Answering The Gnostic Gospels

Gospel of Thomas

Most gnostic literature is a dreary, unreadable catalog of botched gods. These gods do not have the personality of the Greek pagan gods, nor are the stories told about them so entertaining. The gnostic gods are many, like the gods of the pagan Greeks. These entities also mate and produce offspring. But there are no love stories told about them, nor even pursuit and rape stories as with the Greek gods, unless you count the rape of Eve by the archons. They are stuck with peculiar names like 'church' (ecclesia), because their creators labored under the discipline of having to think up names for their gods which could be pointed to in scripture. Like a pet turtle, you have to feed and take care of them, but unlike a dog or cat, they have no personality. This theology lacks the credibility of monotheism, and also lacks the entertainment value of paganism. Which is no doubt why its merchandisers in the modern era have to cast about in all directions to make it palatable, pretending it is something like psychoanalysis or who knows what.

There is one noteworthy exception, a book well worth reading though with caution: the Gospel of Thomas. This book has the air of genuine antiquity. Who wrote it, and why?

One clue is that the book itself points to a successor. When a religion claims to be the legitimate heir of another religion of accepted authority, its devotees search the archives, looking for a promise of a successor. The Muslims find such a promise in Jesus' talk of the 'Comforter.' Christians understand 'the Comforter' to be the Holy Spirit, but Muslims say it's Mohammed. In the case of the Gospel of Thomas, the promise of a successor is explicit, not strained:

"Jesus said, 'When you see one who was not born of woman, fall on your faces and worship. That one is your Father.'" (Gospel of Thomas 15).

The promised one is not Jesus, born of a woman, both in the flesh of the incarnation, and also in heaven according to this peculiar theology: "...but my true mother gave me life" (Gospel of Thomas 101). Simon the Samaritan was a copy-cat of Jesus, who made a claim similar to that of Jesus, though he upped the ante: while Jesus claimed to be the Word incarnate, Simon claimed to be the unbegotten Father incarnate. "[Simon] represented himself, in a word, as being the loftiest of all powers, that is, the Being who is the Father over all, and he allowed himself to be called by whatsoever title men were pleased to address him." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 23.1). Simon in his turn attracted a copy-cat, Menander, who made the same claims as Simon did! Simon "...appear[ed] among men to be a man, while yet he was not a man." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 23.3) This coming one who "is your Father" must be Simon; who else in the history of the world ever made that claim? Since there is a 'coming attraction' pointing to a specific successor, this book must originate in the circle of his followers. Because Simon is cursed by name in the New Testament, Christian readers should beware.

Simon's theology is based on the work of Dositheus, who produced a Bishop Spong-like reductive reading of the Old Testament scriptures. He was correctly understood in ancient times as a sectarian; in modern days, people like that sometimes masquerade as 'scholars.' Simon did not believe in the resurrection of the flesh, and therefore shows no interest in the cross or resurrection of Jesus. He did believe in the immortality of the soul...of the knowers, not the ignorant, who face annihilation. He and Menander promised that their followers would never die: "He [Menander] persuaded those who adhered to him that they should never die, and even now there are some living who hold this opinion of his." (Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 26). Simon subtracts part of the New Testament picture, while retaining part:

Some of the references to corpses being eaten may be left-over bits and pieces of a polemic against the resurrection in the flesh. The Samaritans, including Simon, disbelieved this Christian doctrine. Pagan critics of Christianity found it problematic that a man's corpse might be eaten by a predator: "For many have often perished in the sea, and their bodies have been consumed by fishes, while many have been eaten by wild beasts and birds. How then is it possible for their bodies to rise up?" (Porphyry, Against the Christians).

