It is shameful to say it: the things which I am about to relate here concerning the best writers are not only false, but shameful and absurd, and unworthy both of the reputation for genius and learning of such great men and of the excellence of the purity and holiness of the blessed angels; yet truth compels me to say them, lest perhaps, on account of the authority of those men, something should seem probable to anyone which ought in no way to be approved. At the same time it will become plain to the reader from this disputation how great advances the Church of Christ has made, from that time to this day, in the science of sacred letters and the knowledge of divine things. For many things once obscure and doubtful, or even unknown, to the most learned men are now perceived clearly, indubitably, and with certainty even by the moderately educated.²

It was, then, the opinion of many men distinguished for the praise of antiquity, learning, and sanctity, that the “sons of God,” whom Moses relates to have mingled with the daughters of men, were good angels, who, captivated by the beauty of the women, sank into an obscene love and intercourse with them; and that this was their first sin, by which they lost the heavenly dignity of the angelic state and the glory of their purity and innocence. It will be agreeable, I think, to the reader if we set forth this so remarkable paradox — or rather “prava-dox” (perverse opinion) — of great teachers, in some of their own words here transcribed. Philo, in the book On the Giants, writes that those whom Moses here named “angels” are called by the philosophers “genii,” which are aerial living beings. Josephus too, in the first book of the Antiquities, hands down that these were angels. Justin Martyr, in the former Apology for the Christians, says: “God committed the care of the things that are under heaven to angels appointed to this office; and these, departing from their duty and overcome by love of women, took from them an offspring which the common people call ‘genii’; and, advancing to greater boldness, they subjected the human race to themselves — partly by magical writings, partly by the inculcated fear of punishments, partly by the rites they revealed, which consist of victims, incense, and libations, for which they were held by desire; and, men’s minds being bound fast through these passions, they everywhere filled all things with sorceries. For which reason the poets and tellers of tales, not knowing that it was the angels and the genii born of them who had had to do with males and females, attributed the cities and nations recorded by them to Jupiter himself, and to the sons of him and of his brothers Neptune and Pluto, and to their offspring.” Thus Justin.³

Clement of Alexandria, in the third book of the Stromata, has it thus: “Now the angels too, having been incontinent, overcome by desire, came down from heaven.” Tertullian says this more openly in the book On the Apparel…⁴

…on Women’s Apparel, and On the Veiling of Virgins, where he refers to angels of this kind that saying of Paul: that “a woman ought to be veiled in the church on account of the angels of God” — that is, lest their beauty be an enticement to the angels to lust after them; and he thinks that this saying of Paul too belongs to the same matter: “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” “Therefore,” says Tertullian, “a face so dangerous, which has hurled scandals as far as heaven, ought to be veiled.” And Tertullian supposes that the daughters of men with whom the angels coupled were virgins. Eusebius, in book 5 of the Preparation for the Gospel, ch. 4, suspects that it was from this passage of Moses, ill understood, that the poets took what they invented about the marriages of gods and women, and about the Giants who waged wars against the gods. Indeed Julian the Apostate, as Cyril reports of him at the beginning of the ninth book against him, affirmed that those whom Moses here named “angels,” and said to have mingled with women, are the very same who are called “gods” by the poets, and whose unions with women are sung. Lactantius, in book 2 of the Divine Institutes, ch. 15, judges that the “sons of God” mingled with the daughters of men were angels to whom God had enjoined the office of ruling and guarding the human race.⁵

