Tuesday, January 13, 2026

The Whisper of Satan

The remarkable thing about Judas' series of interactions with the devil in Luke and John is how mundane it is.

Luke's "then entered Satan into Judas" at the time of Judas' approach to the "chief priests and captains" is the parallel of John's account of "the devil having now put into the heart of Judas" to betray Jesus.  Only later in John is it said of Judas that "Satan entered into him."  The degree or the timing of the devil's influence over Judas--to say nothing of how the moralists will assign responsibility--is perhaps a series of puzzles, but if the Judas-Satan nexus is remarkable for anything at all, it is how organic, malleable, and variable it might be.

Christian commentators--wedded as they are to artifices of the distinction between the natural and the supernatural, and also to conceits about the assignable individuality of persons--can only either stride metaphorically along, hands in pockets and whistling distractedly, or pause so as to render the question of Judas' responsibility separable from the rest of the Gospels, a discrete question about how it might be admitted that This Is A Problem.  Christianity has no use for Jesus' description of our self-conceits as houses riddled with door and windows and traversed by myriad entities.

In truth, there is no such thing as a neutral thought, or even a neutral observation.  This is not merely because we are limited, but also because we are under influences that assail us beyond the limits of our understanding.  There is no thought upon which we light that is unattended by the praise of an aggregate of internal voices (whether near or peripheral), and in this din there is always the whisper of Satan.

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