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| Whether We are to Believe that Angels, Who are of a Spiritual Substance, Fell in Love with the Beauty of Women, and Sought Them in Marriage, and that from This Connection Giants Were Born.
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Chapter 23.—Whether We are to
Believe that Angels, Who are of a Spiritual Substance, Fell in Love
with the Beauty of Women, and Sought Them in Marriage, and that
from This Connection Giants Were Born.
In the third book of this work (c.
5) we made a passing reference to this question, but did not decide
whether angels, inasmuch as they are spirits, could have bodily
intercourse with women. For it is written, “Who maketh His
angels spirits,”843
that is, He makes those who are by
nature spirits His angels by appointing them to the duty of bearing
His messages. For the Greek word
ἄγγελος, which in Latin appears as
“angelus,” means a messenger. But whether the Psalmist speaks
of their bodies when he adds, “and His ministers a flaming
fire,” or means that God’s ministers ought to blaze with love
as with a spiritual fire, is doubtful. However, the same
trustworthy Scripture testifies that angels have appeared to men in
such bodies as could not only be seen, but also touched. There
is, too, a very general rumor, which many have verified by their
own experience, or which trustworthy persons who have heard the
experience of others corroborate, that sylvans and fauns, who are
commonly called “incubi,” had often made wicked assaults upon
women, and satisfied their lust upon them; and that certain devils,
called Duses by the Gauls, are constantly attempting and effecting
this impurity is so generally affirmed, that it were impudent to
deny it.844
| 844 On these kinds of devils, see the
note of Vives in loc., or Lecky’s Hist. of
Rationalism, i. 26, who quotes from Maury’s Histoire de la
Magie, that the Dusii were Celtic spirits, and are the origin
of our “Deuce.” | From these
assertions, indeed, I dare not determine whether there be some
spirits embodied in an aerial substance (for this element, even
when agitated by a fan, is sensibly felt by the body), and who are
capable of lust and of mingling sensibly with women; but certainly
I could by no means believe that God’s holy angels could at that
time have so fallen, nor can I think that it is of them the Apostle
Peter said, “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but
cast them down to hell, and delivered them into
chains of
darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.”845
I think he rather speaks of these
who first apostatized from God, along with their chief the devil,
who enviously deceived the first man under the form of a serpent.
But the same holy Scripture affords the most ample testimony that
even godly men have been called angels; for of John it is
written: “Behold, I send my messenger (angel) before Thy face,
who shall prepare Thy way.”846
And the prophet Malachi, by a
peculiar grace specially communicated to him, was called an
angel.847
But some are moved by the fact that
we have read that the fruit of the connection between those who are
called angels of God and the women they loved were not men like our
own breed, but giants; just as if there were not born even in our
own time (as I have mentioned above) men of much greater size than
the ordinary stature. Was there not at Rome a few years ago, when
the destruction of the city now accomplished by the Goths was
drawing near, a woman, with her father and mother, who by her
gigantic size over-topped all others? Surprising crowds from all
quarters came to see her, and that which struck them most was the
circumstance that neither of her parents were quite up to the
tallest ordinary stature. Giants therefore might well be born,
even before the sons of God, who are also called angels of God,
formed a connection with the daughters of men, or of those living
according to men, that is to say, before the sons of Seth formed a
connection with the daughters of Cain. For thus speaks even the
canonical Scripture itself in the book in which we read of this;
its words are: “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply
on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that
the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair
[good]; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the
Lord God said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that
he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty
years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also
after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men,
and they bare children to them, the same became the giants, men of
renown.”848
| 848 Gen. vi. 1–4. Lactantius
(Inst. ii. 15), Sulpicius Severus (Hist. i. 2), and
others suppose from this passage that angels had commerce with the
daughters of men. See further references in the commentary of
Pererius in loc. | These
words of the divine book sufficiently indicate that already there
were giants in the earth in those days, in which the sons of God
took wives of the children of men, when they loved them because
they were good, that is, fair. For it is the custom of this
Scripture to call those who are beautiful in appearance
“good.” But after this connection had been formed, then too
were giants born. For the words are: “There were giants in
the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons
of God came in unto the daughters of men.” Therefore there were
giants both before, “in those days,” and “also after
that.” And the words, “they bare children to them,” show
plainly enough that before the sons of God fell in this fashion
they begat children to God, not to themselves,—that is to say,
not moved by the lust of sexual intercourse, but discharging the
duty of propagation, intending to produce not a family to gratify
their own pride, but citizens to people the city of God; and to
these they as God’s angels would bear the message, that they
should place their hope in God, like him who was born of Seth, the
son of resurrection, and who hoped to call on the name of the Lord
God, in which hope they and their offspring would be co-heirs of
eternal blessings, and brethren in the family of which God is the
Father.