"Now Greeks and Samaritans together argue against us thus. The dead man has fallen, and moldered away, and is all turned into worms; and the worms have died also; such is the decay and destruction which has overtaken the body; how then is it to be raised? The shipwrecked have been devoured by fishes, which are themselves devoured...Vultures and ravens feed on the flesh of the unburied dead, and then fly away over all the world; whence then is the body to be collected? For of the fowls who have devoured it some may chance to die in India, some in Persia, some in the land of the Goths. Other men again are consumed by fire, and their very ashes scattered by rain or wind; whence is the body to be brought together again?" (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 18.2)

That their flesh had been incorporated into another living thing was considered proof against resurrection. Perhaps there is a memory of such a dispute in the saying, "Jesus said, 'Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.'" (Gospel of Thomas, 7). Other sayings, like 60, seem to bring us back to concerns about the robbers eating people unless they are disguised by magic spells during their ascent past the archons to the upper spheres.

A hint at a date may come in Saying 71: "Jesus said, 'I shall destroy this house, and no one will be able to build it...'". This saying, in its more familiar form, is understood by Christians as a reference to Jesus' resurrection (John 2:19-21), though it was taken by hostile witnesses in reference to the temple at Jerusalem. Since Simon rejected bodily resurrection, the latter is left standing as the only interpretation available to him. Simon's home constituency was hostile to the Jerusalem temple on principle, and after the catastrophe of 70 A.D. when the pagan Romans burned the temple, his school may have 'corrected' the Lord's prophecy to this form. Simon is generally committed to realized eschatology: "He said to them, 'What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it.'" (Gospel of Thomas, 51).

After Simon's encounter with the apostles (Acts 8), which started well but ended badly, it may have been spite which led him to magnify James the Lord's brother instead: "Jesus said to them, 'Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.'" (Gospel of Thomas 12).

There is a deformation in the story of the lost sheep in the Gospel of Thomas: the lost one is "the largest" (Saying 107), and better loved; it is not as though just any one of 100 had gone astray. In Simon's system, this lost sheep is errant Sophia: "He said, however, that this (Helen) was the lost sheep." (Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, Book 6, Chapter 14). Simon travelled in the company of this woman, whom he had redeemed from prostitution: "This wench, therefore, was the lost sheep, upon whom the Supreme Father, even Simon, descended, who, after he had recovered her and brought her back — whether on his shoulders or loins I cannot tell — cast an eye on the salvation of man..." (Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul, Chapter 34). It is on account of this party, who is both a prostitute and also Sophia, heavenly wisdom, that it is said:

"Jesus said, 'Whoever knows the father and the mother will be called the child of a whore.'" (Gospel of Thomas 105).

Jesus is her child in this system, as are we all. No doubt those partial to this tendency liked the verse, "But wisdom is justified of her children." (Matthew 11:19).

In anticipation of the objection that two advents of God, the life-spans actually overlapping, seem like overkill, Simon's school explains that the first (Jesus) was for practice:

"Jesus said, 'The Father's imperial rule is like a person who wanted to kill someone powerful. While still at home he drew his sword and thrust it into the wall to find out whether his hand would go in. Then he killed the powerful one.'" (Gospel of Thomas 98).

Simon would have had the opportunity to hear sayings of the Lord from Philip. The Jesus Seminar was willing to deform their entire understanding of Jesus' life and ministry to conform to this text, but there is no reason to think it stands in any evolutionary path leading up to the gospels. The church would not have gone to a hostile, rival sect to get her own sayings back. The gnostics of later date do owe a debt to Simon. Though few of them credited his claim to be God, he started the ball rolling on this tendency. His openness to pagan mythology is shown by his interest in Helen of Troy, who was not just a mortal woman, but the sister of Castor and Pollux. He contributes the idea of Lady Wisdom's downward spiral, which in his system even becomes a fall from heaven.

Just as Jesus began by associating with John the Baptist's ministry before striking out on His own, Simon associated with the Christians before starting his own religion. Room for improvement is left in this version of Jesus' saying: "I was given some of the things of my father," (Gospel of Thomas 61), as opposed to the New Testament: "All things are delivered unto me of my Father..." (Matthew 11:27). Room must be left for Simon's superior revelation, so Jesus is allotted only "some" things instead of "all."

