Judas the Redeemer
On the fragility of narratives
Every surface is a cloak.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
There are probably few things which people love more than narratives. Everything is a narrative: how you view yourself, what you watch on TV, your LinkedIn profile, a company’s earnings report, your relationships, etc. The list goes on almost without end because narratives are how our minds are programmed to function.
Because of this it is very easy to simply accept narratives handed down to us without looking at them with a critical eye. However, in doing so we ignore the fact that all narratives are, by definition, information that has been compressed and all compressed information is also incomplete.
As such, it is easier than you might think to hijack a narrative, and even turn it completely on its head, by deploying a few subtle observations and some simple logic. After all, this is a tale as old as time since extremist groups and cults have been doing exactly this for ages and with great success.
One interesting example of this cunning technique — of turning a narrative inside out using the same elements from that narrative itself — is the essay by the masterful Jorge Luis Borges titled “Three Versions of Judas”.
In it, he proves the potency of this approach by applying it to the narrative that has almost inarguably had the single greatest impact upon the development of humanity: The role of Judas in God’s redemption of the human race.
Most of us are familiar with the “first version” of Judas. We know that Judas was one of Jesus’ chosen apostles and that Judas betrayed Jesus to the Romans leading to his eventual crucifixion. Here, he is portrayed as a despicable informer, implying of course that this was not the will of God even though it was his will that Jesus be crucified.
This contradiction leads to the second version of Judas, which is where things get interesting. In this view, Judas was actually an instrument, a vital component, of God's plan for redemption.
Judas delivered up Christ in order to force him to declare his divinity and set in motion a vast uprising against Rome. A central piece of evidence for this stance is how superfluous Judas’ betrayal actually was. The Romans did not require one of Jesus’ close followers in order to locate a man who preached every day in the synagogue and worked miracles in plain sight of thousands of people. That is precisely, however, what occurred.
Given that this sacrifice was orchestrated by the Divine, an act which was central to the development of the world, the key element to its course could not have been a random act. Judas’ betrayal, therefore, must have been predetermined.
Borges proceeds to explain that Jesus’ sacrifice would necessitate that a man (in representation of all mankind) make a sacrifice of equal worth. Judas was that man since he was alone among the apostles in sensing Jesus’ secret divinity and his terrible purpose on Earth. Just as the Word stooped to become mortal, Judas stooped to become an informer, accepting the consequence of eternity in inextinguishable flames. His sacrifice was meant to add luster to Jesus’.
Judas, then, is God’s reflection in humanity, his shadow.
However, this train of thought implies that God relied on Judas in order to execute his plan and we can take it for granted that a being with all the resources that omnipotence can offer would have no need for such a dependency.
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. (John 1:10)
Borges interprets this verse in the most extreme sense possible as he drives toward his simple and monstrous crescendo, that of a third and most striking version of Judas.
He explains that since God stooped to become man for the redemption of the human race, we should presume that the sacrifice made by him was perfect and unattended by omissions. Therefore, to limit his suffering to that of one afternoon — suffering which is to eternally redeem all of humanity — would be a misrepresentation. Eternal redemption would necessitate something more.
Additionally, to claim that God was a man and yet was incapable of sin would be a contradiction since the attributes of humanity and perfection are utterly incompatible.
For many, the passage from Isaiah 53:2–3 “he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” foreshadows the Christ at the hour of his death, and only then.
For Borges, however, these words are a refutation of the loveliness attributed to the savior; they are the detailed prophesy not of a moment but of the entire horrendous future, in Time and in Eternity, of the Word made Flesh. God was made totally man, but man to the point of iniquity, man to the point of “reprobation and the Abyss”. Jesus, then, was a necessary distraction from God’s true plan to take our place in everlasting suffering.
In order to make this unfathomable sacrifice, God couldn’t choose just any life that weaves the confused web of history. He needed to choose the life that would commit the most egregious offense of all, one which could never be topped.
And so he chose as his existence the most abject among creation:
