Hermeneutic Reversal

Hermeneutic Reversal names the operation by which a narrative's foundational moral-interpretive axis is inverted, revealing that the roles of perpetrator and victim, betrayer and betrayed, are not fixed properties of agents but effects of the interpretive frame brought to bear on the text. In the Rollins source, this reversal is enacted on the Judas/Jesus dyad: the question of who betrayed whom cannot be settled from within the narrative itself, because the grammar of the genitive ("betrayal of Judas") is radically undecidable—it oscillates between subjective and objective readings. This undecidability is not a deficiency of the text awaiting correction but a structural feature that exposes the absence of any meta-position from which divine will or fidelity could be read off without remainder.

The concept belongs to a broader theological-deconstructive argument: if the narrative that grounds Christian ethics cannot stabilise the distinction between fidelity and betrayal at its own originary scene, then "authoritative interpretation" itself is rendered impossible. The reversal does not simply swap the moral valuations of two figures; it destabilises the very logic of moral adjudication that presupposes a stable, readable Other (a God, a text, a tradition) capable of delivering unambiguous verdicts. In this sense, Hermeneutic Reversal is less a rhetorical trope than a structural disclosure—an exposure of the gap in the system that makes singular authoritative meaning impossible.

Within rollins-peter-the-fidelity-of-betrayal-towards-a-church-beyond-belief-paraclete, Hermeneutic Reversal functions as a localised but strategically central move in an argument about the limits of doctrinal certainty and interpretive authority in Christian practice. The concept is positioned where theological reading meets structural undecidability. Its cross-references to Truth, the big Other, Alienation, and Dialectics are all operative here: the reversal exposes that Truth, in the Lacanian sense, cannot be fully said — it can only be "half-said," and any attempt to fix its meaning at the level of the statement (who betrayed whom?) leaves the enunciative level — who is speaking this accusation, from what position, with what stake — unaddressed. The big Other is implicated because the reversal demonstrates that there is no Other of the Other: no meta-textual tribunal, no divine guarantee, that could resolve the ambiguity in the Gospel narrative from outside it. The barred Other (Ⱥ) has a hole precisely here, at the scene of founding fidelity.

The concept also resonates with Dialectics and Alienation as cross-referenced canonicals. Dialectically, the Judas/Jesus pairing is not a simple opposition of good and evil to be sublated into a higher unity; instead it remains in unresolvable tension — an "implacable dialectic" in the corpus's own terms. And Alienation enters insofar as meaning itself is constitutively lost in the act of narrating: to enter the signifying chain ("Judas betrayed Jesus") is already to foreclose alternative chains, but the grammatical structure of this particular sentence refuses full closure, staging in miniature the vel of alienation — you cannot have both the stable meaning and the full being of the event simultaneously. Hermeneutic Reversal is thus best understood as a specification of these canonical concepts applied to scriptural hermeneutics: it is what happens when the structural incompleteness of the Other, the undecidability of Truth, and the alienating force of the signifier are read into a canonical religious narrative at its most morally charged node.

The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond BeliefPeter Rollins · 2008 (p.15)

in the Gospels do we witness the betrayal of Judas (against Jesus) or the betrayal of Judas (by Jesus)?

The quote is theoretically loaded precisely because the repeated phrase "betrayal of Judas" holds two incompatible grammatical functions — subjective genitive (Judas as agent of betrayal) and objective genitive (Judas as its recipient) — within a single syntactic form, making the undecidability structural rather than merely empirical. The parenthetical glosses "(against Jesus)" and "(by Jesus)" do not resolve the ambiguity but only make it visible, staging the impossibility of a final authoritative reading and thereby locating the hole in the Other at the very origin of the Christian moral narrative.