Judas

[_oxymoron]

If a suffering man dies, and there is no afterlife, he will no longer suffer. That’s the simple man’s way of putting it. Of course, logically, this makes no sense since then there would be no “he” to suffer or exist in comfort. But how else can we say it?

Similarly, if Judas had never existed, he would not have gone through all that suffering as a result of turning over Jesus to the authorities. Again, logically, this makes no sense, since if Judas had not been born there would be no Judas to suffer or to exist in comfort. But how else can we say it?

Fact: The sin he knowingly committed against the Christ was beyond measure

Fact: He would greatly suffer for his decision and deservedly so

Fact: The fate of this decision was eternal because if there was any period where the torment of his decision ended and he was reconciled with Christ, then no amount of torment would overshadow the bliss of being restored with Christ therefore why would it better if he were never existed?

One can argue that if he were never born then he would have remained in the bliss of heaven rather than suffer the torment of his decision in life but the end result would still be the same. Why would it matter if he were born or not?

[Lefein]

I like how the Bible is full of idioms, kinda like the every day language of people today.

I find it interesting how God in the flesh speaks in every day language, kinda like us.

[Michael]

One can argue that if he were never born then he would have remained in the bliss of heaven rather than suffer the torment of his decision in life but the end result would still be the same. Why would it matter if he were born or not?

One could argue that if he were never born he would have never suffered the torment resulting from his decision (in life, or in a temporal hell hereafter), and that (even if ultimately reconciled to Christ, and a recepient of eternal bliss), it would have been better for him not to have been born (and not to have suffered that torment.)

…no amount of torment would overshadow the bliss of being restored with Christ therefore why would it better if he were never existed?

True.

But (however you translate the verse), Christ didn’t say that it would have been better for Judas if he never existed.

He said “good were it for Him if that man had not been born.”

Now, if you believe that life begins at conception, isn’t it a fact that not being born isn’t synonomous with non-existence?

[AllanS]

That makes my eyes water, Jason!

Who said scripture could be plainly understood by the common man?

[Melchizedek]

If a suffering man dies, and there is no afterlife, he will no longer suffer. That’s the simple man’s way of putting it. Of course, logically, this makes no sense since then there would be no “he” to suffer or exist in comfort. But how else can we say it?

Similarly, if Judas had never existed, he would not have gone through all that suffering as a result of turning over Jesus to the authorities. Again, logically, this makes no sense, since if Judas had not been born there would be no Judas to suffer or to exist in comfort. But how else can we say it?

Fact: The sin he knowingly committed against the Christ was beyond measure

Fact: He would greatly suffer for his decision and deservedly so

Fact: The fate of this decision was eternal because if there was any period where the torment of his decision ended and he was reconciled with Christ, then no amount of torment would overshadow the bliss of being restored with Christ therefore why would it better if he were never existed?

One can argue that if he were never born then he would have remained in the bliss of heaven rather than suffer the torment of his decision in life but the end result would still be the same. Why would it matter if he were born or not?

And yet, Paul calls himself the “chief of all sinners”. Not Judas.

[Michael]

One can argue that if he were never born then he would have remained in the bliss of heaven rather than suffer the torment of his decision in life but the end result would still be the same. Why would it matter if he were born or not?

One could argue that if he were never born he would have never suffered the torment resulting from his decision (in life, or in a temporal hell hereafter), and that (even if ultimately reconciled to Christ, and a recepient of eternal bliss), it would have been better for him not to have been born (and not to have suffered that torment.)

…no amount of torment would overshadow the bliss of being restored with Christ therefore why would it better if he were never existed?

It wouldn’t.

But (however you translate the verse), Christ didn’t say that it would have been better for Judas if he never existed.

He said “good were it for Him if that man had not been born.”

Now, if you believe that life begins at conception, isn’t it a fact that not being born isn’t synonomous with non-existence?

[TGB]

Gosh how did I miss this thread? I’ve been over on the other Judas thread. Oh well.

Tom

[JasonPratt]

I like how the Bible is full of idioms, kinda like the every day language of people today.

I find it interesting how God in the flesh speaks in every day language, kinda like us.

Me, too!–but it sure leads to some interpretative headaches sometimes!

[JasonPratt]

Fact: The sin he knowingly committed against the Christ was beyond measure

Fact: the sin any of us knowingly commit is against the Christ, and is beyond measure. None of us are ahead of Judas regardless of the relative size of our sin.

