"Although there is much cause for gloom in today's world, the rediscovery of the Song of Songs could lead us to see that ours is a time filled with new and positive possibilities. For ex- ample, the power of the old ecclesiastical sexual morality is broken, and so is the old alliance between church and society. Through the Song of Songs all this is affirmed by the Bible."

In this substantial theology of sexuality based upon a new reading of the Song of Songs, Helmut Gollwitzer finds ways to break open the old impasses between religion and sexu- ality. He finds that "If we take seriously the fact that in the Bible eros is allowed to express itself as freely, unreservedly, and openly as it does in the Song of Songs, then we must assume that eros and agape are not to be construed as mutually exclusive."