A better exegist than I ought to weigh in on this, but for my part, I have come to the opinion that the biblical term "judgment" is equivocal. It carries the dual sense of both "forming an opinion, decreeing an assessment" and of "executing a sentence, inflicting a punishment, effecting a discomfiture." Sometimes one or the other meaning is intended, and sometimes both. The concepts were not sharply distinguished in the ancient world, and we must let the Holy Spirit of Truth and the Analogy of the Faith guide us as to which interpretation is the correct one in a given context.
The Gospel of St. John 8:15 has Jesus talking to the Pharisees, in which he says this: You judge according to the flesh; I judge no man. This is a good proof text on which to carry out our analysis, for it contains all the various shades of meaning in a very pithy format.
First of all, we must ask why Jesus said that he judges no man, since both he and the church he founded have ever proclaimed before all, that he is the supreme judge of heaven and earth. It can mean only that Jesus, in his First Advent, did not come to punish anybody in the flesh. There is not one record in Scripture or Tradition of the merciful redeemer punishing anyone for anything. Even the driving of the money-changers from the temple was not an act of punishment but an act of "housecleaning," as it were. His mission was one of mercy and atonement, a sacrifice pure and acceptible to God.
On the other hand, it simply cannot mean that Jesus did not form opinions or decree assessments concerning any man, for virtually the entire Gospel consists of Jesus' assessments and decrees, declaring this one to be justified and not that one, this generation adulterous and that one less so. So the term 'judgment' which appears in the second clause of the verse, renders effectively as this: "I see all things with perfect clarity, and especially all unrighteousness, but I have not come in my human nature to punish anybody...yet." We are confirmed in our interpretation by the fragment which begins the next verse: Yet if I do judge, my judgment is true. We are likewise confirmed by the common biblical practice of employing the terms 'justice' and 'righteousness' interchangeably.
The first clause has Jesus accusing the Parisees of judging "according to the flesh." This has two possible meanings. It can mean either that they discern not the things of the spirit, for they "know neither him nor his father" ; or that they inflict heavy fines and punishments on others, based on their own rather fleshly priorities. Both meanings are here intended, I think. The first meaning distinguishes Jesus from the Pharisees by contrasting the truth of his assessments with the falsity of their own, while the second meaning accomplishes the same feat by contrasting their hypcrisy (as it is revealed in their harshness) with his own mildness and mercy. Taking these divers meanings together and each in their proper measure, we are enabled to obtain an umproblematical and commonsensical interpretation of Scripture, which is fully harmonious with the entirety of the Gospel, and with what the Church has always believed and taught. So if I may dare an expository reworking of John 8:15, I would caste it thus:
"You Pharisees are fleshly men who act unmercifully toward others, and you derive your authority to do so from your own claim to represent the truth, even though you are far from it. I, on the other hand, am perfect truth and perfect light, seeing all things as they are; and my punishments, were I to inflict them, would be justice itself. Yet I abjure doing so for a time in the name of mercy, for so it has pleased my father to order it."
Here we have Jesus precisely in that mode in which we must always conceive of him, as simultaneously priest and victim, both sacrifice and king: conceding nothing to the world, declaring his infinite superiority to it, and laying down his life for it. That is the habit an manner of the true Christian. But nowhere in this analysis do we find anything to suggest that we ought to tolerate the evil deeds of others, in earnest of "not judging them." For we have received the Sprit of Truth, the same spirit which is the mind and heart of Christ; and what part has truth in falsehood, or darkness in light, or purity in impurity? The modern prophets of tolerance raise an objection to the judgments of truth, an objection which purports to be a moral objection but is rather, in its argumentative formulation, entirely epistemological: "You don't know what the truth is, so don't judge me!" We now see that this objection is founded on a false premise, the falsest of false premises; for we do know what the truth is, and the truth has set us free: free to bind and loose, to heal the sick, to raise the dead, and to set upon twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel, for the spirit we have received is one of righteousness against which all things will be measured.
Now we are in a position to tackle the thorniest conundrum of them all. When the prophets of tolerance retort upon us with the words of Christ, and admonish us to "judge not lest we be judged," we will have ready to hand the true meaning of the Scripture, which our analysis above gives us to be this:
"You who are my flock, do not go after the manner of the Scribes and Pharisees; for unless your righteousness (i.e. your judgment) exceeds theirs, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. They follow the lusts of their own flesh, they hanker after the things of this world, they make their authority felt over others, and this is what they think will justify them. But they have no awareness of me or my father, no awareness of the truth. Their opinions are worthless and their judgments are false. You who have eaten the bread of life, what need have you of any of this worldly nonsense? You don't need to worry or fear, for you know that your father in heaven protects you. You don't need to flatter anyone or show partiality to either the rich or the poor, for you have been given a spirit that sees all things as they are, and it would be a sacrilege of the first order to pervert that spirit by mixing it with worldly sentimentalities. You do not need to exact vengence on those who persecute you for my name's sake, for a justice far greater than your own has justified you, and has you safely in its keeping. Rather you imitate me, who am king but came in the form of a slave, that the world may know that it is not of myself but of my father, of my God and your God, that I speak. If you do these things, and obstain from iniquity, then your reward will be great in the kingdom. But if you go back to the world, back to its self-concern and wickedness, then you will suffer the fire of the ungodly."
Finally, we must now say a word about the judging of souls, which belongs only to God Himself, since we are also frequently accused of usurping that particular prerogative of the Most High, when we say, of a certain politician for instance, that he is not in a state of grace, and should not receive Holy Communion, because he supports abortion. The prophets of tolerance then remind us that "no one knows what passes between a soul and God," as if the likes of Ted Kennedy could be presumed sanctified on the basis of a number of such hypothetical secret communicatons, for which there is not the slightest evidence whatsoever. All that should be said on this subject right now, is that in the term 'judgment,' as it concerns God's prerogative to judge a soul, the emphasis is on the second sense of the word, that of inflicting a punishment or effecting a change of state; for it is incontravertible that only God has the power to raise a soul to heaven or to cast it into hell. And while it remains true that the inmost recesses of a soul or known in their entirety only to God, it is not true that the inmost recesses do not tell upon the outmost recesses, or that we have no means of knowing who is living a righteous life and who isn't. Virtue and innocence, and their opposites, are generally perceptible to both the sensible and spiritual faculties. There are exceptions here and there, as there always are; but the common case cannot by definition be an exception. These truths are elementary, and the obscuration of them by the conciliar establishment is one of the surer marks of its incipient worldliness.
The matter of individual judgments having (hopefully) been settled, the debate should now center upon whether or not a Christian, through the instrumentality of the state, should seek for the redress of grievances committed against him in the temporal sphere, and whether the state has the authority to redress such wrongs and administer the appropriate punishments at all. All I would say at this juncture is that the ordinary magisterium of the Church has answered both questions overwhelmingly in the affirmative, and that the contrary would be utterly unworkable. It is, in fact, among the duties of the Christian monarch to keep the peace in his realm, and to ensure the operations of justice in the practical order. This should silence the perorations of the anti-death penalty crowd, with their constant calls for leniency and clemency, and should also throw a baleful light upon the protections afforded by the conciliar establishment to its pedophile priests. But this is another debate for another post.
Topic: Judging... (Read 4478 times)