Sade and the cross

Notoriously, the Marquis de Sade stole some consecrated wafers, pushed them into a prostitute’s vagina, and had sex, saying, “Avenge yourself, if you are God.”

He meant this as blasphemy, and it is. But his blasphemy only shows just how insurmountable Jesus is. Sade thought himself innovative, but he only repeated a gesture already more than a millennium and a half old, the gesture of Jews and Romans, priests and soliders. His blasphemy can do no more than eroticize the story of the cross – God comes to man, manifesting Himself in a vulnerable body, to be pierced with nails and a spear.

Even the blasphemers acknowledge Him.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist

Peter J. Leithart

It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…

The Possibility of Possibility

Midge Goldberg

"Might could” is a Southern expression meaning “maybe I could” or “I might be able to,” conveying…

The False Promise of No Contact

Noelle Mering

Around the time nineteen-year-old Alice began cutting ties with her family, she announced on social media that…