While addressing the ‘redemption’ of sexuality in the Song of Solomon, Tremper Longman III, addressing Jesus’ response to the Sadducees concerning the woman with the seven husbands, sounds very “Mormon”:
one
of the most remarked-upon features of the Song is the confident voice of the
woman as she pursues relationship with the man. The man responds in kind, and
it is fair to characterize their relationship as egalitarian. There is no power
play between them, no domination of one against the other. . . . It is striking
that the word “desire” (tešūqâ) [which appears in] Genesis
3:16 and 4:7, occurs only one more time—in Song of Songs 7:11 (English 7:10): “I
belong to my lover, and his desire is for me.” There the use is clearly positive.
It is also in a refrain of mutual love, affection, and possession.
However
. . . not all is healed in the area of human relationships. A significant number
of passages express the truth that problems of intimacy still exist in the
world of the Song. Little foxes are “ruining our vineyard, our vineyard in
bloom” (2:15). The city is often the setting of those poems where union is
difficult or impossible (3:1-3; 5:2-7). While rejoicing in love, three times
(2:7; 3:5; 8:4) the young woman warns the chorus of the dangers of premature
love: “I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the deer of the
field, not to awaken or arouse love until it desires.”
In
a word, relationships, broken by sin, may experience the healing of redemption,
but it is an already-not yet phenomenon. The consummation of relationships will
not take place until the eschaton, but precisely what that means is beyond
precise description. . . . we will deal with one enigmatic passage that speaks
of marriage in heaven, Luke 20:27-40. There Jesus is confronted by the
Sadducees, who do not believe in resurrection after death. They use a
hypothetical situation in an attempt to ridicule Jesus. They speak of a woman
who at the end of her life had had seven husbands, each of whom had in turn
predeceased her before producing offspring. To whom will she be married in
heaven?
Jesus’
words are enigmatic in large part because he refused to allow the Sadducees to misdirect
the conversation. The part relevant to our discussion is 20:34-36: “The people
of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered
worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will
neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they
are like the angels.” This passage has led too quickly to the conclusion
that there is nothing like sexuality or intimacy in heaven. However, we must
suspend our hasty judgments. We really do not know what the angels are like in
this regard (Indeed, Gen. 6:1-4 and Jude 6, when understood in its context,
suggests otherwise. The nonsexual nature of angels may be an imposition of
Platonic ideas on the biblical picture). We must remain open as to the nature
of relationships in heaven and not impose a cold, sterile nonsensual
understanding on the biblical text. What we do know is that both divine-human
and human-human relationships will be healed and completely restored in heaven
. . . (Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs [The New International
Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001], 66-67,
emphasis in bold added)
