Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and welcome to my third installment of the Historical Views of Genesis 6, and today we're finally getting to the topic of Augustine.
But before I do that, I want to mention something, because I've had some really weird things happen on Facebook lately. Now, that's not necessarily strange to have weird things happen on Facebook, because Facebook does as Facebook is. But my last episode, the second part of this series, was taken down and removed because of spam.
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Alright, so, that out of the way, let's go ahead and talk about why I'm talking about [00:03:00] Augustine on a Biblical Theology Podcast. Because a biblical theology podcast is really more concerned about, you know, biblical theology, which is the cultural and contextual and grammatical and historical understanding that is swirling around the time of the biblical authors.
But it's too easy to keep biblical theology to the context of the Bible and not move it forward to today, and to see how that looks, and to see what's actually happened in between. And that actually explains why we need biblical theology so much, because we've lost the original context as we've meandered through history in all of these different interpretations.
Now that doesn't mean we should discount or ignore historical or systematic theology because there's a lot we can learn from that, and there's a lot that's correct in that. We can ask what wisdom can these things give us? [00:04:00] Even without thinking that all of the historical interpretations are going to lead us to that propositional truth. You know, wisdom isn't just about fact, but it's about discernment. And that includes things like empathy for others, and entering into world views and ways of thought that aren't our own.
And historical interpretation can help us do that really well. Also, I think it's cool to take the tools of biblical theology and then apply those same things to historical interpretation. Just like the Bible has a context, the church has had a context through time, and there are specific reasons that interpreters take the positions that they do, because of their previous influences, because of their teachers, or because of direct circumstances surrounding them.
In my previous two episodes, I've gotten up to about the year 300, 350, and to [00:05:00] that point, it's almost universally the angelic view of Genesis 6. After that, the angelic view got to be much more rare, and so we can ask why. Well, first of all, there has been a disconnect from the previous context, in both linguistic historical ways.
Even if they knew of the Sons of God text versus the Angels of God text, they had no idea why the Sons of God would be called the Sons of God, because at this point, they understood believers to be the Sons of God. And that's a good thing.
But then you go to the Old Testament and you ask, well, how could those guys have been doing something wicked if they were the sons of God, right? Sons of God is a positive thing. And as far as anybody could tell at that time, the sons of God reading could have just been another [00:06:00] variant for all they knew. So what we have going on is, once a linguistic term has changed in nuance like this, then, after a while, it's possible to entirely lose the original context and meaning.
In the Old Testament, Sons of God would be an ontological term for spirit beings. A son of somebody would be a son of that person, like, that's a literal kind of a thing. And it had to do with inheritance and things like that, but the term Son of God would be a spiritual being because God is a spiritual being.
Now, they did have metaphorical meaning in the concept of the Sonship. We see that in Adam. We see that in David. We see that in Israel. We see that the New Testament makes people into the sons of God. You can go look up John 1 12. Romans [00:07:00] 8, 14, Galatians 3, 26, Galatians 4, 5 through 6, which is all about adoption. And so there's still that idea of inheritance and family line and things like that.
But obviously for the church, the designation sons of God would mean people of the church and not spirit beings. But understanding Old Testament theology to New Testament theology, we can see how this plays into the idea that the believers become members of God's divine counsel.
But again, that's not an ontological thing. We're suddenly using the term in a metaphorical way. We've seen some of the quotes that we've actually talked about struggle with this directly, and they make a case that they were called the sons of God for different reasons. So then we get into the New Testament, and then we get into the [00:08:00] early church, and there's all of these apologetics things that are going on.
People are opposing paganism, and they're doing so as if there were no higher ranking autonomous supernatural beings in authority or with power, which again, that makes sense, because by the early church, they had been delegitimized. And when you're going into apologetics reasons for explaining something, just like how today it's easier to oppose other belief systems if there's no other gods, that's kind of what they were doing.
By easier I mean it's more direct, it's more simple, it requires less teaching or explanation, and it doesn't require a back narrative of what's going on with God in the spirit realm. But of course, a lot of people have found it easier to witness to people with the Divine Council worldview in mind as well. [00:09:00] But what I'm talking about here is just the simpler way of explaining things.