Simon's followers did not in any way discount Jesus' claims, rather they added their own master's claims to the mix. The copy-cat enterprise proved, for a while, almost as successful as the original. Justin Martyr reports that Simon's religion was still around in the mid-first century. Simon seems to have expected Christianity to be pulled up by its root and his own planting to endure:

"Jesus said, 'A grapevine has been planted apart from the Father. Since it is not strong, it will be pulled up by its root and will perish.'" (Gospel of Thomas 40).

It happened the other way around; Jesus' followers, whose plantation was "apart from the Father" (they did not acknowledge Simon as the Father), endured and still endures, in spite of all efforts by the modern-day 'Jesus' industry to reverse the verdict. During the early years of the proclamation of the gospel, Christianity had to endure the indignity of this preposterous road show tagging along afterwards: a man claiming to be God the Father dragging around a prostitute whom he claimed to be his first thought. Fortunately the church lived it down. The pagan polemicist Celsus tried to throw Helena back in the Christians' faces, like she was our problem: "He next pours down upon us a heap of names, saying that he knows of the existence of certain Simonians who worship Helene, or Helenus, as their teacher, and are called Helenians." (Origen, Contra Celsus, Book 5, Chapter 62). Origen, however, doubts if there are thirty followers of Simon left in the world in which he wrote, in the third century A.D.: "There was also Simon the Samaritan magician, who wished to draw away certain by his magical arts. And on that occasion he was successful; but nowadays it is impossible to find, I suppose, thirty of his followers in the entire world, and probably I have even overstated the number." (Origen, Contra Celsus, Book 1, Chapter 57).

The Gospel of Judas

The National Geographic Society has released, with great fanfare, the gnostic 'Gospel of Judas.' There is a sucker born every minute, it is said; perhaps they imagine there is someone out there so naive as to believe this text records an actual conversation between Jesus and Judas. Along with the high praise the gnostic gospels receive in Dan Brown's novel 'The Da Vinci Code,' long ensconced on the best-seller list, it looks like boom times for gnosticism. But this once popular alternative spirituality has been misunderstood. (Critics may object, the problem with this movement is that it cannot be understood!) But whatever the gnostic writers were getting at, it wasn't Dan Brown's ideal of Jesus as a moral philosopher: “'My dear,' Teabing declared, until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet...a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.'” (The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, Chapter 55).

The gnostic writers did not understand Jesus to be "a mortal." In the Gospel of Judas, Judas, not Peter, first confesses Jesus' descent from above: “Judas [said] to him, 'I know who you are and where you have come from. You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo. And I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you.'” (Gospel of Judas, National Geographic Society).

Barbelo

Who, or what, is 'Barbelo'? The gnostic organizational chart of the heavenlies is subject to great variation, not to mention gender confusion. Here is one theory: "Great is the first aeon, male virginal Barbelo, the first glory of the invisible Father, she who is called 'perfect.'" (The Three Steles of Seth, p. 399, The Nag Hammadi Library.) This is a pagan gnostic treatise without any Christian trappings. Irenaeus was aware of Barbelo: "Some of them, then, set forth a certain Aeon who never grows old, and exists in a virgin spirit: him they style Barbelos. They declare that somewhere or other there exists a certain father who cannot be named, and that he was desirous to reveal himself to this Barbelos...Barbelos, glorying in these, and contemplating their greatness, and in conception [thus formed], rejoicing in this greatness, generated light similar to it. They declare that this was the beginning both of light and of the generation of all things; and that the Father, beholding this light, anointed it with his own benignity, that it might be rendered perfect. Moreover, they maintain that this was Christ..." (Irenaeus, Against All Heresies, Book I, Chapter 29:1). It is difficult to get a fix on the gender of this party: "And Its Thought became operative and revealed herself. She stood before It out of the splendor of the light...She is the perfect power, the Barbelo, the perfect Aeon of glory." (The Secret Book of John, The Other Bible, edited by Willis Barnstone, p. 54). Since the gnostic pantheon is filled with fictitious gods, every gnostic author makes up 'Barbelo's' gender and attributes to suit himself. This is fiction-writing, and the authors enjoy all the freedom that goes along with that genre.

