Discussion - Week Fourteen - Borges - Three Versions of Judas

[Jim]

This discussion covers the story, Three Versions of Judas


A Swedish heretic? A deluded, amateur theologian? Or a modern day Judas? Runeberg fiddles and befuddles his way through Christian mythology hoping to leave his mark (rune stone?) on mankind’s beliefs of the unknowable.

[Zadignose]

This was one more interesting story, with a little bit of its own unique character at the same time that Borges keeps up some of his familiar themes. This time he dabbles specifically in Christian theology, pursuing what he brands a "monstrous" conclusion, while preempting criticism of his theology by putting it in the words of another fictional author and raising most of the reasonable objections himself.

While titled "Three Versions of Judas," it's really more like three steps towards the most radical possible version of Judas.

Here I can come out as the true atheist that I am--though I've been reading more and more relating to Christianity, particularly Catholicism. Anyway, in general theology appears to be where logic would necessarily take us, if it were founded on absolutely untenable premises. The story of Judas is enigmatic, challenging, demanding of deep consideration to try to comprehend or rationalize, mainly because... it's a flawed and absurd story at heart. But if one takes as an axiom that it is not a flawed or absurd story, but is actually a flawless and perfect expression of some spiritual truth... well, we can see where one's logic can take one from there.

Borges engages in just such an intellectual pursuit and takes us along for the ride. He also indulges in some logical leaps which he permits himself because of the pretense that this is a summarized conclusion of another author's work without space to present the supporting arguments, thus allowing us to try to fill in the blanks in our own minds, or else allowing us to casually coast past the finer points that might admit of contradiction.

I think he successfully teases us along, as I would say that I somewhat anticipated the conclusion he would reach just about when I think he wanted me to anticipate it. One has to think, well if... then... and then it's not far to go to reach the idea that, if God really wanted to take on man's sin and "die" on our behalf (not just the temporal death, which the bible makes out to be a trivial and almost illusory phenomenon, but the spiritual death as well)... well, Judas might well be the best agent of all for an incorporated God.

But it's still 100% unsupportable within the bounds of Christian faith; it, like the Judas that "reflects" Jesus in the early version of Runeberg's theorem, is a virtual inversion of conventional Christian faith. Thus its heretical nature.

There's one other reflection I see, and that is from the story The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero. Specifically, its the idea of the man in the present reaching a conclusion that has been contrived for him, only for it to be the undoing of him as the discoverer, and also an accomplishment of a premeditated goal.

The messenger in this case, who is ignored, is actually part of God's plan to keep the message a secret, because his presentation makes the truth ridiculous and unacceptable... or so the messenger supposes, though it could just as well be his own mad conceit.

Of course there's the more obvious connection to Traitor and Hero in that this is about an ambiguously treacherous/heroic figure who may or may not have orchestrated an infallible plan to win by losing, or lose by winning, and cast an impenetrable haze over the truth of his character.

[Zadignose]

Oh, by the way, looking up a Bible verse, I find that when "the rigid Bishop of Lund" accused Runeberg "of contradicting the third verse of the twenty-second chapter of the gospel of St. Luke," he was referring to this:

"And Satan entered into Judas, who was surnamed Iscariot, one of the twelve."

And when he's accused, in his first version of Judas, of omitting the hypostatic union, this refers to nature of Jesus as both man and God in one. So, I guess the crudest form of Runeberg's idea, by making Judas the human reflection of the divine word in Jesus was "flawed", as the critics saw it, because Jesus was already an embodiment of both these aspects.