Why was Judas punished?
By barbarella
@barbarella (354)
December 19, 2006 9:47pm CST
Can somebody please explain this to me as I don't understand how it can have been predestined that he betray Jesus yet it says in the Bible that he was punished for it after death. If it was necessary for him to betray Jesus in order for Jesus to die for all our sins, then why is Judas being punished for it? The same question applies for Pontius Pilate.
2 responses
@livewyre (2450)
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30 Jan 07
Hi Barbarella
Predestination has a lot of people scratching their heads and I prefer to look at it this way:
We see time as linear, it goes from yesterday to today and then hence to tomorrow..
For God, the whole of time is there at one glance - he sees the beginning of a thought and the consequence simultaeneously (taking some risks with my spelling here..)
So because God knows what the outcome of our thought processes will be, he can place us to fulfill his will - even though paradoxically, it is OUR choice.
Judas may well have been frustrated that Jesus hadn't led some sort of insurrection to bring down the established rulers (Judas was supposed to be a Zealot) and taken matters into his own hands to force Jesus into a tight spot - who knows.
The disciple whom Jesus loved I think is actually Peter, and this reported by Peter himself - not sure whether Peter is overwhelmed by his own part in denying Jesus and uses this phrase to stress that he is unworthy of Jesus' love - that one's open to debate I guess.
According to Biblical teaching, if we don't accept Jesus as Christ each of us will suffer the same seperation from God, I don't think Judas has been singled out except of course that his actions had enormous consequences which he cannot have fully understood, and his own deep regret will have been punishment on a major scale.
One thing that has struck me about being able to see time all at once is that at the point of creation, God must have known that man would commit sin and that the cost of that would be for God to have to sacrifice his own son. Of course, the majority of people may not accept the concept of a creator God, but to me, that idea of knowing that man would let God down speaks volumes about Gods relationship with us.
(nailed my colours to the mast a bit with this post, but there you go...)
@barbarella (354)
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31 Jan 07
Nothing wrong with nailing your colours to the mast Livewire. Okay, my problem with that is that in order for God to have that perspective on time, He would have to exist outside of time and so be timeless. If that were the case, then how can He be an interventionist God who acts INSIDE of time, for example to have chats with Moses etc? You can't just go popping in and out of time willy-nilly you know!
There can't be The disciple that Jesus loved - he's Christ, he's supposed to love everyone.
Another problem with an interventionist God who is outside of time and sees all at once is the choices that He makes on that basis and His reported reactions to events He had foreseen. For example, if you know that the whole Sodom and Gommarah fiasco is on the cards but have the power to direct things differently, where is the purpose in creating a race that you intend to kill all but one family of and does this still fall under the benevolent God allowing free-will definition or is it just mean? And why does He get so cross and disappointed about these things when He knows in advance that they are coming? And why would Satan even bother going against Him if he knows that God knows everything and has seen it all in advance - it doesn't bode well for winning any fights you start with Him.
The nature of time is an incredibly interesting concept and I think I may go and start a discussion on it if you haven't pipped me to the post! p.s. separation and simultaneous, can't say anything really though as wasn't at all sure about my spelling of Gommorah!
@barbarella (354)
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1 Feb 07
I think you'll find You are spelling Livewire wrong - it being your name is no excuse!
The thing about God popping in and out of time is that it creates a few problems for Him. First of all, whilst He is in time He becomes subject to time and being subject to time makes Him less powerful than time and thus not omnipotent. He can't not be subject to time because if He weren't moving through it as we do then He couldn't act within it (just thought of another time question!). Also, once he is within it he is not omniscient unless He sees everything using some other method. Another aspect of being inside time is that you become subject to cause and effect, as soon as He 'pops in' He becomes less powerful than the forces of nature that he created but without the ability to pop in He is incapable of action within time and so has no powers at all. Its just as well He has all those mysterious ways to move in or He'd be in a bit of a pickle!!
I think Peter was probably just a bit arrogant in thinking of himself as the favourite, I want one of those T-shirts that says 'Jesus loves you but I'm His favourite' but its acquisition won't actually make it true!
I personally think that our idea of God has evolved and become more sophisticated - the Old Testament God bears all the signs of the anthropomorphism that you spoke about. My view is that God is a non-interventionist force for precisely that reason, the Biblical stories of Gods acts just seem way too human.
As an irrelevant aside, in psychology, there is something called the Jonah complex which is used to refer to people who are scared of progressing or succeeding.
