A meaningful theology for the Song of Songs will be found in the intersection between God and humanity.  A lot of the themes that are found in the Song of Songs are also found in the creation account.  God created them male and female.  God’s creation is good.  God gave Adam the perfect companion, Eve.  God intended for the two to have a wonderful relationship.  He intended this spiritually and physically.  This does not just mean working side-by-side cultivating the garden but sexually as well.  There is a particularly meaningful theology in today’s world.  The Christian west is, and has been for generations, sexually confused.  The church as far back as Augustine On Christian Teaching has seen sex as a necessary evil.  The secular world has seen it as a good dirty joke.  Neither of these are how the scripture records it or how God sees it.  The sexual relationship between a husband and his wife is something to be celebrated as it is in the Song of Songs.  This is a theology that we need in today’s world.  Sex should not be considered dull or irrelevant in marriage.  It should be celebrated as the young lovers in the song tell us.  I recently read a sermon given by Dr. Spears in which he refers to creation as a dance between the three persons of the Trinity, in which he invites mankind to participate.  This is what God intended and what He expected that men and women would do in marriage -- continue the joy of creation.  The Song of Songs is, after all, a story about how creation takes place in the human realm.  So the major theological theme is creation.  Another theological theme is the special marriage relationship between a husband and wife.  This is so critical in the world we live in today where so many have experienced anything but happiness in their marriages.  The Old Testament theological theme and modern day constructive theology is that marriage is still relevant today and is the special relationship that takes place between a man and woman until they are separated by death.

The Song of Songs was first included in the Hebrew Canon.  This is why the Christian Canons include it.  I believe that the Jews included it in their canon because they understood the importance of family and they understood that the success of the family was dependent on the success of the marriage between the husband and wife.  This was very critical in a world that depended on the survival of the tribe and the tribe depended on the survival of the family.  The basic nucleus of this structure is the husband-wife relationship.  Basic to any husband and wife relationship is the physical relationship in a loving considerate way that becomes a celebration that only the two can share.  This is essential to the survival of the tribe because this is the creative relationship in the tribe.  A tribe depends on the young and old to survive.  The mother and father take care of the children.  The adult children take care of the elderly parent.  There is no government to care and provide for the tribes existence.

The Christian theology to this book of scripture is One, the special relationship between husband and wife, the survival of the Christian family unit by celebrating the basic relationship of husband and wife (Christian communities of faith have always survived in the basic structure of a tribe, today we know it as a congregation), and the special act of human creation.