This morning, however, I've been reading de Sade. He is the opposite of beautiful. He is destruction. He is rape and murder. He is the slit throat of a dead prostitute. He is a child torn to shreds in a frenzy, broken skulls, wine and blood, bloody corpses, screaming and blasphemy. People are his playthings. His pleasure is their suffering. Try as I might there is no beauty to be found here. But somehow he finds the divine in all this. Perhaps it is because the Divine once desired the destruction of peoples, once demanded the blood of gentle lambs soaking his altar, spilled from gaping slit throats. Even Christianity touches on violence and the divine, as Bataille says:
"The ordeal of the Cross itself links Christian conscience to the frightfulness of the divine, though blindly. The divine will only protect us once its basic need to consume and to ruin has been satisfied."
And this is true. Why the cross, that torturous stake? Only after the scourges and rending of the Saviour's flesh can we receive the blessing! Marcion was wrong to deny the God of the Jews was the same God of the Christians. Here's how we know: This God is bloodthirsty. He demands blood before bestowing gifts upon the people.
But I have to add a qualification here. The God of the Jews demanded death as a satisfaction. The God of the Christians demands death so he can create anew. Bataille stops at the cross, but he should visit the empty tomb. This is little consolation in the end however. Why, one might ask, must we destroy before we can witness the new creation? Why must the Saviour be covered in his own blood and filth, pierced by crude nails, before he can know his own exaltation? This is still the logic of the old god, the logic of satisfaction, now with a promise. When I sacrifice myself for the love of Christ I do so to remove myself out of my own way in order for the new man in Christ to come forth. I cannot pour new wine into old wineskins. But when Jesus was sacrificed, who was it he had to remove? He was already the man of God, full of the new wine. Here we see the scandal: We do not die like Jesus, he was a true sacrifice.. the last bloody corpse to satisfy the old god. Sacrifice today means something quite different.