And of course, apologetics often just kind of discounts other worldviews. And so that's kind of why they're gonna go that direction of not going Divine Council worldview for apologetics reasons in a highly pagan world. Maybe a better way of putting that is that the world is going from a paganistic world to a Christian world.
A related reason to apologetics is pastoral or discipleship questions. We have the idea of worship, and it's possible that people were starting to elevate angels and worship angels, even in Christian circles. This is hard to track definitively. It's mentioned by early church fathers, but we're not really sure who was doing angelic worship or how they were doing it, or [00:10:00] maybe if it was a bit of an overstatement.
There is mention of a sect called the Angelicy, but we really don't have any objective information about them. So this could be hearsay or polemics. Of course we do have Colossians 2. 18 which mentions the worship of angels, but that could just be referencing the heavenly host and the gods of the nations and pagan worship. So we don't really know. And that is as opposed to a type of angelic worship that would possibly arise in Christianity because of the angels who are not the gods of the nations, if that makes sense. That's why it's kind of hard to talk about this stuff because you have the word angel which could mean such different things in different contexts.
Another reason we might have the Sethite view being highlighted more [00:11:00] is because of the heightened virtue of celibacy. Remember, we have monasticism on the rise. And we're fighting against heathens and their emphasis on fleshly pleasures and that kind of thing. They're dealing with a lot of Gnostics. So all of these things with historical pressure and political polemics even, are going to tend to push towards certain directions for the interpretations.
Now, I think there's really good reasons to accept the angelic view as primary because the earliest views all saw the sons of God as angelic, spiritual, divine beings, whatever word you want to use there. The Nephilim and Giants were seen in various ways, though. So accepting the sons of God as spiritual beings does not mean that we have to accept a particular view of the Giants themselves, because we've seen, already, several different ideas here. We've seen the Sons of [00:12:00] God as spirit beings with spirit bodies. We have Sons of God as attaining human bodies and doing this thing in Genesis 6. And then we have other people who just, they don't give an explanation how the Giants were Giants, they just kind of were there, okay. And so it doesn't have to mean biology or DNA if we take this spiritual view.
Another reason to accept the angelic view as the primary one we should be taking is that it uses a linguistic grammatical argument, a literal one even, because Sons of God as Sons of God in a literal sense, well, that's more literal, right? And Sons of God as a particular technical term is probably how we should be understanding this, versus Sons of God in metaphorical ways. You know, the metaphorical way is actually the Sethite view. Because Seth isn't God [00:13:00] and Cain isn't Adam. It makes more literal sense to take the sons of God as the sons of God and the daughters of men to be the daughters of humanity, not just one line of man.
Another good reason for the angelic view is that it uses a historical argument. The ancient Near East understanding of spirit beings and how much influence they had in the world and what they could do, rather than a later dismissal of such ideas, right? Okay, come on, the whole world was flooded simply because of intermarrying? Really? How did that lead to wickedness? Now there's potential explanations for that. If we're talking about the same thing that happened in Canaan with Israel turning to idolatry, well, okay, but it doesn't say that that's what's happening. And the flood is still far more extreme than the exile.
Another reason to accept the angelic view is [00:14:00] that the human view came about first by allegorical interpretation, and it didn't really reject the spiritual view even then. It just makes more sense of the flood narrative, and any view is going to put presuppositions or prior burden on the text. But the presumption that they can't be spiritual beings is definitely reading our later understanding of Sons of God into the text, or it's reading our understanding of how the world and spirit realm works. It's just reading things in, that's all there is to say. The text nowhere says Sons of Seth or Sons of Cain, and the Sethite view doesn't explain the Nephilim narrative very well, or even at all.
So let's go ahead and talk about the pull of the human view and why Church Fathers would go that direction. I mentioned Athanasius last time, and [00:15:00] let's talk about him again for just a moment, because as influential as Augustine is, he's kind of backed up by the fact that Athanasius is one of those church fathers that people will, I think rightly so, love to quote.
So, Athanasius of Alexandria lived from about 296 to 373. He worked against Arianism. He had a strong defense of the Trinity and he said that the sons of God were the sons of Seth who mixed with the line of Cain and sullied their bloodline. Athanasius said quote 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 [00:16:00] 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 for themselves as wives, thus ruining their ancestral nobility. End quote.