Fact: He would greatly suffer for his decision and deservedly so

Fact: the same is true of anyone who impenitently holds to a sin. (Even ultra-universalists tend to agree with this, though they would say the suffering happens only in this life.)

Fact: Judas didn’t impenitently hold to his sin, but regretted what he had done, confessed his sin, and acted toward trying to fulfill justice with God instead.

Fact: we don’t even have to speculate whether this happened after death; GosMatt says he did it before death.

Fact: the term “regret”, although the Greek word “after-care” (or “after-concern” or “after-matter”), is still closely related to the word for repentance “after-mind”, and is treated everywhere else in the New Testament as being equivalent to repentance. (So trying to claim there is some special technical distinction such that Judas didn’t ‘really’ repent of his sin, is pointless. Not that you’ve tried this yet, but I’ve seen that defense often enough I figured I ought to pre-empt it. )

Fact: while Judas may have despaired that God would forgive him and accept his attempts at reconciliation (not surviving long enough to be visited like Peter nor to hear the “Father forgiven them” from the cross), no one anywhere at any time considers Judas Iscariot to be an inerrantly inspired theological authority despite being a chosen apostle like Simon Peter (who himself was hardly an inerrantly inspired theological authority, at least until much later. ) So why we, who presumably know better theology than Judas, should accept his despair as being religiously authoritative truth, must be established (if at all) on other grounds.

Fact: The fate of this decision was eternal because if there was any period where the torment of his decision ended and he was reconciled with Christ, then no amount of torment would overshadow the bliss of being restored with Christ therefore why would it better if he were never existed?

Fact: this argument, if followed out, indicates Jeremiah and Job (among others) must have eternally suffered torment, too, with no reconciliation to Christ.

Fact: no one anywhere believes the similar language used by Jeremiah and Job in regard to themselves, indicates a revealed metaphysical truth about their final unending misery. Nor does anyone anywhere believe their eventual blessedness, overshadowing their torment, renders their statements worthless as an expression of their misery and (in various ways) their crying needs for salvation, at the time they made those statements.

There may be good arguments for believing Judas will never be saved from his sins; but these are not them.

[Lefein]

Its kind of hard to imagine someone that Jesus Christ literally hand-picked and personally chose (predestined?) to be his follower should be in hopeless damnation for doing nothing that any of the other hand-picked disciples didn’t do. They all betrayed Christ, Judas just did it a little more obviously, before doing his very best to reconcile himself back and make up for his mistake. Ironically; the religious leaders who put him up to the task refused to help him repent of it.

Fascinating how The Law did little to nothing to clean the man of the sins that The Law hired him to commit!

[Michael]

So… you soberly think they would have existed better off if they had not existed to be born?

I’d have to re-read Jeremiah, but I have no doubt that Job didn’t see anything getting any better, and would have prefered not to exist at all.

I believe he genuinely cursed the day of his birth, and I see no reason to take his words hyperbolically.

Also (considering that he had lost all his sons and daughters, was covered in boils from head to foot, and was in constant pain), I think it’ fair to say that if things never got any better, he would have been better off out of existence.

This was from the same Job who kept demanding that he was innocent and that God would do justice for him eventually, right?

My question there, of course, was whether you thought this was what was being revealed to be true by their words. Later in your post you distinguished their emotional extremities from an objective pronouncement about metaphysical truth, which by necessity would thus be some kind of hyperbole compared to an objective pronouncement about metaphysical truth.

No doubt they were honestly expressing their personal feelings, which were immensely intense. That doesn’t mean they were expressing metaphysical technical truths thereby. If they weren’t, then they were using hyperbole to express their personal feelings.

I don’t follow you at all here.

It seems to me that they (or at least Job) were expressing there feelings quite literally.

Why would they have to be speaking hyperbolically, if they weren’t right (*expressing metaphysically technical truths") in their assesment?

Did they kill themselves, or even try to do so? Or were they praying and hoping for God to make things right in the future, including appealing to Him with their complaints?

If they tried to kill themselves (or even succeeded) then I would agree, they weren’t speaking hyperbolically: they weren’t expressing the intensity of their feelings by exaggeration and actually believed they would somehow be better off not-existing and so were trying to achieve that non-existence (regardless of whether that made any logical sense or not).

