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| Chapter XXIV.—Concerning the Angels and Giants.
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Chapter XXIV.—Concerning the Angels and Giants.
What need is there, in speaking to you who have searched
into every department of knowledge, to mention the poets, or to examine
opinions of another kind? Let it suffice to say thus much. If the poets
and philosophers did not acknowledge that there is one God, and concerning
these gods were not of opinion, some that they are demons, others that
they are matter, and others that they once were men,—there might
be some show of reason for our being harassed as we are, since we employ
language which makes a distinction between God and matter, and the natures
of the two. For, as we acknowledge a God, and a Son his Logos, and a
Holy Spirit, united in essence,—the Father, the Son, the Spirit,
because the Son is the Intelligence, Reason, Wisdom of the Father, and
the Spirit an effluence, as light from fire; so also do we apprehend
the existence of other powers, which exercise dominion about matter,
and by means of it, and one in particular, which is hostile to God:
not that anything is really opposed to God, like strife to friendship,
according to Empedocles, and night to day, according to the appearing
and disappearing of the stars (for even if anything had placed
itself in opposition to God, it would have ceased to
exist, its structure being destroyed
by the power and might of God), but that to the good that is in God,
which belongs of necessity to Him, and co-exists with Him, as colour
with body, without which it has no existence (not as being part
of it, but as an attendant property co-existing with it, united and
blended, just as it is natural for fire to be yellow and the ether dark
blue),—to the good that is in God, I say, the spirit which is about
matter,786
| 786 [Comp. cap. xxvii.,
infra.] | who was created by God, just as the other
angels were created by Him, and entrusted with the control of matter
and the forms of matter, is opposed. For this is the office of the
angels,—to exercise providence for God over the things created and
ordered by Him; so that God may have the universal and general providence
of the whole, while the particular parts are provided for by the angels
appointed over them.787
| 787 [Kaye,
192. And see cap. x., supra, p. 133. Divine Providence does not
exclude the ministry of angels by divine appointment. Resurrection,
cap. xviii., infra.] | Just as with men, who have freedom
of choice as to both virtue and vice (for you would not either honour
the good or punish the bad, unless vice and virtue were in their own
power; and some are diligent in the matters entrusted to them by you,
and others faithless), so is it among the angels. Some, free agents,
you will observe, such as they were created by God, continued in those
things for which God had made and over which He had ordained them; but
some outraged both the constitution of their nature and the government
entrusted to them: namely, this ruler of matter and its various forms,
and others of those who were placed about this first firmament (you know
that we say nothing without witnesses, but state the things which have
been declared by the prophets); these fell into impure love of virgins,
and were subjugated by the flesh, and he became negligent and wicked
in the management of the things entrusted to him. Of these lovers of
virgins, therefore, were begotten those who are called giants.788
| 788 [The Paris editors caution us
against yielding to this interpretation of Gen. vi. 1–4. It was
the Rabbinical interpretation. See Josephus, book i. cap. 3.] |
And if something has been said by the poets, too, about the giants,
be not surprised at this: worldly wisdom and divine differ as much from
each other as truth and plausibility: the one is of heaven and the other
of earth; and indeed, according to the prince of matter,—
“We know we oft speak lies that look like
truths.”789
| 789 Hesiod, Theog., 27. [Traces of the Nephilim are found in all
mythologies.] |
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