There is another Barbelo, a mother goddess like the pagan goddess Isis: "The first power, the glory of Barbelo, the perfect glory in the aeons, the glory of the revelation, she glorified the virginal Spirit and it was she who praised him, because thanks to him she had come forth. This is the first thought, his image; she became the womb of everything for it is she who is prior to them all..." (The Apocryphon of John, p. 107, The Nag Hammadi Library).

"Three powers came forth from him; they are the Father, the Mother, (and) the Son, from the living silence...The second ogdoad-power, the Mother, the virginal Barbelon...who presides over the heaven...the uninterpretable power, the ineffable Mother. She originated from herself; she came forth; she agreed with the Father of the silent silence." (The Gospel of the Egyptians, p. 209, The Nag Hammadi Library).

There is a text in the Nag Hammadi Library called 'Thunder, Perfect Mind,' which is a hymn to the pagan goddess Isis:

"For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter...
I am the mother of my father
   and the sister of my husband,
   and he is my offspring...
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
   and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.
...I am the one whose image is great in Egypt..." (The Thunder: Perfect Mind, The Nag Hammadi Library, pp. 297-299).

This is outright denied by some of the gnostic boosters, but she "whose image is great in Egypt" is Isis. Elaine Pagels denies it: "One might expect that these texts would show the influence of archaic pagan traditions of the Mother Goddess, but for the most part, their language is specifically Christian, unmistakably related to a Jewish heritage." (Elaine Pagels, 'The Gnostic Gospels,' p. 49). The Judeo-Christian heritage for the mother goddess who married her brother (Osiris),-- she is "the sister of my husband,"-- is nil; the party referenced is Isis.

All that, and 'Isis' counts four letters besides! Despite their half-hearted denials, the gnostic boosters are after all wonderfully impressed with Isis-worship: "In Greece and Asia Minor, women participated with men in religious cults, especially the cults of the Great Mother and of the Egyptian goddess Isis." (Elaine Pagels, 'The Gnostic Gospels,' p. 62).

Where does gnosticism come from? Gnosticism is what happens when Isis-worshippers hear the gospel of Jesus Christ...and keep on being Isis-worshippers.

The Apostolic Church

The gnostics, contra 'The Da Vinci Code,' did believe in the deity of Jesus Christ: "Therefore would it be agreeable to you, our brother, to come according to the orders of our God Jesus?" (The Letter of Peter to Philip, p. 434, The Nag Hammadi Library, James M. Robinson, editor). Unfortunately in their system divinity is not as exclusive an honor as it is in Christian theology. In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus reports the officiants at the Jerusalem temple offer sacrifices in His name: “Jesus said to them, 'Why are you troubled? Truly I say to you, all the priests who stand before that altar invoke my name. Again I say to you, my name has been written on this […] of the generations of the stars through the human generations. [And they] have planted trees without fruit, in my name, in a shameful manner.'” (Gospel of Judas, National Geographic Society). The Bible confirms the Messiah's name is the name invoked in the temple: "In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called: Jehovah our righteousness." (Jeremiah 23:6). But as is clear throughout, and normal in a gnostic text, this name is not the name of the only God, though He is the God the disciples other than Judas ignorantly serve. There are many gods in gnostic theology, and the God of Israel is a bit player, a minor leaguer, not the one True and Living God as in the Bible.

