[To catch up on this series of posts about Genesis 6:1–4, see here, here, and here.]
How did the early church fathers interpret Genesis 6:1–4?
In the first few centuries of the church, the prevailing interpretation was that the “sons of God” were angels rebelling against God and committing sexual sin with human women. And the offspring of these unions were the Nephilim.
Let’s consider some primary sources for evidence. These sources will be from the first four hundred years of church history.
The Sons of God are Rebel Angels
The following excerpts from primary sources adopt the position that the “sons of God” are rebel angels.
Clement of Rome
Clement of Rome lived in the 1st century AD.
From his Clementine Homilies, he wrote in Homily 8.13: “But when, having assumed these forms, they convicted as covetous those who stole them, and changed themselves into the nature of men, in order that, living holily, and showing the possibility of so living, they might subject the ungrateful to punishment, yet having become in all respects men, they also partook of human lust, and being brought under its subjection they fell into cohabitation with women; and being involved with them, and sunk into defilement and altogether emptied of their power, were unable to turn back to the first purity of their proper nature, their members turned away from their fiery substance: for the fire itself, being exhausted by the weight of lust, and changed into flesh, they trode the impious path downward. For they themselves, being fettered with bonds of flesh, were constrained and strongly bound; wherefore they have no more been able to ascend into the heavens.”
And from Homily 8.15, “But from their unhallowed intercourse spurious men sprang, much greater in stature than ordinary men, whom they afterwards called giants; not those dragon-footed giants who waged war against God, as those blasphemous myths of the Greeks do sing, but wild in manners, and greater than men in size, inasmuch as they were sprung of angels; yet less than angels, as they were born of women.”
Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr lived from approximately AD 100 to 165. In Chapter 5 of his work The Second Apology, he says:
“But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons; and besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful passions; and among men they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate deeds, and all wickedness. Whence also the poets and mythologists, not knowing that it was the angels and those demons who had been begotten by them that did these things to men, and women, and cities, and nations, which they related, ascribed them to god himself, and to those who were accounted to be his very offspring, and to the offspring of those who were called his brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the children again of these their offspring. For whatever name each of the angels had given to himself and his children, by that name they called them.”
Athenagorus
Athenagorus lived from approximately AD 133 to 190.
In his work, Plea for the Christians, he said in 24.81, “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.”
Irenaeus
Irenaeus lived from approximately AD 130 to 202.
In his work Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, Irenaeus wrote in Section 18, “And for a very long while wickedness extended and spread, and reached and laid hold upon the whole race of mankind, until a very small seed of righteousness remained among them and illicit unions took place upon the earth, since angels were united with the daughters of the race of mankind; and they bore to them sons who for their exceeding greatness were called giants.”
Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria lived from approximately AD 150 to 215.
In Book 5 of his Miscellanies, Clement said, “To which also we shall add, that the angels who had obtained the superior rank, having sunk into pleasures, told to the women the secrets which had come to their knowledge; while the rest of the angels concealed them, or rather, kept them against the coming of the Lord.”
Tertullian
Tertullian lived from approximately AD 155 to 240.
In Chapter 7 of On the Veiling of Virgins, Tertullian said, “For if it is on account of the angels— those, to wit, whom we read of as having fallen from God and heaven on account of concupiscence after females— who can presume that it was bodies already defiled, and relics of human lust, which such angels yearned after, so as not rather to have been inflamed for virgins, whose bloom pleads an excuse for human lust likewise? For thus does Scripture withal suggest: ‘And it came to pass,’ it says, ‘when men had begun to grow more numerous upon the earth, there were withal daughters born them; but the sons of God, having descried the daughters of men, that they were fair, took to themselves wives of all whom they elected.’ For here the Greek name of women does seem to have the sense ‘wives,’ inasmuch as mention is made of marriage. When, then, it says ‘the daughters of men,’ it manifestly purports virgins, who would be still reckoned as belonging to their parents— for wedded women are called their husbands’— whereas it could have said ‘the wives of men:’ in like manner not naming the angels adulterers, but husbands, while they take unwedded ‘daughters of men,’ who it has above said were ‘born,’ thus also signifying their virginity: first, ‘born;’ but here, wedded to angels.”
Commodianus
Commodianus lived in the 3rd century AD.
In his work Instructions, Commodianus said in Chapter 3, “When Almighty God, to beautify the nature of the world, willed that that earth should be visited by angels, when they were sent down they despised His laws. Such was the beauty of women, that it turned them aside; so that, being contaminated, they could not return to heaven. Rebels from God, they uttered words against Him. Then the Highest uttered His judgment against them; and from their seed giants are said to have been born.”
