Divine Singularity

Regular readers would be familiar with that little streak of writing and podcasting that I produced arranged around the theme of a theological engagement with pornography.

What began as a single post on Humanum ended up being a three-parter on some of the misconceptions of pornography entertained by believers and non-believers alike, and later developed into a peer-reviewed journal article.

That in turn spun off into a few podcast interviews, with Justine Toh of the Centre for Public Christianity, and with Shane O’Neill of The Naked Gospel.

One of the important themes that got distilled from this process of writing and interviews is the way pornography functions as a failed messiah, providing salvation by providing novelty to an otherwise plodding and repetitive existence.

After distilling this point after a few years, I have now realised that there was still something missing in this idea.

This only became apparent after reading James K.A. Smith’s book On the Road with St Augustine for my spiritual reading, which is Smith’s thematic reflections on the vast corpus of Augustine’s writings, most notably his Confessions, his letters and sermons. In particular, Smith has been really great in outlining in simple terms why Augustine continues to be of relevance, especially in an age that is not particularly interested in things pertaining to Christian theology.

In a chapter dedicated to sex Smith, distilling Augustine’s own thoughts on the matter, highlighted the reasons behind the importance that we place on sex, and why we pursue it, sometimes to our own destruction. A lot is found in that chapter, but the point that was relevant, that brought to relief a nuance I had not considered in my work on pornography thus far, was the connection between sexual pleasure and singularity.

For Smith, our culture’s constant drive to pursue sexual pleasure was not ultimately the pleasure per se. Instead, what Smith identified as the cause for our desire for this kind of pleasure is a desire for what he calls an exception. That is, something that is unique that could not be found in any other experience. Indeed, it is the kind of sexual pleasure that Augustine sought was something that is unique and distinguished from all other experiences of sexual pleasure that came before. As Smith wrote in the book:

What Smith suggests is the undercurrent informing Augustine’s search for the kind of sexual pleasure he describes as a search for the divine. It is not simply that the pleasure obtained pays some vague homage to the transcendent. Rather, it pays homage to the transcendent precisely because of the exceptionality tied to the experience of sexual pleasure.

This observation reminded me of the days when I taught on Neoplatonism in Campion College. In Neoplatonist metaphysics, all our activities here in this plane of existence is but a participation in another transcendent plane of existence. More accurately, they are a participation in the being of that transcendent category Plotinus called “The One”, which the Church Fathers have adapted to help understand our belief in the one God (an understanding that influenced Augustine’s own thought). All things in the universe are hardwired towards this singularity, which is then manifested in a desire for singularity in our immanent experience. This is hinted at in the very name “universe” which, as a former colleague from Campion pointed out, translates to “turning towards the one”.

This hardwiring towards singularity is then what drives our search for novelty. We are not simply looking for a new version of the same thing. Rather, we are looking for another thing entirely, an exception to all things, a singularity that participates in the oneness of “The One”.

If you enjoyed reading this and would like to see more, check out Matthew Tan’s other works.