I previously published a reflection under the title ‘The Mirror of Judas Iscariot.’ In that article I tried to see Judas no longer as the one-dimensional monster we have made of him over the centuries, but as a man of flesh and blood. A human being who, like us, struggles with expectations, disappointments, and the inclination to instrumentalize the other for his own plan.

I asked myself: am I the only one who looks at Judas this way? Who else has gazed into that same dark mirror, and what did they see there? In this exploration I want to dig deeper. I have gone in search of other voices from psychology, literature, philosophy, and theology: Carl Jung, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

An attempt to see why Judas’ story is not only about an event of two thousand years ago, or about “evil” held at arm’s length, but about the anatomy of the human soul today.

The Shadow in the Mirror: Carl Jung

My earlier thesis was that we make a monster of Judas in order to feel safe ourselves. For if he is a monster, then he is not like us. But when we take up the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, we discover that this very reflex is what prevents us from truly becoming human.

Jung introduced the concept of the Shadow: that part of our personality that we prefer not to show to the outside world, and not even to ourselves. It contains our greed, our jealousy, our cowardice, and yes, our inclination to betrayal as well. Jung taught us that we often project this shadow-side onto others. By demonizing Judas, we project our own ‘inner traitor’ onto him. Thus our own self-image remains clean and just.

But Jung warns: as long as we do not recognize our shadow, it has power over us. The ‘mirror’ I wrote about is, in Jungian terms, the confrontation with our own shadow. When we make Judas human, we are doing in fact a piece of shadow-work. We acknowledge that the seed of betrayal is present in every human heart.

The question I asked — “Why a kiss?” — receives in Jung a still deeper layer. The kiss is the symbol of the ultimate adaptation, the ‘persona’ (the mask) that Judas puts on to hide his shadow while he commits his act. Jung’s lesson is clear: only when we dare to say “I am Judas,” can we also truly say “I am a follower.” The mirror is not meant to condemn us, but to make us whole by bringing our hidden darkness into the light of truth.

Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Ideology of Power

In my article I wrote that Judas had written a ‘script’ for Jesus. He probably wanted a Messiah who would drive out the Romans, a strong leader. When Jesus did not match that picture, He became for Judas an object that could be exchanged. No writer has captured the tragedy of this ‘script’ more sharply than Fyodor Dostoevsky, particularly in the famous chapter ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ from The Brothers Karamazov.

In that story Jesus returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition. The Grand Inquisitor has Him arrested and explains to Him why He is not welcome. The Inquisitor argues that humanity is not waiting for the freedom and the love that Jesus brings; humanity wants bread, authority, and miracles. The Inquisitor has, like Judas, his own plan for the salvation of humanity, and Jesus’ refusal to wield power stands in the way of that plan.

For Dostoevsky, Judas is the precursor of this Inquisitor. He does not love the actual Jesus, but the idea of the Messiah. When the reality of Jesus — His vulnerability, His suffering, His focus on the invisible Kingdom — collides with Judas’ ideology, Judas chooses for the ideology.

Dostoevsky teaches us that betrayal often begins with a ‘good intention.’ We want to save the world, we want to bring order, we want to see results. And in that drive we make of the living person an instrument for our ideals. Judas did not betray Jesus because he loved evil, but because he found his own being-right more important than the Person who stood before him. The lesson for us is piercing: how often do we sacrifice our neighbors on the altar-stones of our own being-right?

Søren Kierkegaard and the Leap into the Unknown

In my reflection I called Judas the pragmatist who began to calculate. This brings us to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard spoke of the ‘offense’ (forargelse) that Jesus inevitably evokes.

For human reason, the idea of a God who becomes man and chooses death on a cross is an absurdity.

Judas is, par excellence, the man who is offended by Jesus. He tries to understand Jesus with his intellect, with his logic of thirty pieces of silver and three hundred denarii for the perfume. But Jesus does not let Himself be understood; He lets Himself only be followed. Kierkegaard held that a ‘leap’ is required, a self-surrender that leaves the logic of the intellect behind.