Of the same opinion Ambrose seems to have been, in the first book On Virgins, writing in this manner: “Chastity made the angels. He who has preserved it is an angel; he who has lost it, a devil.” And a little below: “How splendid it is,” he says, “that angels through their intemperance fell from heaven into the world, while virgins through their chastity passed from the world into heaven?” But that this opinion was by no means pleasing to Ambrose, he himself does not conceal in the book he composed On Noah. For in the fourth chapter of that book, explaining this passage of Moses — “The angels of God, seeing the daughters of men” (for so Ambrose reads, following the reading that in his time was in many codices of the Septuagint translators) — he interprets the “angels of God” not as celestial substances, but as holy men, whom divine Scripture is also wont to call “sons of God.” Ambrose’s words in that place run thus: “Scripture frequently calls angels ‘sons of God,’ because souls are generated from no man. And so God has not disdained that faithful men be called his sons. As, therefore, men of upright life are called ‘sons of God,’ so those whose works are carnal we call, on the authority of the Scriptures, ‘sons of the flesh.’ For John the Evangelist says: As many as received the Lord Jesus, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” So Ambrose there. And he, on Psalm 118, in the seventh Sermon, and in Epistle 84 To Demetrias, says clearly and affirmatively that the first sin of the devil, before the fall of man, was Pride. It appears, therefore, that Ambrose, in the book On Virgins, touched on that opinion about the fall of the angels through the intemperance of lust not because he himself held it, but in order the more magnificently to extol the glory of chastity.⁶

This is remarkable, that that opinion so pleased Severus Sulpicius that he set it forth not only in open and explicit words, but even with great asseveration, writing thus, not far from the beginning of the first book of his Sacred History: “At which…⁷

“…At which time, when the human race was already abounding, the angels, whose dwelling was heaven, captivated by the beauty of comely maidens, sought after illicit desires, and, degenerate from their own nature and origin, abandoning the higher regions of which they were inhabitants, mingled themselves in marriages with mortals.” So he.⁸

And these are the things which by those writers were both believed and set forth in writing concerning the intemperance of the angels — an opinion which we cannot doubt pleased many, both because the authority of such great men made it probable, and because men seeking some patronage for their own lusts and pleasures desired that it be held for true, so that, namely, their own intemperance might seem more excusable by the example of the angels. “It is likely,” says Cyril, in the ninth book against Julian, “that many are disturbed by that opinion, and, despising better things, choose the love of pleasures, while they consider how difficult and arduous it is for them to resist carnal pleasures altogether, and believe that even the holy angels themselves pursued obscene affections. For it is exceedingly harmful to hear and to believe that the holy angels themselves are affected by the comeliness of bodies and take delight in pleasures so profane and absurd.” Thus Cyril. St. Augustine, in chapter 23 of book 15 of The City of God, does indeed reject that opinion, but so modestly that he seems, out of reverence for so many and so great teachers who had followed it, to have remitted the severity of the censure which that opinion deserved. “I could in no way believe,” says Augustine, “that the holy angels of God could at that time have so fallen, nor that the Apostle Peter said of these: For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but, thrusting them down into the prisons of the darkness of hell, delivered them to be reserved for punishment unto judgment; but rather of those who, first apostatizing from God, fell with the devil their prince — who first deceived man through envy by the serpent’s guile.”⁹

Cassian, in the eighth Conference, chapter 21, thought that opinion was strongly refuted even by this single argument. “In no way,” he says, “is it to be believed that spiritual natures can be carnally mingled with women. For if at some time this could have been done literally, how is it that now too the same thing would happen, even not rarely, so that we should see some born of women in like manner without seed or the intercourse of a man, by the conception of demons? — especially since it is established that they take great delight in the filth of lusts, which without doubt they would prefer to practice through themselves rather than through men, if that could in any way have been accomplished.” Thus Cassian. But this argumentation of Cassian is feeble. For the approvers and defenders of that opinion could meet his reasoning in two ways. They would say, first, that the angels have the power of entering women, but that they used that power only once, by God’s permission, and thereafter were forbidden by God to use it — just as the demon has the power of harming men as he harmed Job, yet God does not allow him to exercise that power against other men; for the demon can do many things which he would do frequently and willingly, but, God forbidding, he does them either rarely, or only once, or even never at all. They would say, furthermore: that since good angels or demons enter women only under the appearance and figure of a man, therefore…¹⁰

…it cannot be discerned whether they are men or spirits fallen from heaven [?]. So that it is not incredible, they will say, that many who are reckoned sons of men were begotten by the seed of demons.¹¹