Lactantius
Lactantius lived in the 4th century AD.
In his Divine Institutes, 2.15, Lactantius wrote, “When, therefore, the number of men had begun to increase, God in His forethought, lest the devil, to whom from the beginning He had given power over the earth, should by his subtlety either corrupt or destroy men, as he had done at first, sent angels for the protection and improvement of the human race; and inasmuch as He had given these a free will, He enjoined them above all things not to defile themselves with contamination from the earth, and thus lose the dignity of their heavenly nature. He plainly prohibited them from doing that which He knew that they would do, that they might entertain no hope of pardon. Therefore, while they abode among men, that most deceitful ruler of the earth, by his very association, gradually enticed them to vices, and polluted them by intercourse with women.”
Ambrose
Ambrose lived in the 4th century AD.
In Noah and the Ark 4.8, Ambrose said, “ ‘The giants (Nephilim) were on the Earth in those days.’ The author of the divine Scripture does not mean that those giants must be considered, according to the tradition of poets, as sons of the earth but asserts that those whom he defines with such a name because of the extraordinary size of their body were generated by angels and women.”
The Sons of God Are Descendants of Seth
The following excerpts from primary sources adopt the position that the “sons of God” are human descendants from the line of Seth.
Julius Africanus
Julius Africanus lived from approximately AD 160 to 240.
In his Passion of St. Symphorosa and Her Seven Sons, Julius said in Fragment 2, “When men multiplied on the earth, the angels of heaven came together with the daughters of men. In some copies I found ‘the sons of God.’ What is meant by the Spirit, in my opinion, is that the descendants of Seth are called the sons of God on account of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him, even down to the Saviour Himself; but that the descendants of Cain are named the seed of men, as having nothing divine in them, on account of the wickedness of their race and the inequality of their nature, being a mixed people, and having stirred the indignation of God.”
Athanasius of Alexandria
Athanasius of Alexandria lived in the 4th century AD.
In his Interpretationes ex Veto Testamento, Athanasius said in Quaestio 65, “From Adam Seth was born, who was the third after Abel, and from Seth Enosh was born. He hoped to be called the Lord and God. Therefore the children born from him bear the name ‘sons of God’, just like we also from the name of the master Christ are called Christians. The race of Seth was segregated and not mixed with the race of Cain because of the curse which was laid on him by the God of the universe. But later, when they observed how beautiful the daughters of Cain’s family were, they became enchanted and took them for themselves as wives, thus ruining their ancestral nobility.
John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom lived in the 4th century AD.
In his Homilies on Genesis, Chrysostom said in Homily 22, “We made the point before in teaching you that it is customary with Scripture to call human beings sons of God. So, since these people took their origin from Seth and from his son named Enosh those descended from him in future were called sons of God by Sacred Scripture for the reason of their imitation of the virtue of their ancestors up to his time. On the other hand, he gave the name sons of men to those born after Seth, the descendants of Cain and those taking their descent from him.”
Augustine
Augustine lived from AD 354 to 430.
In Chapter 22 of The City of God, Augustine said, “When the human race, in the exercise of this freedom of will, increased and advanced, there arose a mixture and confusion of the two cities by their participation in a common iniquity. And this calamity, as well as the first, was occasioned by woman, though not in the same way; for these women were not themselves betrayed, neither did they persuade the men to sin, but having belonged to the earthly city and society of the earthly, they had been of corrupt manners from the first, and were loved for their bodily beauty by the sons of God, or the citizens of the other city which sojourns in this world.”
Cyril of Alexandria
Cyril of Alexandria lived from approximately AD 376 to 444.
In his Glaphyra in Genesim 2.1, he said, “That we rightly understand this passage is also very much confirmed by the interpretation of the other translators. Aquila says: ‘When the sons of the gods saw the daughters of men’. On the other hand, instead of ‘sons of the gods’, Symmachus rendered the expression as ‘sons of the rulers’. They called the descendants of Seth and of Enosh sons of the gods, or better, sons of the rulers, because of the piety and godliness which was in them, and because they could defeat all adversaries: while God, I suppose, in all likelihood came to their aid, and made known all around this pious and holy generation, which was not mixed with that other one, that is to say, with the descendants from Cain and, what is more, from Lamech.”
Summary
The earliest view of the “sons of God” among the church fathers was that these were rebel angels who engaged in sexual sin with human women. This was the prevailing view in the first four centuries of the early church.
From the 4th century AD onward, the “Sethite” view—that the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2 were human descendants of Seth—gained traction.
In the next—and final—post in this series, I’ll argue for the interpretation of the “sons of God” and the “Nephilim” that I found most persuasive.