If they still looked and appealed to God to restore them and save them from their misery, and never tried to end their miserable existence in despair from God’s salvation, then they were using the phrase as a cry for pity–which, not incidentally, is how the concept is typically treated in Near Middle Eastern culture.

Note that when atheists (or anyone else) uses the “quality of life argument”, as you mentioned, they’re doing so for purposes of practical justification of a particular action: namely ending a life (theirs or someone else’s).

Even then, it’s still a cry for pity though. And people who make that argument (which I have a lot of sympathy for) who also believe in God or at least in some kind of ‘heaven’, don’t mean by it that the person in question will suffer endlessly after death or be annihilated out of existence. Theistic/heavenly quality-of-life proponents want the person transferred to post-mortem life as soon as possible in order to avoid more suffering in this life.

So, since you yourself bring up the distinction of using the claim as a justification for euthanasia or suicide: was either Job or Jeremiah using the claim to justify their suicidal actions? If not, then they were making a hyperbolic cry for pity. If so, they were making a more literal cry for pity. But either way it’s a cry for pity; and either way they had hope from God for something better which they were seeking by making that cry.

Your only evidence against it is a literal interpretation, the actual literality of which you yourself reject when the implications are spelled out

I don’t reject the literality of it at all, and I don’t understand your logic.

Literally the phrase indicates that they would be better off to have continued existing without being born. But you reject their pre-existence as such. So in fact, as I noted, you don’t take the phrase literally but figuratively. Yet the weight you want to put on it requires (as you yourself keep emphasizing) some kind of very literal application.

Would you agree with Augustine’s contention that it’s better to be damned (to eternal conscious torment) than not to exist at all?

No, I would not. I would call that a category error; there is no common frame of reference for comparison. Someone who does not exist at all is in no position to be in a better or worse state compared to any existent person.

I certainly acknowledge that a person may mistakenly feel that way, especially in high emotion; or not understand the issues involved and so soberly have an opinion about which one is “better” for the person.

How can you say that a figurative, hyperbolic interpretation is necessary, because the statement can’t be taken literally?

Step 1: I assess the literal value of the statement and I find that, to be taken literally, it requires a belief that a person exists in a better status before birth than the person has any hope of being after being born.

Step 2: I check to see whether this can or should be taken literally. It can, but only if someone believes that a person exists in a better status before birth etc.

Step 3: I check to see whether the person making the statement believes that a person exists in a better status before birth, and I discover the person does not in fact believe this.

Step 4: I conclude that the person does not take the sentence literally as stated, but is applying it figuratively in one or another way.

Step 5: I check to see how far the person making the statement believes (by means of a logical category error, as it happens) that the non-existence of the person so described is somehow better than that person’s continued existence.

Step 6: I find that the person is taking no steps to send the person so described into non-existence.

Step 7: I also find that the person is taking no steps to send the person so described even into a post-mortem better existence.

Step 8: I conclude that a figurative and hyperbolic interpretation of the statement is necessary, because the person making the statement is not taking the statement literally (because the person does not believe in a pre-existent better state of the described person); and because the person making the statement shows concern for the person described by the statement, yet the person making the statement is not acting to put the person so described into a better status by sending them out of this life (whether into non-existence or into a superior post-mortem existence)–thus is speaking in exaggeration for emotional emphasis, i.e. hyperbole.

Step 9: I type out the words “a figurative, hyperbolic interpretation is necessary, because the statement can’t be taken literally”, thus saying them.

When I also factor in (1) the cultural usage of the statement as a non-hopeless cry of pity for the person so described (with examples at hand, by the way); (2) the emotional status of the person making the statement (grieved in himself and shaking etc.); (3) the person making the statement has a habit of deploying cultural usage phrases and concepts; (4) the person making the statement has at least some real chance of pitying the person so described; then I can be reasonably certain the person making the statement was expressing a cry of non-hopeless pity for the person so described.

Job fits all the elements of this analysis (assuming he did not believe in pre-existence of the merely human soul); so does Jeremiah (ditto); so does Jesus (ditto), the main difference being that He is making the statement about someone else other than Himself (better for Judas if Judas had not been born). The main point of contention is whether any or all of them believed in the pre-existence of (merely human) souls and so was in fact making a literal appeal after all.

