Judas - Damned for all time?

[gigi]

First, a nit: It’s “He hanged himself.” Thanks. Although isn’t there another passage that says he bought land and then fell and did himself a hurt–accidentally–which killed him? Something about entrails spilling out?

Posted by dogsbody

But, I’m wondering what doctorinal stances are on this subject; what does your particular church say happened to the poor guy?

The only mentions in the Catholic catechism http://www.ziplink.net/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/kerygma/a.pl are:

The historical complexity of Jesus’ trial is apparent in the Gospel accounts. The personal sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence we cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry of a manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles’ calls to conversion after Pentecost.

(Thus negating the idea that Christians should blame the Jews for killing Christ, even though the crowd said His blood should be on them and thier children.)

and

It is precisely in the Passion, when the mercy of Christ is about to vanquish it, that sin most clearly manifests its violence and its many forms: unbelief, murderous hatred, shunning and mockery by the leaders and the people, Pilate’s cowardice and the cruelty of the soldiers, Judas’ betrayal - so bitter to Jesus, Peter’s denial and the disciples’ flight. However, at the very hour of darkness, the hour of the prince of this world, the sacrifice of Christ secretly becomes the source from which the forgiveness of our sins will pour forth inexhaustibly.

I think it’s very dangerous to interpret Judas as without free will and a pawn of God. It’s not clear that the apostles understood just who Jesus was, and their heads could be turned by earthly temptations. Peter was essentially faithful to Jesus but was still compelled by fear of those around him to deny Him three times, as Jesus said he would. Judas did show some discomfort at Jesus’s words at the Last Supper, because he knew what he was going to do, but the desire for power and money was stonger. If the version of him hanging himself is taken as the real one, he does express remorse which you could construe as repentance.

[MEBuckner]

Oy, Joel. No one is saying the Biblical God doesn’t judge according to deeds. It’s just that he also judges according to intentions. You’re damned either way.

A fundamentalist Protestant view would be that, judging by deeds and intentions, everyone is worthy of damnation, and no one can do anything–or have thoughts pure enough–to save themselves, whether it’s Judas or Mother Teresa. Only faith in Jesus Christ can save. (C’mon, you guys have read Chick Tracts, right?) So the question would be “Did Judas accept Jesus as his personal savior before he died?” The Biblical answer would appear to be probably not. But who knows?

[Skott]

Personally, I don’t think Judas has been judged at all by God! Yet, anyway. And if He hasn’t, why shouldn’t anybody else? Judgement isn’t coming for a while…

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. -Rev 20:12-15

From what I read, this judgement takes place way in the future… at least from a human perspective

[JerseyDiamond]

*Originally posted by Lauralee *
**Well, it’s fairly safe to say that Judas felt guilty. After all, he hung himself. But feeling guilt is not the same thing as repentance, so we really don’t know. Anyway you look at it, I feel sorry for him. **

I don’t feel sorry for him. Just think, he was right there, next to Jesus. He saw the miacles and everything. I guess if he didn’t repent, I do feel sorry for him, especially since he knew the truth ( directly form Jesus ).
As for what the OP said about free-will, God knows everything, even before he created heaven and earth. He gave us free-will and he knew that Judas would betray Jesus.
So yes, Judas had free-will, and his betrayal was going to happen. God knew that already. What God knows doesn’t change. So it doesn’t mean Judas didn’t have free-will, it means God gave him free-will and since God already knows whats going to happen it had to happen. I understood what I typed lol I hope you could follow. If not, hopefully someone else can explain.

[Zarathustra]

Originally posted by JerseyDiamond I don’t feel sorry for him. Just think, he was right there, next to Jesus. He saw the miacles and everything. I guess if he didn’t repent, I do feel sorry for him, especially since he knew the truth ( directly form Jesus ).

Just don’t be too sure you wouldn’t do the same thing. If you look at Judas and say, “how could he do that? I would never do that!”, then IMO you’ve committed the sin of pride, and of judging others. Not that I’m saying that you are, I’m just adding that as a caveat. What’s sobering about the the story of betrayal of Jesus is that just about everybody except the central character acted in a pretty shoddy fashion, and if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’d likely do no better.

[kniz]

Speaking of Judgement Day, I recently heard it defined as:
“God’s last chance to get it right”.

[JerseyDiamond]

I would hope that my feelings now would never let me betray God. There is no one in this world that I would denounce Jesus for, probably because when it comes to that no one else matters. Besides, only he knows what I would do anyway. As for pride, I really don’t think so. As for judging, again, I don’t think so.

