According to him, the Song is the key to understanding the soul's relationship to Christ. One of the first, and most influential, was Origen of Alexandria, a second-century mystic who became the first great Christian theologian. Song of Songs is not only an unquestioned part of Jewish and Christian scripture, it's been understood for millennia by Jewish sages as the key to understanding the most important events in Israelite history.īy the second century A.D., Christians too began framing their relationship with the divine in erotic terms through the Song of Songs. "Your channel is an orchard of pomegranates with all choicest fruits," the narrator recounts her man saying to her, before proclaiming that her garden is "a fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon." It's filled with vivid physical descriptions of the two characters and the delights they take in each other's bodies. The Song of Songs is written from the perspective of a woman longing to be with her male lover.
This is illustrated in the Song of Songs, an erotic love poem with a female narrator. For the Israelites, the divine one is also their romantic soulmate. In turn, Israel is envisioned as Yahweh's wife. When Yahweh ratifies his covenant with Israel, his chosen people, he is often referred to as Israel's husband. Throughout Israelite history this idea frames the relationship between the people of Israel and God, whom they know as Yahweh. Israel – the ancient kingdom, not the modern nation-state – plays the role of God's spouse. "For your Maker is your husband," a passage in the Hebrew Bible says. This idea is expressed in the Hebrew Bible, where God is consistently seen as the one to whom his chosen people, Israel, are betrothed. Despite important differences, they both envision amorous union with the one divine force as the pathway to true selfhood, happiness and wholeness. While the examples from religious traditions are numerous, I will mention just two from Judaism and Christianity.Īt different points in the history of these these two faith traditions, mystics and theologians employed erotic and marital metaphors to understand their relationships with God. In numerous religious traditions, the human soul's connection to God has been envisioned in similar ways.
These references aren't limited to Coleridge and Plato. Aristophanes explains the transcendent experience of two soulmates reuniting in the following way: "And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself … the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment." Plato quotes the poet Aristophanes as saying that all humans were once united with their other half, but Zeus split them apart out of fear and jealousy. Several centuries prior to Coleridge, the Greek philosopher Plato, in his text "Symposium," wrote about the reasons behind the human yearning for a soulmate. One early use of the word "soulmate" comes from the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a letter from 1822: "To be happy in Married Life … you must have a Soul-mate."įor Coleridge, a successful marriage needed to be about more than economic or social compatibility. As a scholar of religion and culture who was trained in the history of ideas, I was interested in connecting the various iterations of the soulmate ideal through time. Ten years ago, after a hard breakup, I decided to investigate. What accounts for the persistence of the soulmate ideal in the contemporary age? The idea that there is a person out there who can make each of us happy and whole is constantly conveyed through portrayals in films, books, magazines and television.
That number far surpasses the percentage of Americans who believe in the biblical God. According to a 2017 poll two-thirds of Americans believe in soulmates. Most Americans, it seems, are still looking for one. Despite these trends, a yearning for a soulmate remains a common thread across the generations.
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