By these two arguments, then, that opinion is to be overthrown. It is beyond controversy that angels are either incorporeal, or, if they are corporeal, have a body different from the human — aerial, namely, or fiery, or invisible to human eyes. For the figure of a human body, by which they have declared their presence to certain persons, they assume for a time, either from without, or by conforming their own body — since it is most subtle and capable of being shaped in every way — to that appearance. Hence, then, it is concluded that angels can in no way be affected by the delights and pleasures of our flesh and take delight in them of themselves, nor be bodily mingled with women, nor beget sons from them. But because this reasoning applies commonly and equally to good angels and to evil demons, let it for the present be omitted, to be treated more fully and conveniently a little below, when we deal with the demons. There is, then, a second most powerful argument against that opinion: if the holy angels fell from heaven through the intemperance of lust, then the first sin of the angels was the sin of lust; but that the angels had other, prior sins is proved by manifest testimonies of Scripture. For the sin of lust, if it was committed by the angels, was certainly not committed before a thousand years had passed since the founding of the world; for about that much time elapsed from the beginning of the world up to the time at which Moses relates that the sons of God mingled with the daughters of men. But that there were other, far more ancient sins of the angels — namely, committed by them at the very beginning of the world — is plain from the words of our Lord which are in John, chapter eight, where he said that the devil was “from the beginning of the world a liar and a murderer.” In the book of Wisdom too it is written that “by the envy of the devil death entered into the world”; but death entered as soon as Adam sinned, as Paul testifies to the Romans in chapter five, when he says: “By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death.” Long before that sin of lust, therefore, we find in the sacred writings that there were three other sins of the angels: of Envy, of Lying, and of Murder.¹²

Indeed it is acknowledged among almost all the Fathers and Theologians that the first sin of the angel was pride; so that for that reason it is recorded in the book of Ecclesiasticus, chapter ten, that “the beginning of all sin is pride.” For the first of all sins was the sin of Lucifer; and this was pride, as the Doctors are wont to argue from those words of Isaiah which are in chapter 14: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning?” etc. — where, under the figure of the king of Babylon, is described Lucifer’s fall from heaven to hell on account of pride. It appears, therefore, that the first sin of the angels was not the sin of carnal lust. I said “carnal lust,” on account of the opinion of Scotus, who judged that the first sin of the angel was a certain spiritual lust. But if the first sin of the angels was not carnal lust, then the good angels were not, on account of the foul lust which…¹³

…they practiced with women, cast down from heaven, nor did they lose the dignity of their state.¹⁴

This argument the blessed Chrysostom — reckoning it a most powerful weapon for destroying that opinion — treated in these words, in homily 22 on Genesis: “But what do these men say? Surely they say that they were indeed angels, but that, because they descended to this iniquitous deed, they fell from their dignity. Behold again another, more fabulous tale! What then? Did the angels fall, and was this the cause of their ruin? But Scripture teaches us otherwise: that before Adam was formed, the devil fell from his dignity. For a certain wise man says: ‘By the envy of the devil death entered into the world.’ For if he did not fall before man was made, when, remaining in such great dignity, did he envy man? For it is not reasonable that an incorporeal angel, established in such dignity, envied man bearing a body; rather he envied because he had been cast down from supernal glory into the utmost ignominy. Therefore, although he was incorporeal, yet, seeing man endowed in the body with such great honor by the goodwill of the Creator, he blazed with envy, and by the deception in which he used the serpent’s aid, he made man liable to the punishment of death. For such malice cannot but bear grievously the happiness of others. For of what great madness would it be to say that the angels were cast down in order to have to do with women, and that an incorporeal nature was joined to bodies? Do you not hear the Lord saying of the substance of the angels: ‘In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God’? For it is not possible that an incorporeal nature should at any time have such concupiscence.” Thus far Chrysostom. But enough has been said for vindicating the good angels from the intemperance of lust and from the obscenities of women’s loves. Next let us dispute, treating a similar question, concerning the evil angels, who are commonly called demons or cacodemons.¹⁵