The Defense of Judas: The Problem of Evil and Free Will

 rmqphilosophy.blogspot.com

THE DEFENSE OF JUDAS: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND FREE WILL

by Ronald Michael Quijano

The Kiss of Judas. Infrared photography revealed that the painting must have been turned around in the 16th century. Photograph: HKI Institute/The Fitzwilliam Museum, Image Library

Salvation. The concept on which Christianity based its ultimate ending. For them, it’s the end all and be all of everything. Perhaps, the most profitable promise a religion can offer. For Vikings: Valhalla, for Muslims: Jannah, for Jews: Olam Haba, and for Buddhists: Nirvana. These concepts of heaven vary across different cultures and belief systems. Stories of creation, heroism, and martyrdom surround Christianity. Some, are historical, some fictional. Faith is what makes these contradictory fields aligned. These spoonfed sentiments shaped our ideals; indoctrination is the cornerstone built upon the shallow grounds of our moral arc. Where raising questions about the divine is wicked; and defending the twaddle of the sacred compass is sainthood. Faith, as defined under the context of religion, is a trust in a higher power or spiritual reality. For believers, it is seen as essential to salvation or spiritual enlightenment, and it can provide a sense of meaning, purpose, and hope in the face of life’s challenges and difficulties. In a philosophical context, faith is referred to as a belief in something that cannot be empirically or scientifically proven. Conversely, one must be reminded that a wish remains a wish whoever the wish came from. Believing something without evidence just because it provides comfort imposes a moral responsibility. It is an excuse for inaction or complacency in the face of suffering and injustice. It shows that faith can be used as a tool to control or manipulate individuals. This concept sparks debate among philosophers arguing that faith is incompatible with an evidence-based inquiry. Faith doesn’t just place the believers in a non-progressive way of thinking, it also puts God’s attributes to trial. The problematic concept of faith allows humanity to ignore the very essence of their existence and pursue the non-evident afterlife. For them, living another life is more important than living the current life justly. Faith and wish for salvation created the moral preference for a reward-based system. With all these questionable subjects, philosophy provides countless inquiries about the works and understanding of the divine. On how humanity created such attributes that result in contrariety and moral predicaments. In this short essay, we are going to contextualize the problem of evil and the problem of free will and predestination in the defense of Judas.

Theodicy, as to what it is commonly known for; is an attempt to resolve the problem that challenges both the field of theology and philosophy. It is an attempt to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world under the supervision of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. An attempt to show that the existence of evil doesn’t rule out the possibility of God's existence. This is the most asked but less answered question for us thinking beings: why is there evil? It is not foreign knowledge that the world is full of evil. And when it comes to evil, a wide spectrum of it; from petty lies to a pandemic and everything in between. Believers and non-believers both agree on the existence of evil. However, many theists believe in an omni-god (all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good). In contrast, atheists see the existence of evil and the existence of an omni-god as contradictory. Theists’ set of beliefs cannot all be true at the same time. This implies that if one is true, the other must be false. It means that in order to fit these concepts together, one must surrender something in return; and for theists, the existence of God is off the table. So they try to surrender one attribute or two. God is all-knowing, he even knows something bad is gonna happen even before it happens (and by “he”, no offense), and being omnipotent; he can do something about it, and being omnibenevolent; he must do something about it. Maybe God is powerful, but not powerful enough to stop evil. Of course, the motivation to stop evil is present in his omnibenevolent attribute. But maybe God is not all-good or not good enough to even care about stopping it. The proposed concept of an envious, petty, and jealous God is an attempt to acknowledge that he is not all-good. If you ever checked out the Old Testament, there’s a God there with some anger and daddy issues. One who is okay with wiping out the entire population just because of some primitive behavior. One who is okay with pranking an old man to kill his beloved son just to showcase his undying faith. 

One of the most popular theodicy as an attempt to resolve this issue is called “The Free Will Defense.” This defense shows that God created free beings to maximize goodness in the world. And being free means we can choose between doing good or bad - which we exercise mostly (I think?). This exhibits that God did not create evil and evil cannot be avoided without depriving us of our freedom, and a world without freedom would be the worst place to live in. Now that we have an understanding of the problem of evil, let us try to contextualize it in the defense of Judas. 

Why did God let Judas betray Jesus if he foresaw that he would do so? Does this imply that God knew about Judas' plans before they were carried out or that God can still be held accountable for Judas' deeds? God’s all-knowing feature implies that Judas’ destiny is already written, evidently prophesied in the Old Testament, and continuously reiterated by Jesus himself. If God knew everything, including what will happen, it must happen, otherwise, if Judas chose not to betray Jesus, God’s foretelling means he was wrong. And believers cannot fathom a God who commits mistakes because, for them, it would invalidate God’s perfection. So Judas cannot commit otherwise. We can revert to the creation of evil and the discrediting of humanity’s morals back in the Garden of Eden. Assume that God created everything, a perfect God means a perfect creation, Lucifer was God’s creation; Lucifer must be perfect. If Lucifer felt jealousy and hatred, where did it come from? If God knows everything including the future, he would know that Lucifer will feel such feelings and eventually will amplify evil. And if God’s omnibenevolence is ever-present, this would mean that appropriate action must be done through his omnipotence. The same goes for how shocked God is when Adam and Eve betrayed him by eating the forbidden fruit. So God created mankind in his own image; God is perfect, and so is mankind. Perfection means incapable of error. 

Going back to Judas’ case. Judas’ destiny is known to God. It cannot change so Judas has no choice but to betray Jesus. The betrayal act is prophesied will result in Jesus' sacrifice and will result in the redemption of sin and victory over death. Judas cannot choose otherwise because it would mean that God is not all-knowing, so he must do it. Therefore, Judas' action was orchestrated by the divine and has no means to be guided by his own free will. No matter where and how we look at it, God’s omniscience (knows everything including the past, present, and the future) will never be compatible with free will. It simply states that God (who may or may not author destiny) knows what happened, what is happening, and what will happen no matter what.  Freewill has no room for this attribute.