This new gospel confirms the church's claim to follow the doctrine of the apostles, making it clear the apostles' doctrine was not gnosticism. The church serves the God the apostles served: the God of Israel, the Creator. It is quite typical of the gnostic boosterism of the 'Jesus' publishing industry that they promote the claims of the gnostics beyond what these folks said. The boosters say, the gnostic claimed to be heirs of Jesus and His disciples:

"There was an enormous range of opinion in the early church: lots of different groups represented lots of different perspectives, they all had sacred books supporting their views, they all saw their views as stemming from Jesus and his closest followers, and they all insisted that since they were right, the other groups were wrong." (Bart D. Ehrman, 'The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot,' p. 178)

...this in a book about a gospel which explicitly denies the twelve disciples were gnostics, and admits only one follower (singular), Judas, to life. The gnostic polemic admits that the public teaching of Jesus and His twelve disiciples was not gnostic. 'James' says that Jesus "did not wish to tell" the gnostic teaching "to all of us, his twelve disciples":

What is agreed by both gnostic and orthodox is that the church, following its methology: querying the witnesses, asking them to remember what the Lord said,-- was never going to come up with gnosticism, a 'secret' known only to a few. If any apostles had fallen off the radar, they were claimed by the gnostics, because they couldn't be queried. The weakness of this claim is apparent. Or perhaps instead of 'weakness' one should say power, because by use of this methology, one can claim that anyone at all believes anything at all:

'Barack Obama is a Satanist.'
'But he doesn't sound like a Satanist.
'Of course not, it's a secret.'

'Ben Bernanke is a Marxist-Leninist.'
'But he doesn't say the things a Marxist-Leninist would say.'
'Of course not, do you think he'd say such things publicly?'

'Hillary Clinton is a flat-earther.'
'But she says nothing that would make you think she's a flat-earther.'
'Of course not, crafty, isn't she?'

And so on and so forth. But the modest claims the gnostics actually make are then upgraded and taken to the next level by their modern-day promoters. Instead of the chosen few, who reveal their 'secrets' only reluctantly, they are imagined to be the majority; instead of a 'secret' known only to Judas and Jesus, this teaching is supposed to stem from "Jesus and his closest followers."

Saved by Nature

The author of 'Judas' sees different destinies for different folks. The apostolic Bible calls out to all: "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." (Revelation 22:17). The gnostic gospel is not good news for 'whosoever will,' but only for "these people":

“Jesus said, 'The souls of every human generation will die. When these people, however, have completed the time of the kingdom and the spirit leaves them, their bodies will die but their souls will be alive, and they will be taken up.” Where you end up does not depend on what you have decided, but on where you're from: “When Jesus heard this, he laughed and said to them, 'Why are you thinking in your hearts about the strong and holy generation? Truly [I] say to you, no one born [of] this aeon [world] will see that [generation], and no host of angels of the stars will rule over that generation, and no person of mortal birth can associate with it...'” (Gospel of Judas)

'Gnosis' means 'knowledge,' and it is to teach the elect who they really are that Jesus came into the world: “[Jesus] answered and said, 'Judas, your star has led you astray.' He continued, 'No person of mortal birth is worthy to enter the house you have seen, for that place is reserved for the holy.'” (Gospel of Judas, National Geographic Society).

This is a common theme in gnostic literature. You either got it or you ain't. Irenaeus pointed out: "...they declare that some men are wicked by nature, and some, on the other hand, naturally good..." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 2, Chapter 7.3). If you've got it, no one can take it away:

"The psychic men have been instructed in psychic matters; they are strengthened by works and mere faith and do not have the perfect knowledge; they belong to the earthly church. Good conduct is necessary for them, for otherwise they cannot be saved; but we spirituals shall certainly be saved not by conduct but simply because we are by nature spiritual. Just as the earthly cannot participate in salvation, for it is not capable of receiving it, so in turn the spiritual cannot accept decay, no matter what actions it undertakes. [...] Those of the church receive grace as a loan, and therefore will be deprived of it, but we have it as our own possession after it has come down from above from the ineffable and unnameable Pair." (The Valentinian System of Ptolemaeus, p. 617, The Other Bible, edited by Willis Barnstone.)

