Inner Attitude.
Judas’ attitude is that of standing in a growing contradiction to the Lord. And it is uncomfortable for him. But above all Jesus feels an unease in relation to Judas. He allows this unease to occur precisely within the sphere of his human nature. He does not allow it to grow or diminish through his divine knowledge; he does not hate Judas as the betrayer. But he is also incapable of simply setting aside his unease and ignoring it until the time of the Passion. He allows it to follow human laws and development. Judas has a certain share in this discomfort, with increasing rancor. He sees more and more that something is not right. Why does the Lord not intervene, since he in fact sees that it is not right this way? And because he does not do anything about it, perhaps he is not the messiah. But Jesus does not make an exception for Judas. He gives him the entire lesson of Christianity, just as he gives it to the others — no more and no less. Judas does not receive any ‘private lessons.’ Jesus cannot make any special efforts in order to convert him, for these would have their ground purely in his divine and supernatural knowledge; he would be able to justify an extraordinary effort only on the basis of the whole of his knowledge, which includes the human. Occasionally he does make use of the higher knowledge, for example, in his prediction of Peter’s denial. But what he does in relation to Peter he does not do in relation to Judas. He does not give him any predictions; he does not warn him. In relation to Judas, he fundamentally avoids doing this. He turns only his human knowledge toward him. It is almost as if it were necessary to avoid forcing Judas’ guilt too far, almost as if Judas already had enough to bear, without awakening in him an extraordinary faith through extraordinary graces, which would only burden his betrayal more deeply. By keeping silent, the Lord protects Judas. To be sure, an abyss opens up here for us: we are unable to see what law the Son of God is following in administering his divine knowledge, when he uses it and when he does not.
Judas becomes inwardly more and more alienated and stubborn. He plays in a sense with his inner attitude: he clings to the fact that the Lord called him in spite of everything and, then, again to the fact that the whole thing is not possible; everything he picks up from the Lord’s teaching makes it possible to deny it even more. And nevertheless he is involved. He is like the religious who has taken vows and can no longer undo them. Ultimately, he has no faith. He acts as if he were trying to decide between belief and unbelief. He weighs what it would be like to believe…But the most important thing is: he has no hope. And, therefore, no love and, therefore, no faith. He does nothope that he could become someone else through his calling, that God would root himself in himself, that he could accept Jesus’ teaching. He does not hope because he thinks he knows himself.
There is no confessional attitude. He does not believe in any forgiveness, because ultimately he does not believe in any sin. When he lies, for example, he is completely aware of the fact that he does not speak the truth. In fact, he knows this quite clearly. Indeed, it would be desirable for the majority of Christians to have such a clear understanding of their sin! But Judas recognizes them, not as sins, but only as facts, which are arranged somehow in his life’s system, in the system of his self-justification.
Prayer is foreign to him. When the others pray, he blasphemes God inwardly. In the moment when he betrayed the Lord, there is the glimmer of a possibility of hope in him. It is the first time he reflects: “Perhaps he truly was the Lord!” Something like hope is born out of the despair: “If it is the Lord, then he belongs to God, and then the truth is in him and not in me.” This could have been hope; this could have been liberation form the ego, the recognition that God is the one who is right. One cannot say that Judas did not know this “hope”. Nevertheless he does hang himself. This situation, in any event, is too monstrous, too brutal for him to be able to find a solution for himself. But he sees that there may be a solution for the Lord. Because his betrayal would not be able to thwart the Lord if he comes from God. And it may be that he turned to his Lord for just this reason, … like the evil tenders of the vineyard, who say: he is the Son, and therefore we want to kill him… And in the hope for Jesus, for the possibility that he could really be the one, is somehow so powerful in Judas that it does not leave any room in him, as it were, for any hope for himself… The “regret”, which causes him to bring the money back to the Temple , is a fruit of his hope; he would not have been able to achieve this if he did not have this hope. And if he does hang himself, then it is because he is no longer able to live any longer, because he betrayed the Lord! If hope — a single hope — had arisen before the betrayal, then it would have been available for himself as well. He is like an Abraham who really did kill his son Isaac and now realizes the angel was in fact present to keep him from doing it… And thus Judas murders his whole negating subject; his deed appears to him so deserving of destruction that he destroys himself. He knows no other way of undoing what he has done.
