by Robert W. McDonald

Created on: November 09, 2009

The question of whether Judas was a "good guy" or a "bad guy" should be restated as "Was Judas a sinner?" Despite the contempt with which he is denounced by the more fundamentally-oriented believers, I hold such condemnations of Judas are inconsistent with Christian theology and, therefore, to condemn Judas is call into question either the sincerity of one's beliefs or one of the cornerstones of the Christian faith.

First, we can define "sin" as any action that is contrary to the will of God or any action that will interfere with the implementation of God's will by another. This definition is merely a paraphrasing of 1 John 3:4 and Romans 7:12-14. We can now infer that to do the will of God is not to sin.

We are also assured that God is omnipotent, which is to say "all powerful and all knowing." Furthermore, as both the trinitarians and John 1:1-3 will testify, God and Jesus are manifestations of each other. From this we know that to do God's will is not only pleasing to God but also pleasing to the second person of the trinity because, obviously, the son cannot contradict himself if he is truly part of the trinity. Of course we could also point out that this duality (God and logos) is a restatement of arguments first raised in both Plato's Phaedo and in Euthyphro but, as we will soon see, we need not complicate the issue at hand.

If we accept the view that God is all-knowing, then we must also acknowledge that the second person of the trinity (the logos, the son, or Jesus) is also all-knowing. Since God is omnipotent and all-knowing, God must have full knowledge a priori (before) of future events, as would Jesus himself. Again, this does not contradict any of our previous understanding regarding the nature of God.

This brings us to a critical point in our argument.

Since God is all-knowing, then God must have had a priori knowledge that Judas would "betray" Jesus. But, was that act of "betrayal" a sin?

Previously, we have established that to do God's will is not a sin. We also have determined that God (and by extension the son) is, of necessity, aware of the outcome of human history. Since God must have been aware of what Judas would eventually do, then Judas was merely "playing the role" assigned to him by God. Since that role given to Judas would have been God's will, and since to do God's will is not to sin, we must therefore conclude that Judas did not sin and those that rush to condemn him are either 1) wrong in their passage of judgment on Judas or 2) are willfully disregarding the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth!

In closing, I suggest that our fundamentalist friends might be well-served by a thoughtful rereading of the Gospel attributed to John, verses 7:53 to 8:11, inclusive.

Until then, as Jesus of Nazareth must have himself said on many occasions, shalom.

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