Annotatio LXXVII

”But there were giants upon the earth.” — Genesis 6:4

Ambrose, in the first book On Noah and the Ark, chapter 4, narrating this passage, seems to hand down that the Giants who preceded the Flood were procreated from the intercourse of Angels and women.¹ Which opinion St. Philastrius, Bishop of Brescia, in chapter 108 of his Catalogue, reckons among the heresies. But these are Ambrose’s words: “The founder of divine Scripture does not wish those Giants to be seen, in the manner of the poets, as sons of the earth; but asserts them to have been generated from Angels and women, etc.” And elsewhere too Ambrose indicates that the cause of the Angelic ruin, and of the fall from the heavens, happened from this — that angels coupled foully with women — as in the first book On Virgins, not far from the end: in which place, comparing among themselves the merits of the continence of virgins and the incontinence of the Angels, he says: “Why should I pursue the praise of chastity with more [words]? For chastity made the Angels. He who kept it is an Angel; he who lost it is a Devil. How illustrious it is, moreover, that Angels, on account of their intemperance, fell from heaven into the world, [while] virgins, on account of their chastity, passed from the world into heaven.” From this Ambrosian opinion Chrysostom does not much differ, in the homily delivered on the feast of the beheading of John the Baptist, when he says: “Woman laid low not only men, but even Angels from heaven.” There are those to whom it seems that Ambrose took this from Philo, Lactantius, and Eusebius — of whom the first, in the book On Giants, has it thus: “‘The Angels of God saw the daughters of men,’ etc. — whom other philosophers [call] genii, Moses is wont to call Angels. These are souls flying through the air; nor is there [any reason] why anyone should think this fabulous: for it is necessary that the whole world, in all its parts, should have animate beings — the earth, terrestrial [ones]; the sea, aquatic [ones]; fire, [beings] born of fire, of which very many are reported to be born in Macedonia; likewise heaven, the stars — for these are wholly immortal and divine souls. Accordingly it necessarily follows that the air too is full of its own living beings, which are invisible to us. Certain of these, therefore, descended into bodies.” Thus Philo writes. But Lactantius, in the se[cond book] [But Lactantius], in the second book of the Divine Institutions, chapter 15, speaks of this matter thus: “When, therefore, the number of men had begun to increase, God — foreseeing lest the Devil (to whom from the beginning he had given power over the earth) should either corrupt or scatter the men whom he had made in the beginning — sent Angels for the protection and cultivation of the human race; to whom he enjoined, before all, that they should not, defiled by the contagion of the earth, lose the dignity of their heavenly substance. And so, while they dwelt among men, that most deceitful ruler of the earth, by very habit, gradually enticed them to vices, and polluted them with the embraces of women; then, not received back into heaven on account of the sins in which they had immersed themselves, they fell to the earth. Thus the Devil made them, from Angels of God, his own satellites and ministers.” These things Lactantius: before whom, many years [earlier], the same had been held by Justin Martyr, in the Apology to the Roman Senate, and in the apology to Antoninus Pius; and by Clement of Alexandria, in the third and fifth volumes of the Stromata — writing most clearly that the angels sinned with women. To both subscribed Tertullian the African and Methodius, Bishop of Olympus. Of whom the former, in the book On the Dress of Women, says, “The Angels rushed from heaven to the daughters of men, and, after the exhausted moments of their lusts, sighed for heaven”; and here, in the sermon On the Resurrection, he says: “The Devil was made wicked concerning the administration of the things committed to him, and conceived envy against us — just as also those who afterward loved flesh, [and] on account of intercourse consorted in love with the daughters of men.” Agreeing with these, Eusebius of Caesarea, in the fifth volume of the Evangelical Preparation, set down these words: “Which matter Plutarch the more confirms, saying that the fabulous discourses about the gods signify certain things done by Demons in most ancient times, and that the things sung of the Giants and Titans were operations of Demons. Whence a suspicion has sometimes fallen upon me, whether these be not the very things which, done before the Flood by the Giants, the divine scripture touched upon — concerning which it is said: ‘But when the angels of God had seen the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, they chose for themselves wives out of them, from whom were procreated the most famous Giants of the age.’ For someone will suspect that they, and their spirits, are those who were afterward called Gods by men, and that their conflicts, tumults, and wars are those which are fabulously written of the gods.” Thus far Eusebius: from whose opinion I judge that Ambrose recoiled — because in many places, but most of all in the exposition of Psalm 118, sermon 7, in which, speaking of the cause of the Angelic fall, he demonstrates that it was not lust, but pride,² saying thus: “The devil himself, through pride, lost the grace of his nature; for when he says, ‘I will place my throne above the clouds, and I will be like the Most High’ [Isaiah 14:14],³ he fell from the fellowship of the Angels.” And in epistle 84, to Demetrias, showing that the devil fell through pride before man’s fall, he says: “Pride took its beginning from the devil, who — since he was pleased with his own power and dignity, which he had received from the Creator, and compared himself to the glory of his author — together with those Angels whom he had drawn into the consent of his impiety, was cast down from the heavenly sublimity. And therefore he was able to harm the first men, because he persuaded them, ill-believing, that they would become better if they leaped out into the liberty of their own will, than if they remained in the custody of the given law.”

Accordingly, lest the aforesaid words of Ambrose move anyone, one must know that he understood, by “Angels,” not spiritual and heavenly substances, but illustrious men and worshippers of the one God, descending from the holy stock of Seth⁴ — whom, because they had remained until that day in the faith and worship of the one God (as we have already said), Moses called בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים Bene elohim, that is, “Sons of God”; [and] the older edition of the Seventy interpreters said τοὺς ἀγγέλους Θεοῦ [the angels of God]; the Italic edition — which Augustine expounded in the fifteenth book On the City of God, chapter 23 — called [them] “Angels of God”; and Ambrose, following this, called the parents of the Giants “angels.” Which his own words also show, when, in the book On Noah and the Ark, in that place which we cited above, he added: “Scripture usually calls the sons of God, or faithful men, ‘Angels,’ because souls are generated from no man.” To this exposition Augustine assents, in the Questions on Genesis, question 3, in this manner: “It is asked how the Angels could lie with the daughters of men, whence the Giants are reported to have been born — although some codices, both Latin and Greek, do not have ‘Angels’ but ‘Sons of God’: whom certain [interpreters], for solving this question, believed to have been just men, who could also be called by the name of ‘Angels.’ For of the man John it is written, ‘Behold, I send my Angel,’ etc.⁵ Whence it is more credible that just men — called either ‘Angels’ or ‘sons of God,’ [and] fallen through concupiscence — sinned with women, than that Angels, not having flesh, could have descended to that sin; although concerning certain Demons, who are troublesome to women, so many things are said by many, that it is not easy to define an opinion on this matter.”