A faith that moves mountains, speaking with the tongues of angels—without love, these are nothing. Paul’s Song of Songs has been absorbed into everyday language through the power that lies in the words and presumably also the bridge that these words build to other religions. “I belong to no religion. My religion is love,” wrote the Islamic mystic Rumi, building on this same heartfelt bond of faith. “Where religions are wise, they are indistinguishable,” says philosopher Gert Scobel.1 In these times of great conflict, it is worth adding the words of theologian Hans Küng from 1990 that there can be no world peace without religious peace.
In Christianity, Paul is the peacemaker, the bridge builder. How does he intone his Song of Songs? He compares us humans to one body. As members of humanity, we are each as different, unique, and indispensable as our physical feet and hands. He praises diversity, then love, in the oft-quoted 13th chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians. And what follows the praise of love? Paul remembers: “When I was a child …” After the Song of Songs, he looks back and speaks of development.
Diversity opens and development closes the hymn about love. Diversity and development: different things next to each other and different things one after the other—that is love. In other words, diversity and development are the two colors of life. So life is love.
Translation Laura Liska
Image Miniature in the St. Gallen manuscript of the Pauline letters, first half of the 9th century. It is considered to be one of the oldest depictions of Paul in European art. The inscription reads: “Saint Paul sits and writes.” (Edited)
