makes meaning when it is used to link different religious practices.

Goshen-Gottstein=s argument, although not a direct critique of Davis, sounds out Rabbinic themes that, prima facie, appear dissonant with her interpretation. Of particular note is his attestation of a crisis of interpretation in regards to the Song of Songs.

AAs a reader who is aware of the rich history of interpretation of the Song, the Song itself is hopelessly lost to me...consequently I am unable to find a way of >thinking with@ the Song of Songs. I may be able to Athink of@ the Song of Songs, , through the lens of the Rabbis, Maimonides, the Zohar or Rav Kook. ...thereby shaping my consciousness and how I live the world spiritually. However, I will not be able to Athink with@ the song of Songs. It will not be the Song of Songs that has function as a spiritual structuring force but what has been made of it through the history of interpretation. It is here that I locate my crisis in relation to the Song of Songs. This is perhaps th only biblical text of which I am unable to make spiritual sense on its own account for which I am wholly indebted to the history of its interpretation.@

This conclusion is the result of a complex argument that correlates two factors: (1) early rabbinic patterns of interpretation and (2) an evaluation, on the basis of early rabbinic practice of the unpersuasiveness of erotic interpretations of the Song and interpretations of the Song as an allegory of love. The early rabbis did not interpret the Song as a whole but intertexually interpreted various fragments of the Song, connecting them to a variety of scriptures in order to highlight and praise different rabbinic values. Thus allegory was not a part of rabbinic practice and love was not a central to their use of the Song. In combination with interpretations of sexual erotics, marriage, in contrast with the possibilities of religious experience, for Goshen-Gottstein there seems to be no persuasive argument for interpreting the Song as an spiritually erotic or an allegory of the love between God and Israel, despite the tradition of later interpreters of the Song of Songs. Any unifying interpretation Song, on rabbinic principles, would be illegitimate. There is, however, a possibility, as he notes, that Christian interpreters may have discovered an appropriate use of the text. This use, however, determined as it is by a transfer of use from the original context to Christian liturgy and hymody, does violates the intertexual pattern of interpretation practiced by the early rabbis.

Given the contrast between Davis= and Goshen-Gottstein=s interpretations, it seems that we are left with a dilemma: if the original context of the Song is changed through reading it as part of a Christian liturgy, it is possible to interpret the Song as a whole. However, if we interpret the Song as a single text, we violate rabbinic patterns of interpretation. Moreover, since context determines use, different contexts will constitute different meanings for the Song. How then is it possible to understand the hermeneutics of the Song of Songs?

For postcritical scriptural interpreters, it is the practice of interpretation that shapes hermeneutic theory. It is possible, therefore, that there will be different hermeneutics for different communities of interpretation. The apparent contrast and conflict between the interpretations of Davis and Goshen-Gottstein thus may be interpreted as the result of their participation in different communities of interpretation. These interpretations do not conflict because they are being used for different purposes. Davis= interpretation is integral to a using the Song in liturgy or for a an iconicly based theology for the healing of creation. Goshen-Gottstein=s interpretation is integral to a recovery of the complex nuances of rabbinic patterns of interpretation. But if they are not conflicting because they are community based hermeneutics for different communities, for what reason and to what purpose would we read them together with the Song of Songs?

One possibility is promising, however, it requires, as Davis and Goshen-Gottstein note, a confession of particularity and limitation: the interpretative perspective of postcritical interpreters may still be shaped by a search for the original or a core meaning to a text. The language of and preference for unity is, of course, a reflection of a historical-critical method or a systematic theological or philosophical perspective. In contrast to this temptation, Goshen-Gottstein=s rabbinic perspective and Davis= use of iconography is exemplary. Each interpretation is particular, bound by a context of practice, and unsystematic. However, the virtues of particularity and self limitation tends towards paradox when the strengths of different interpretations make it difficult to discover a connection between them. The problem for a postcritical hermeneutic is to discover how interpretations are complimentary without violating the integrity of their difference.

Is it possible that each of the interpretations offered is an attempt to repair religious practice by using a particular history of reading to interpret the Song of Songs? The trajectory of Davis= interpretation of the Song is to use the erotics of the Song to repair creation. The trajectory of Goshen-Gottstein=s rabbinic perspective is to use rabbinic practices of interpretation to disconnect the song from allegorizing interpretations that obscure the intertextual richness of the Song. Davis= interpretation in Goshen-Gottstein=s perspective may be one of these suspect allegorizing interpretations. However, her interpretation is not offered as the only interpretation of the Song and given the context of the crisis of the created order, and her use of the numerous connections of the Song to Genesis, her interpretative practice, however Christian, is recognizably rabbinic.

If postcritical interpretation is shaped by an investigation of the ways scripture repairs the problems of religious practice, given the above interpretations of the Song of Songs, a postcritical hermeneutics may be shaped by a search for the ways different interpretative perspectives repair each other. It is at this point that postcritical interpreters may experience the tendency to generalize and systematize. But having noted this temptation, what might be a postcritical complementarity between Davis= and Goshen-Gottstein=s interpretation of the Song of Songs? It may be this: Following Ricoeur, the Song of Songs itslef is the connection between different practices and different religious hermeneutics.

Following the trajectory of Davis=s interpretation, the Song is an expression of love that reaches towards a divine love that heals creation. Following the trajectories of Goshen-Gottstein=s interpretation, the Song implicates the reader in all the intertextual complexities of the covenantal tradition. In this tradition, the ways of God have been revealed to humanity. Love, however, is not all the covenant requires. There is something more to God than love. But given who God was. is, and will be, who would not love God? The history of Israel, the church and humanity tells the best and worst of this story. We have not loved as we have been loved, so we need to be and do something else. In the Methodist tradition, ordinands affirm the belief that they will be perfected in love in this life. What we are and what we do may fulfill love for the moment. However, if we are postcritical in our commitments we will recognize that the fullness of God requires that we defer perfection even as we seek it. Ggiven this, in the final analysis, isn't the Song of Songs that the best hermeneutic of the contrast between fulfillment and deferral?

I am a rose of Sharon, a lilly of the Valleys. As a lily among brambles, so is my love among maidens. As an apple tree among th tress of the wood, so is by beloved among young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples. For I am faint with love. O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right had embraced me. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the wild does, do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready. (2:1-7)

As scriptural reasoners and hermeneutic philosophers, the fullness of presence and deferal of fullfillment in Song of Songs is a beginning to textual wisdom.