Augustine’s Oceanic: The Wellspring of Christianity vs. the Disease of Desire
American Imago June 1, 2022 F. Restuccia
Challenging Freud's view that religion originates from a need for a protective father, a reading of Augustine's Confessions suggests that an oceanic feeling of eternity generated the concept of original sin, which justified a theological path back to that ecstatic experience, laying Christianity's foundation. Lacanian and Kristevan theory reveal Christianity as a wish for maternal fulfillment, clinging to the plenitude of das Ding. Agamben highlights the subjectivity in Augustine's formation of Christianity, while Foucault underscores Augustine's obsession with sex and suggests the forbidden fruit might be understood sexually. The Christian ideal fuses with the mother-Church to experience oceanic completeness, enabling victory over the Law of the Father. Augustine, however, drowned the symptom in meaning, repressing it, thereby instigating two thousand years of Christianity.