[Opus1]

Well, this isn’t directly related to the OP, but how often do I get to bring up such esoteric information?

Biblical scholar Robert Eisenmann has an interesting theory that there was no Judas. In fact, the Judas who is said to have betrayed Jesus is really the same man as the Judas who is Jesus’ brother. He was intentionally slammed by Paul because he beat Paul in a competition to convert an important queen to Christianity. I would be happy to post supporting evidence if anyone is interested.

[jmullaney]

*Originally posted by JerseyDiamond *
There is no one in this world that I would denounce Jesus for, probably because when it comes to that no one else matters.

But even Judas didn’t betray Jesus for another person: he betrayed Jesus for money.

If I might be forgiven for taking a rather long excerpt from the On-line Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Judas Iscariot the last three paragraphs touch on most of the themes of this thread and sum them up well:

But these textual difficulties and questions of detail fade into insignificance beside the great moral problem presented by the fall and treachery of Judas. In a very true sense, all sin is a mystery. And the difficulty is greater with the greatness of the guilt, with the smallness of the motive for doing wrong, and with the measure of the knowledge and graces vouchsafed to the offender. In every way the treachery of Judas would seem to be the most mysterious and unintelligible of sins. For how could one chosen as a disciple, and enjoying the grace of the Apostolate and the privilege of intimate friendship with the Divine Master, be tempted to such gross ingratitude for such a paltry price? And the difficulty is greater when it is remembered that the Master thus basely betrayed was not hard and stern, but a Lord of loving kindness and compassion. Looked at in any light the crime is so incredible, both in itself and in all its circumstances, that it is no wonder that many attempts have been made to give some more intelligible explanation of its origin and motives, and, from the wild dreams of ancient heretics to the bold speculations of modern critics, the problem presented by Judas and his treachery has been the subject of strange and startling theories. As a traitor naturally excites a peculiarly violent hatred, especially among those devoted to the cause or person betrayed, it was only natural that Christians should regard Judas with loathing, and, if it were possible, paint him blacker than he was by allowing him no good qualities at all. This would be an extreme view which, in some respects, lessens the difficulty. For if it be supposed that he never really believed, if he was a false disciple from the first, or, as the Apocryphal Arabic Gospel of the Infancy has it, was possessed by Satan even in his childhood, he would not have felt the holy influence of Christ or enjoyed the light and spiritual gifts of the Apostolate.

At the opposite extreme is the strange view held by the early Gnostic sect known as the Cainites described by St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., I, c. ult.), and more fully by Tertullian (Praesc. Haeretic., xlvii), and St. Epiphanius (Haeres., xxxviii). Certain of these heretics, whose opinion has been revived by some modern writers in a more plausible form, maintained that Judas was really enlightened, and acted as he did in order that mankind might be redeemed by the death of Christ. For this reason they regarded him as worthy of gratitude and veneration. In the modern version of this theory it is suggested that Judas, who in common with the other disciples looked for a temporal kingdom of the Messias, did not anticipate the death of Christ, but wished to precipitate a crisis and hasten the hour of triumph, thinking that the arrest would provoke a rising of the people who would set Him free and place Him on the throne. In support of this they point to the fact that, when he found that Christ was condemned and given up to the Romans, he immediately repented of what he had done. But, as Strauss remarks, this repentance does not prove that the result had not been foreseen. For murderers, who have killed their victims with deliberate design, are often moved to remorse when the deed is actually done. A Catholic, in any case, cannot view these theories with favour since they are plainly repugnant to the text of Scripture and the interpretation of tradition. However difficult it may be to understand, we cannot question the guilt of Judas. On the other hand we cannot take the opposite view of those who would deny that he was once a real disciple. For, in the first place, this view seems hard to reconcile with the fact that he was chosen by Christ to be one of the Twelve. This choice, it may be safely said, implies some good qualities and the gift of no mean graces.

But, apart from this consideration, it may be urged that in exaggerating the original malice of Judas, or denying that there was even any good in him, we minimize or miss the lesson of this fall. The examples of the saints are lost on us if we think of them as being of another order without our human weaknesses. And in the same way it is a grave mistake to think of Judas as a demon without any elements of goodness and grace. In his fall is left a warning that even the great grace of the Apostolate and the familiar friendship of Jesus may be of no avail to one who is unfaithful. And, though nothing should be allowed to palliate the guilt of the great betrayal, it may become more intelligible if we think of it as the outcome of gradual failing in lesser things. So again the repentance may be taken to imply that the traitor deceived himself by a false hope that after all Christ might pass through the midst of His enemies as He had done before at the brow of the mountain. And though the circumstances of the death of the traitor give too much reason to fear the worst, the Sacred Text does not distinctly reject the possibility of real repentance. And Origen strangely supposed that Judas hanged himself in order to seek Christ in the other world and ask His pardon (In Matt., tract. xxxv).

