In a paper I was reading this morning, which turned out to be not a lot of use, I found this quotation from Karl Barth...

Paul sets out from the very place where the pentient Judas had tried to turn back and reverse what had already happened.  He begins by doing what to Judas' horror the high priests and elders had done as the second links in the chain of evil.  He fulfills the handing-over of Jesus to the Gentiles: not this time in unfaithfulness, but in faithfulness to Israel's calling and mission; not now aiming at the slaying of Jesus, but at establishing in the whole world the lordship of this One who was slain but is risen.  Judas... begins the true story of the apsotles in the sense of Mt. 28:19, the genuine handing-over of Jesus to the Gentiles.

Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol 2 Pt 2 p 478

 

This intrigues me - and takes my mind off what I'm meant to be thinking about, but never mind.

Matthew certainly has a repentent Judas (Matt 27:4) whilst Luke does not (Acts 1:18-19); yet while Luke has spontaneous eruption of guts, Matthew requires suicide by hanging to invoke divine curse (Deut 21:23).  Matthew's potter's field becomes a burial place for foreigners (Gentiles), Luke's is simply the Field of Blood.  In historicity we have a mismatch that is not easily reconciled, needing either an unrepentent Judas or a hanging to keep him under curse.  Whether curse = eternal damnation I don't feel qualified to judge, though that is the understanding I've been taught through the years in respect of Judas.

I don't quite know why I have a soft spot for Judas, and I don't know quite why I keep trying to find a loop hole for him.  Perhaps it is because I know that there have been times when I've behaved not a million miles differently from him.  Perhaps it is because I've always intuitively believed in general, not particular, atonement.  Perhaps it is my secret yen for God to be a universalist even if I'm not.  Or perhaps I'm just an incorrigble heretic.

Whatever the truth may be, I find Barth's perspective intereting.