John 6:66-71 is one of those rare crystalline points where theology, language, and ontology come together. Even the verse number 6:66 feels like a mirror of division, marking the threshold where the Word separates those who remain from those who cannot bear the mystery.
Just before this, Christ uttered the most scandalous of all sayings: “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life” (John 6:54). He is offering a symbolon, the Greek word σύμβολον meaning “a thing thrown together,” a token of union, a joining of two halves, two syzygies, that recognise each other. The symbolon is that which unites.
Then comes the rupture: “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him” (6:66). Here is the separation. And, immediately after, Jesus says: “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” or, in Greek, διάβολος (6:70). The diábolos is literally “the one who throws across,” the opposite of symbolon. The one who divides what should be joined.
Right when Christ institutes the ultimate symbolon – the Eucharist, the union of heaven and flesh – appears the one who embodies diábolon, the act of division. It is as though the cosmic polarity is being revealed through persons: union and disjunction, communion and betrayal.
Judas bears the principle of dispersion, the counter-pole that prevents the Sacred sign from collapsing into mere idolatry. Without the diábolos, the symbol would risk becoming a closed circuit, a self-adoration of form. Through betrayal, the Word passes into the world; through division, the union becomes real.
On the other hand, Christ is the centre that opens the circle of the Twelve, just as the Sun opens the zodiac. He is the radiating heart from within. The Twelve are like living constellations revolving around Him, each receiving and reflecting the Logos in its own manner. But, for the circle to remain alive, for the incarnation to move beyond mere contemplation, there must be a fissure, a descent, a point through which Light pours downward into the world.
That point is Judas. The διάβολος is the one who opens the circuit by rupture. Without him, the Christic force would remain suspended in perfection, like a closed mandala of light. Judas introduces movement, risk, and drama, as he is the point where the cosmic symmetry is broken so that incarnation may occur.
In the apostolic circle, Christ is the ἄξων (axōn), the axis mundi; Judas is the wound of entry. The circle must be pierced in order to become a spiral. The diábolos is the inverted reflection of the Christos: He opens upwards, Judas opens downwards. One says “λάβετε φάγετε” (“take, eat,” Matthew 26:26); the other, by his act, says “παραδιδόναι” (“to hand over, to betray,” John 6:64; 13:2). Both are gestures of passage, one sacramental, one tragic. But both serve the same movement of the Word entering matter.
In this sense, Judas participates in the mystery of κένωσις (kenōsis), the divine self-emptying. He embodies the breaking of the vessel that allows the Divine wine to flow. The drama, therefore, is not between good and evil but between circle and fissure, symbol and diabolon.
Κύριε ελέησον