First Imagin yourself:

A.) In constant, unending, unbearable pain,

Then imagine:.

B.) Nothing, you don’t exist

Are you saying that (if given a choice) you’dt have no preference?

Are you saying you wouldn’t prefer option B over option A (or that you couldn’t make a choice because it would be like comparing apples to oranges)?

If that’s not what you’re saying, you’re just playing with words here, and I’m not interested in word games or thought experiments.

I would have an understandable emotional preference for B, under the misapprehension that I would somehow exist in my non-existence to benefit by comparison. But if my logical faculties were not impaired by the constant, unending, unbearable pain (and considering that I have constant unending emotional pain, which has occasionally flared to the point I have begged God to kill me and be done with it, I am not speaking from lack of experience here), then I would realize the supposed preference is a non sequitur and that option B is just playing with words–I ought to be interested in actual salvation from my pain, not in self-contradictory word games or thought experiments (imagining what my comparative state of existence would be if I didn’t exist, for example.)

I was just re-reading this, and I was wondering if you realized that George Macdonald would disagree with you here.

And if any man remind me of his words, “It had been good for that man if he had not been born,” I had not forgotten them, though I know that I now offer nothing beyond a conjectural explanation of them when I say: Judas had got none of the good of the world into which he had been born. He had not inherited the earth. He had lived an evil life, out of harmony with the world and its God. Its love had been lost upon him. He had been brought to the very Son of God, and had lived with him as his own familiar friend; and he had not loved him more, but less than himself. Therefore it had been all useless. “It had been good for that man if he had not been born;” for it was all to try over again, in some other way—inferior perhaps, in some other world, in a lower school.

afirstnewssource.net/sermons/Mac … rgiven.htm

**He doesn’t seem to see any necessity of taking Christ’s words hyperbolically.

He takes them literally, and offers a perfectly logical interpretation.**

Would you agree with Augustine’s contention that it’s better to be damned (to eternal conscious torment) than not to exist at all?

No, I would not. I would call that a category error; there is no common frame of reference for comparison. Someone who does not exist at all is in no position to be in a better or worse state compared to any existent person.

I wouldn’t agree with Augustine there either, but I think you’re wrong to call all comparosons a category error.

I disagree witn Augustine because I consider a happy existence better than no existience, and no existence better than an unhappy existence.

Existence in bliss is better than non-existence in the same way that one is greater than zero (and the fact that you’d have to exist in order to consciously recognize the truth of either statement doesn’t make either of them any less true.)

Existence in misery is worse than non-existence, in the same way that minus one is less than zero (and the fact that you’d have to exist in order to see and appreciate that fact doesn’t change it either.)

I know what it’s like to live in emotional pain, but I don’t find it helpful to view everything as relative.

If you view the pain as bad, happiness as good, and existence in a state of happiness as intrinsically better than non-existence, you can at least hope everything will be worthwhile in the end (and thank your Creator for bringing you into existence in the first place.)

If you view all things as relative, and existence (whether in pain or bliss) as essentially no better or worse than non-existence, I don’t see how you could ever be grateful to your Creator for bringing you into existence (and I strongly advise you not to use that line of argument with anyone who’s even remotely suicidal.)

Anyway, after all the times you brought this topic up in our private conversations (when I was more interested in your views on other things, and didn’t want to talk about this at all), I hope you’ll forgive me for replying to you here.

I see no reason not to take Christ’s words as literally as George MacDonald, and I believe there are states of existence that are better than non-existence.

That’s why God created us–to share the good we couldn’t experience if we didn’t exist.

P.S. However valuable you found the “category error” argument in your past debates with annihilationists, I believe it is a fallacious argument.

If it is an act of kindness for a man to shoot a horse who’s in constant pain, it would certainly be an act of kindness for God to end the suffering of the incorrigibly wicked (even if “they” didn’t exist to consciously see and appreciate that kindness once they were annihilated–playing semantics with personal pronouns doesn’t change that.)

To say otherwise is to say that it would be just as kind for God to go on tormenting them forever, and just as kind for the man to leave the horse to die in pain–that’s nonsense Jason.

Even if you disagree with annihilationists, you should treat them with “fair-togetherness,” and avoid the fallacious arguments (and you should be aware that this particular argument could be quite toxic to anyone who’s really questioning the value of existence.)