This is not a religion of altar calls. In mainstream Christianity, the Lord commands His disciples to preach the good news to "every creature:" And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." (Mark 16:15). But the gnostic gospel is not good news for every creature, only for some:

The fans of this literature are well aware of this exclusivity:

"I should stress that not everyone has the means to escape. That is because not everyone has a spark of the divine within them: Only some of us do. The other people are the creations of the inferior god of this world. They, like other creatures here (dogs, turtles, mosquitos, and so on), will die and that will be the end of their story. But some of us are trapped divinities. And we need to learn how to return to our heavenly home." (Bart Ehrman, 'Christianity Turned on its Head,' pp. 86-87, The Gospel of Judas, National Geographic Society).

The three types of human beings, who have such very different destinies, are the spirituial, the psychic, and the material:

These people don't think they are even the same kind of thing as you or I.

Polytheism

Irenaeus was acquainted with this gospel, and reports its contents:

"Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas." (Irenaeus, Against All Heresies, Book I, Chapter 31:1).

In this system, the creator of the world is not the highest God, but a being from a lower realm, a blunderer named Saklas: “Then Saklas said to his angels, ‘Let us create a human being after the likeness and after the image.’ They fashioned Adam and his wife Eve, who is called, in the cloud, Zoe.” (Gospel of Judas, National Geographic Society). Jesus purportedly prophesies the downfall of this party: "When Saklas completes the span of time assigned for him..." (Gospel of Judas, National Geographic Society). But some, not all, of the inhabitants of this world owe nothing to this creator; their spirits are from above: “Jesus said, 'This is why God ordered Michael to give the spirits of people to them as a loan, so that they might offer service, but the Great One ordered Gabriel to grant spirits to the great generation with no ruler over it—that is, the spirit and the soul.'” (Gospel of Judas, National Geographic Society). Jesus comes as liberator to give these people, not the others, the freeing 'knowledge' of who they really are.

As should be apparent by now, there is a rift here that cannot be bridged. The Bible does not, in either testament, in any way confirm that the Creator of this world is any other than the true and living God:

The gnostic writers do not hesitate to describe Jesus as 'God'...or rather 'a god.' The problem is, being a god is not such a distinction in this system, because there's such a profusion of gods, archons, aeons, stars, firmaments, and what not: "“Adamas was in the first luminous cloud that no angel has ever seen among all those called ‘God.’” (Gospel of Judas, National Geographic Society). The system is polytheistic.

Some of the contemporary authors calling attention to gnosticism do not themselves believe the system at all. Author Dan Brown does not want it known that Christianity is in error because Christians fail to perceive that Jesus came from the immortal realm of Barbelo, far above the archons, rather than from the Creator of this world as Christians hold. Rather he wants it believed that Jesus was a mere mortal man. But the gnostics did not so believe.

Exclusivity

Some of those celebrating the release of this new 'gospel' like it because it upsets mainstream Christianity's apple-cart, a religion they dislike for its exclusivist claims: "The Rev. Jayne Oasin, a social justice officer for the Episcopal Church, USA., says that 'to consider there to be only one truth is to me a form of oppression.'" (The Christian Science Monitor, 'Christian mavericks find affirmation in ancient heresies,' By G. Jeffrey MacDonald.) But the Gospel of Judas itself makes exclusivist claims, mocking the twelve disciples for ignorantly serving the Creator, a doomed god:

"For to the human generations it has been said, ‘Look, God has received your sacrifice from the hands of a priest’—that is, a minister of error. But it is the Lord, the Lord of the universe, who commands, 'On the last day they will be put to shame.'" (Gospel of Judas, National Geographic Society).

The gnostics found in true belief, not a precondition for salvation, but salvation itself. Most people, according to their belief system, have no hope of salvation, being material rather than spiritual in nature.

Utilitarianism

Like the song says, Jesus came for to die:

"I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor. ornery people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky.
                        (I Wonder As I Wander, John Jacob Niles)

Therefore, according to 'The Gospel of Judas' and Bart Ehrman, Judas was the hero of the story, right?:

Biblical ethics is not utilitarian. It does not look to the projected outcome of the deed to evaluate its moral fitness. Paul expressed horror at the concept:

"And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just." (Romans 3:8).