So, Hofstra Univ. is hosting a Borges conference next November, and abstracts are due on Friday. I'm trying to condense 100 pages of my dissertation into a 2-page abstract. As I've been working with this same material for seven years, it all makes sense to me, and I've damned-near got these sentences memorized.
If anyone feels up to reading this and seeing if it makes sense to an educated non-specialist, I'd be grateful. I can't bring myself to write it from scratch, as I just wind up typing the same sentences I've already written. I know that there are some redundancies, but if you've ever written anything like this, you know how hard it is to have any kind of distance between you and your words. I'm not looking for critique of the ideas here, so much as grammar, redundancy, fluidity, clarity, voice, and so on.
If you want to know more, read the whole story and I'll email you the 100-page chapter about it.
If anyone feels up to reading this and seeing if it makes sense to an educated non-specialist, I'd be grateful. I can't bring myself to write it from scratch, as I just wind up typing the same sentences I've already written. I know that there are some redundancies, but if you've ever written anything like this, you know how hard it is to have any kind of distance between you and your words. I'm not looking for critique of the ideas here, so much as grammar, redundancy, fluidity, clarity, voice, and so on.
If you want to know more, read the whole story and I'll email you the 100-page chapter about it.
“Tres versiones de Judas” purports to share a theological treatise about the work of Nils Runeberg, a fictional Swedish theologian, concerning the relationship between Judas and God. Over time, Runeberg elaborates a theory of Judas’s true nature that suffers two evolutions until arriving at his final theory that Judas was God. The “Three Versions” then are not three separate versions of Judas per se, but the changes in Runeberg’s theory as he formulates it and reveals God’s secret--ultimately leading to his own demise at the hands of a wrathful God. My examination of the story will not focus solely on the differences between the evolving versions of Judas but on the overall effect that these ideas have on the final goal of Runeberg’s theory, situating each version of Judas in the several notions of Judeo-Christian free will reconciliation for comparison.
Runeberg’s reasoning suggests that if the salvation of the world and the fulfillment of prophecy hinged on the betrayal and sacrifice of Jesus, and his sacrifice in turn depended on the greed, corruption and/or political intrigue of Judas to cause his death, then Judas did not have free will because Judas’ betrayal of Christ was so essential to God that he would have ensured that Judas betrayed him. This problem brings into plain view the nature of predestination versus foreordination. According to standard logic, if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, he should have foreknowledge of how each of his creations will act in any given situation or circumstance. This essentially means that the book of each person’s life has already been written (resting on a shelf somewhere in the Library of Babel) and that we are merely automatons living out the pre-programmed plot of a divinely-authored plan.
In the story, the narrator takes the central redeeming figure of Christianity and juxtaposes him with the single most reviled figure in all of Christendom. The narrator never claims that the Christian God does not exist and he likewise never disagrees with the theory of the protagonist, Nils Runeberg, that Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed the one whom Christians consider to be the Savior of the World, was actually God. The narrator, via Runeberg, proposes that our adoration of God should be even more respectful and profound, because God did not only come down in the body of Judas to the world, instead of reaping the glory that was rightfully his, he also paid an even greater price by condemning himself to everlasting damnation. Anyone can die for someone else, but this God has sufficient love to condemn himself to endless suffering for billions who will then revile him and worship and praise someone else. “Tres versiones” also calls into question the debate concerning the illusory nature of mankind’s free will. In my analysis I will show how Gnostic symbolism in “Tres versiones de Judas” determines how the inherent meaning of these symbols alters the reception of the story, eschewing the already-thorough studies completed about how these symbols relate to the Cabbala or other paradigms of religious creation.
In “Tres versiones,” the narrator reveals two approaches to the free will/determinism debate and then an ultimately and uniquely novel one. The first version of Judas is predestined, lacking agency. The second version dwells somewhere in one of the other theories, while the third version, as a deity, accomplishes his own will; and his agency and will are one and the same. Via specific examples in the text and citations from theologians such as Aquinas, Occam, Molina, Calvin, Maimonides, Gersonides, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer, I will show that the reader too exercises a kind of agency that the author fosters via an elaborate multi-perspectivism in which the reader gets to follow his/her own forking path of interpretation, never really arriving at the truth.
Runeberg’s reasoning suggests that if the salvation of the world and the fulfillment of prophecy hinged on the betrayal and sacrifice of Jesus, and his sacrifice in turn depended on the greed, corruption and/or political intrigue of Judas to cause his death, then Judas did not have free will because Judas’ betrayal of Christ was so essential to God that he would have ensured that Judas betrayed him. This problem brings into plain view the nature of predestination versus foreordination. According to standard logic, if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, he should have foreknowledge of how each of his creations will act in any given situation or circumstance. This essentially means that the book of each person’s life has already been written (resting on a shelf somewhere in the Library of Babel) and that we are merely automatons living out the pre-programmed plot of a divinely-authored plan.
In the story, the narrator takes the central redeeming figure of Christianity and juxtaposes him with the single most reviled figure in all of Christendom. The narrator never claims that the Christian God does not exist and he likewise never disagrees with the theory of the protagonist, Nils Runeberg, that Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed the one whom Christians consider to be the Savior of the World, was actually God. The narrator, via Runeberg, proposes that our adoration of God should be even more respectful and profound, because God did not only come down in the body of Judas to the world, instead of reaping the glory that was rightfully his, he also paid an even greater price by condemning himself to everlasting damnation. Anyone can die for someone else, but this God has sufficient love to condemn himself to endless suffering for billions who will then revile him and worship and praise someone else. “Tres versiones” also calls into question the debate concerning the illusory nature of mankind’s free will. In my analysis I will show how Gnostic symbolism in “Tres versiones de Judas” determines how the inherent meaning of these symbols alters the reception of the story, eschewing the already-thorough studies completed about how these symbols relate to the Cabbala or other paradigms of religious creation.
In “Tres versiones,” the narrator reveals two approaches to the free will/determinism debate and then an ultimately and uniquely novel one. The first version of Judas is predestined, lacking agency. The second version dwells somewhere in one of the other theories, while the third version, as a deity, accomplishes his own will; and his agency and will are one and the same. Via specific examples in the text and citations from theologians such as Aquinas, Occam, Molina, Calvin, Maimonides, Gersonides, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer, I will show that the reader too exercises a kind of agency that the author fosters via an elaborate multi-perspectivism in which the reader gets to follow his/her own forking path of interpretation, never really arriving at the truth.
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