But that those angels were not
angels in the sense of not being men, as some suppose, Scripture
itself decides, which unambiguously declares that they were men.
For when it had first been stated that “the angels of God saw the
daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of
all which they chose,” it was immediately added, “And the Lord
God said, My Spirit shall not always strive with these men, for
that they also are flesh.” For by the Spirit of God they had
been made angels of God, and sons of God; but declining towards
lower things, they are called men, a name of nature, not of grace;
and they are called flesh, as deserters of the Spirit, and by their
desertion deserted [by Him]. The Septuagint indeed calls them
both angels of God and sons of God, though all the copies do not
show this, some having only the name” sons of God.” And
Aquila, whom the Jews prefer to the other interpreters,849
| 849 Aquila lived in the time of
Hadrian, to whom he is said to have been related. He was
excommunicated from the Church for the practice of astrology; and
is best known by his translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into
Greek, which he executed with great care and accuracy, though he
has been charged with falsifying passages to support the Jews in
their opposition to Christianity. | has
translated neither angels of God nor sons of God, but sons of
gods. But both are correct. For they were both sons of God, and
thus brothers of their own fathers, who were children of the same
God; and they were sons of gods, because begotten by gods, together
with whom they themselves also were gods, according to that
expression of the psalm:
“I have said, Ye are gods,
and all of you are children of the Most High.”850
For the Septuagint translators
are justly believed to have received the Spirit of prophecy; so
that, if they made any alterations under His authority, and did not
adhere to a strict translation, we could not doubt that this was
divinely dictated. However, the Hebrew word may be said to be
ambiguous, and to be susceptible of either translation, “sons of
God,” or “sons of gods.”
Let us omit, then, the fables of
those scriptures which are called apocryphal, because their obscure
origin was unknown to the fathers from whom the authority of the
true Scriptures has been transmitted to us by a most certain and
well-ascertained succession. For though there is some truth in
these apocryphal writings, yet they contain so many false
statements, that they have no canonical authority. We cannot deny
that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, left some divine writings, for
this is asserted by the Apostle Jude in his canonical epistle.
But it is not without reason that these writings have no place in
that canon of Scripture which was preserved in the temple of the
Hebrew people by the diligence of successive priests; for their
antiquity brought them under suspicion, and it was impossible to
ascertain whether these were his genuine writings, and they were
not brought forward as genuine by the persons who were found to
have carefully preserved the canonical books by a successive
transmission. So that the writings which are produced under his
name, and which contain these fables about the giants, saying that
their fathers were not men, are properly judged by prudent men to
be not genuine; just as many writings are produced by heretics
under the names both of other prophets, and more recently, under
the names of the apostles, all of which, after careful examination,
have been set apart from canonical authority under the title of
Apocrypha. There is therefore no doubt that, according to the
Hebrew and Christian canonical Scriptures, there were many giants
before the deluge, and that these were citizens of the earthly
society of men, and that the sons of God, who were according to the
flesh the sons of Seth, sunk into this community when they forsook
righteousness. Nor need we wonder that giants should be born even
from these. For all of their children were not giants; but there
were more then than in the remaining periods since the deluge.
And it pleased the Creator to produce them, that it might thus be
demonstrated that neither beauty, nor yet size and strength, are of
much moment to the wise man, whose blessedness lies in spiritual
and immortal blessings, in far better and more enduring gifts, in
the good things that are the peculiar property of the good, and are
not shared by good and bad alike. It is this which another
prophet confirms when he says, “These were the giants, famous
from the beginning, that were of so great stature, and so expert in
war. Those did not the Lord choose, neither gave He the way of
knowledge unto them; but they were destroyed because they had no
wisdom, and perished through their own foolishness.”851
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