*Originally posted by MEBuckner *
No one is saying the Biblical God doesn’t judge according to deeds. It’s just that he also judges according to intentions.

Yet since intentions bring about deeds (for those whose bodies are whole – which I’ve always considered was Paul’s point) the result is the same. Marguerite Porete tasks to task the Old Testament verse “a just man falls seven times a day” and insists that isn’t a requirement, and nor does that imply a fall into anything beyond what we’d today call venial sins. The Catholic Church now teaches “living charity wipes away venial sins.”

You’re damned either way. … C’mon, you guys have read Chick Tracts, right?

Yeah, yeah. Luther’s teaching that “Original Sin” radically perverted man’s free will in such a way that true repentance is impossible lives on, sadly not just in comic book form.

Even between the Catholics and Free Spirits it was a point of disagreement as to whether someone could be so filled with the Holy Spirit that it becomes impossible for them to sin, with Porete, et al., maintaining this was so. In light of the teachings of Luther that it is not possible to stop sinning, which the Catholics have also rejected as heretical, their own particular orthodoxy has moved much closer to the Free Spirit point of view, if still somewhat muddled.

[Zarathustra]

*Originally posted by JerseyDiamond *
I would hope that my feelings now would never let me betray God. There is no one in this world that I would denounce Jesus for, probably because when it comes to that no one else matters.

Peter, maybe the most passionate of Jesus’ disciples, said more or less the same thing, as I recall:

Mark 14:29-31
Peter said to [Jesus], “Even though all become deserters, I will not.” Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

JerseyDiamond, are you saying that you would have done better if you had been in Peter’s place?

[Polycarp]

Couple of comments:

There are those who read “Iscariot” (Judas’s byname) not as a misreading of Ish-kerioth (man of Kerioth, presumably his hometown), but as a misreading of “Sicariot” (i.e., one who kills with a dagger – the term being the appellation of one of the most activist groups among the Zealots). If this were the case, Judas’s motives (other than the money, which is attested, but amounts to hardly a sum to warrant selling out a friend) would have been to force Jesus’s hand – seeing him, as many did, as the Conquering King style of Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus come back as it were, to throw out the Romans and all those heathen practices and Bring This Land Back To What God Expects It To Be. (Sound at all familiar?) In this understanding of Judas’s thinking, Jesus, faced with the crisis of being arrested, would have had to call the revolt, declare the Day of the Lord, and clean things up with God behind him.

Oops. Wrong idea of what the Messiah’s supposed to be. Well, how was I supposed to know that ahead of time!?

However, I think that it’s safe to say that God’s justice and mercy have dealt or will deal appropriately with Judas, and that his destiny is something we can leave in God’s hands.

Jersey, I too would like to think I would not deny my Lord under any circumstances. But remember my screen name: I took as my patron saint the guy who was converted by St. John the Evangelist, lived to a ripe old age and got martyred in his 80s or 90s (depending on how you read the 86 years of his dying words – age or years since conversion in early teens). And we’ll never know until we face it.

The final point I’d make is something the guy Judas betrayed had to say: “Judge not, lest you be judged. For with the judgment you mete out you shall also be judged.” I don’t know what motivated Judas, and I think that one can go too overboard in trying to accommodate predestination here. Whatever he meant to do, it left him reviled for all time. I think Lauralee was right: compassion is all we can give him at this point.

[Spiritus_Mundi]

I would be happy to post supporting evidence if anyone is interested.

Yes, please.

[Opus1]

Eisenman’s thesis is essentially that all the Jameses, Judases, and Simons in the NT derive from three figures:
James the Just,
Judas,
Simeon,
all brothers of Jesus.

What happened, he argued, is twofold. First, as the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity became dogma, Jesus’ brothers had to be turned into cousins, step-brothers, and friends. Secondly, as the early Jerusalem church died after 70 CE, the new gentile Christians attempted to distance themselves from their Jewish roots, including the early church led by Jesus’ own brother James.

