It's clear freom these verses from the Book of Job.that the sons of God were angels, and some of them (1/3 we are told elsewhere) fell. The "sons of God" are fallen angels
"Now on a certain day when the sons of God came to stand before the Lord, Satan also was present among them."
[Job 1:6] |
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"And it came to pass, when on a certain day the sons of God came, and stood before the Lord, and Satan came among them, and stood in his sight,"
[Job 2:1] |
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"When the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody?"
[Job 38:7] |
Genesis 6 is clear.
"The sons of God seeing the daughters of men, that they were fair, took to themselves wives of all which they chose."
[Genesis 6:2] |
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"Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these are the mighty men of old, men of renown."
[Genesis 6:4] |
It is clear that they married the human women who bore giants, which correlates with the "myths" of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
I am aware of that, but what I am saying is that it is contrary to what the Church teaches on angelic natures. So, to say that these were, in fact, traditional angels in the sense of heavenly intelligences, doesn't add up.
As we also have Our Lord and the Apostles in the New Testament using the same term to refer to the saints:
"But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name."
[John 1:12]
"For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."
[Romans 8:14]
"For the Spirit himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God."
[Romans 8:16]
"And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body."
[Romans 8:23]
"Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth not us, because it knew not him. Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is."
[1 John 3:1-2]
It is in light of this that I am going to stand more in line with St. Augustine in saying that these "sons of God" referred to in Genesis were, in fact, the just men, the line of ante-Diluvian patriarchs, the sons of Seth (or Shem); not angels in the sense that Job states. That's not to say Job is wrong, but it's clearly unreasonable, based upon the teaching of Ss. Dionysius and Thomas, to think that immaterial angels somehow procreated directly with material women. If you want to take the angle that demons possessed them and did so in order to tamper with the genetics of man, I would agree with that myself.
Topic: Enoch, Church Fathers and the Giants of Genesis (Read 19880 times)