Judas refused to make that leap. He remained on the side of calculation. For Judas, Jesus became a ‘case’ to be studied, a teacher who could be evaluated. Kierkegaard shows us that the moment we begin to ‘evaluate’ religion or our fellow human being on the basis of usefulness and logic, we are taking the path of Judas. Friendship dies where appraisal begins. Kierkegaard’s lesson is that truth is not an object we can possess or sell, but a subjectivity in which we must lose ourselves. Judas wanted to keep control, and precisely thereby he lost everything.

From I-It to I-Thou: Martin Buber

The heart of my article was the shift from person to object. Judas made Jesus an instrument for his own ends. This touches the essence of the philosophy of Martin Buber, who in his masterpiece I and Thou drew the fundamental distinction between two ways of standing in the world.

Buber held that we can approach the other as an ‘It’ (an object we observe, use, and categorize) or as a ‘Thou’ (a subject whom we encounter with our entire being). Judas’ betrayal was the total transition from the I-Thou relation to the I-It relation. The kiss in the garden was the ultimate expression of this objectification: a symbol of a ‘Thou-encounter’ abused for an ‘It-transaction.’

What we can learn from Buber is that this inclination to objectification is rooted deeply in us and in our culture. We speak of people in terms of their functions, their economic value, or their political color. The moment we do that, we commit a small betrayal. Buber reminds us that God can only be encountered in the ‘Thou.’ Judas did not lose God because he committed a sin, but because he replaced relationship with calculation.

The reaction of Jesus in the garden — “Friend” — is, in Buber’s logic, the attempt to restore the I-Thou relation. Even at the moment that Judas treats Jesus as an ‘It,’ Jesus continues to address Judas as a ‘Thou.’ That is the way shown to us: the refusal to reduce the other to an object, however hard they may have wounded us.

Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Love of God

Finally I come to the theologian who, in this search, has consoled me most: Hans Urs von Balthasar. In his work he reflects deeply on the question of the fate of Judas. Whereas many theologians have effortlessly consigned Judas to hell, Balthasar asks whether the love of God is not greater than even the deepest betrayal.

Balthasar points to the events of Holy Saturday, on which Jesus ‘descends into hell.’ He suggests that Jesus, in His death, seeks out the uttermost loneliness of man — precisely the loneliness in which Judas found himself after he had thrown away the thirty pieces of silver and hanged himself. For Balthasar, Jesus is the ‘Friend’ who follows Judas into the abyss.

The refusal of Jesus to give Judas up, which I described in my article, becomes in Balthasar a cosmic principle. The love of God is not a passive waiting, but an active search for the lost sheep. Judas thought he had placed a period at the end of the relationship; God places a comma.

What can we learn from this? Perhaps this: that the ‘way out’ for which I was searching at the end of my article does not lie in our own strength to return, but in the refusal of God to let us go. The mirror of Judas shows us our own inclination to despair, but Balthasar points us to the Man who appears behind us in the mirror. He reminds us that there is no abyss deeper than grace.

What Can We Learn from This?

When I lay these five thinkers alongside my own reflection, I realize that my question — “Who else thinks this way?” — has led me to the heart of the human deficit.

From Jung we learn that we must dare to look at our own inner Judas instead of projecting him onto others.
From Dostoevsky we learn that ideologies and ‘scripts’ are the enemies of love.
From Kierkegaard we learn that the intellect has its limits and that the surrender of the heart is the only road to truth.
From Buber we learn that the other must always remain a ‘Thou’ and never become an instrument.
And from Balthasar we learn that we may never, but never, give up hope, neither for ourselves nor for the other.

Judas Iscariot remains a heavy name, and rightly so. But he is not a name that should make us shudder with fear of a monster outside us; he is a name that invites us to humility. I have come to the conclusion that the story of Judas is not meant to point out a traitor, but to warn us against the cold logic of our own heart.

The real victory over betrayal lies not in the condemnation of Judas, but in answering Jesus’ question: “Friend, why are you here?” In that question lies the recognition that we, despite all our scripts, all our calculations, and all our shadows, are still seen as a person, as a subject, as a human being.

Let us therefore lay down the thirty pieces of silver of our judgment and learn anew to look at the other — not as an object that must conform to our picture, but as a friendship that wants to be won again every day. That is the way of Judas back to humanity, and it is the way that we all, with falling and rising again, are called to walk.