The complete theory is really far too complex to enter into here. But a brief summary is found at http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rpeisman.html

Here are some relevant pieces:

Second, Eisenman has developed a keen sense for the “name game” played in the sources. Most of us have sometime scratched our heads over the tantalizing confusions latent in the strange redundancy of similar names in the New Testament accounts. How can Mary have had a sister named Mary? Is there a difference between Joseph Barsabbas Justus, Judas Barsabbas Justus, Jesus Justus, Titius Justus, and James the Just? Whence all the Jameses and Judases? Who are Simon the Zealot and Judas the Zealot (who appears in some NT manuscripts and other early Christian documents)? Is Clopas the same as Cleophas? What’s going on with Jesus ben-Ananias, Jesus Barabbas, Elymas bar-Jesus, and Jesus Justus? What does Boanerges really mean? Is Nathaniel a nickname for someone else we know of? And so on, and so on. Most of us puzzle over these oddities for a moment—and then move on. After all, how important can they be, anyway? Eisenman does not move on till he has figured it out.

His working hypothesis is that the confusions, alterations, and obfuscations stem from an interest in covering over the importance, and therefore the identity, of the desposyni, the Heirs of Jesus, who had apparently functioned at least for Palestinian Christianity as a dynastic Caliphate similar to the Alid succession of Shi’ite Islam or the succession of Hasmonean brothers. It is a commonplace that the gospel texts treating Jesus’ mother, brothers and sisters either severely (Mark and John) or delicately (Luke, cf., the Gospel according to the Hebrews) are functions of ecclesiastical polemics over their leadership claims as opposed to Peter and the Twelve (analogous to the Companions of the Prophet in Sunni Islam) or to outsiders like Paul. It is equally well known that the Synoptic apostle lists differ between themselves and between manuscripts of each gospel. Why? Eisenman connects these phenomena with another, the confusion arising among early theologians over the siblings of Jesus as the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity became widespread. They had to be harmonized with the dogma, so brothers and sisters became cousins, step-siblings, etc. And characters became sundered. Mary suddenly had a sister named Mary because the mother of James, Joses, Simon, and Judas could no longer also be the mother of Jesus. And so on.

The Gospels give prominence to an inner circle of three: Peter, John son of Zebedee and John’s brother James. And Galatians has the Three Pillars in Jerusalem: Peter, John son of Zebedee, and Jesus’ brother James. What happened here? Surely the gospels’ inner group of three is intended as preparatory for the Pillars, to provide a life-of-Jesus pedigree for the Pillars. But then why are there two different Jameses? Mustn’t they originally have been the same? Eisenman says they were, but certain factions wanted to play up the authority of the shadowy college of the Twelve against the earlier authority of the Heirs and found it politic to drive a wedge between James the brother of Jesus and the Twelve, so James becomes James the Just on the one hand and James the brother of John on the other.

Another attempt to distance James the Just from the Companions of Jesus was the cloning of James the Just as James the son of “Alphaeus,” which name Papias says is interchangeable with “Cleophas,” who happens to be the father of Simeon, James’ successor as bishop of Jerusalem and his brother as well. And eventually James the son of Alphaeus and James son of Zebedee both replace James the Just in the circle of disciples. Meanwhile, Thomas has similarly undergone mitosis into Judas of James, Thaddaeus, Theudas (=Thaddaeus + Judas), Lebbaeus, and Judas Iscariot. Simon the Zealot is Simon bar Cleophas and may be Simon Cephas as well.

To summarize the chain:

1. Judas, the brother of Jesus, is also known as Thaddeus. We know this because we can compare the list of disciples in Luke and Matthew, and they differ only in this one name.
2. A note in one manuscript of Luke tells us that:
   “Thaddaeus, also called Lebbaeus, and who was surnamed Judas the Zealot, preached the truth to the Edessenes and the people of Mesopotamia when Abgarus ruled over Edessa, and has been buried in Berytus of Phoenicia.”
3. “Iscariot,” as Polycarp pointed out, is taken by some to mean “Sicariot,” a type of Zealot.
4. Thus, the good Judas=Thaddeus=Judas the Zealot=Judas Iscariot.

As to why this happened, Eisenman argues that Judas converted an important Helenic queen that Paul (and the Pharisees, according to Josephus) was also trying to convert. Paul was upset that such a key figure ended up in a competing denomination of Christianity. Once all the Jewish Christians were killed or expelled in the revolt against Rome, the gentile Christians got their revenge by blaming him for Jesus’ death.

All of this information is found in Papias, the Pseudo-Clementines, Josephus, the gospel of Thomas, and a bunch of other documents that aren’t exactly readily available to the lay person. But you can find Eisenman’s reconstruction of it all in James, the Brother of Jesus.

[Spiritus_Mundi]

Thanks. I may have to check that one out.