So why, Athanasius, why did you take this? Remember how I was saying how we're reading the New Testament into the Old Testament? It's exactly what's going on here. And if we're doing so in an allegorical way, I can actually see how that would work okay. If we're like, this is allegorical, and we're not denying, again, that historical, literal interpretation of the past, and, I mean, come on, it's very strongly centered on a Christological reading of the Bible, and we like Christological readings of the Bible.
[00:17:00] The New Testament says Sons of God are followers of Jesus. We talked about allegory and how this could play into that, but of course the more specific term for Athanasius would probably be typology. The Old Testament prefigured the New Testament. So if the Old Testament used the term Sons of God, it's going to connect to the New Testament use of Sons of God, which the New Testament use is obviously positive. So, the question is, how does it connect, and in what ways? What does it mean?
Athanasius probably wouldn't have seen a massive disconnect in the term, Sons of God, because it's so positive. Why would they be wicked in the Old Testament? I think we can see from his perspective how that line of thinking makes sense. But I think we can also see how it's reading into the Old Testament something that's not there.
Now there's another really interesting thing going on. [00:18:00] And this is the fact that they could be answering early Christian critics. We have Celsus, who lived about 178, and he wrote something called On the True Doctrine. His writing is known primarily from the polemical book, Contra Celsum, that was written by Origen of Alexandria.
Celsus argued against philosophy, and he said that Christians made things up, and that they just copied from other people. He said Christianity is a danger to the empire because they don't participate in the worship. He said many things about Jesus were lies and fables, or they just riffed off of other stories, such as the virgin birth as an explanation for a bastard son, and they repurposed old myths. But they were boring compared to Greek and Roman stories. Celsus said that the Christian God is helpless since he can't help people in [00:19:00] their suffering. He said that Christians actively seek out lower class people , because, lower class people believe in ridiculous ideas. He said Christianity was against reason, and it came from Jews, and Jews had revolted multiple times, and they couldn't agree with one another, and they met in secret, and they were just this big danger.
And Celsus used the narrative of Genesis 6 against Christianity. He said, quote, O Jews and Christians, no god or son of a god, either, came or will come down to earth. But if you mean that certain angels did so, then what do you call them? Are they gods, or some other race of beings? Some other race of beings, doubtless, and in all probability, demons. End quote.
So, you know, it's possible that some of the writing that we have in [00:20:00] the leaning towards the Sethite view is because of this kind of pushback on Christianity. Which you probably noticed that that narrative really hasn't changed all that much through time, right? We still get the same kind of pushback on Christianity today.
Another early Christian critic was Julian the Apostate. He lived from 331 to 363, and we call him Julian the Apostate because he was the last pagan emperor, he was the nephew of Constantine, and historically he was in the context for both Athanasius and Augustine. He was definitely an influence on Augustine. Julian the Apostate wrote something called Against the Galatians. The text doesn't survive, but it's quoted in Cyril of Alexandria's work, which is also itself not fully intact.
Julian wants to show that there's no evidence of Christ in the Old Testament. And [00:21:00] he uses the Genesis 6 Sons of God narrative to prove that Moses didn't know about Jesus, who would come as the Son of God, because if Moses knew about Jesus, why wouldn't Moses have said something about Jesus? And, why are there so many sons of God if Jesus is the only one?
Julian mentions Israel as God's firstborn son, and Moses obviously didn't see being the Son of God to be that big of a deal if all of Israel could be the Son of God. Julian also uses the Shema as evidence against Jesus. Moses said that there's only one God, and yet you guys worship more than one because, hey, look at the Great Commission. The Great Commission proves that you worship more than one God, which, this is pretty interesting, right? This is not from the mouth of a Christian, but from somebody else, and he is suggesting that you guys worship more than [00:22:00] one God. Why is that? Because you're seeing Jesus as God. So, in a way, that's actually really good evidence for Christianity.
But I want to go ahead and read his quote here. He says, quote, And that Moses calls the angels gods, you may hear from his own words. The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose. And a little further on, And also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became the giants, which were of old, The men of renown. Now that he means the angels is evident. And this has not been foisted on him from without, but it is clear also from his saying that not men but giants were born from them, for it is clear that if he had thought that men and not beings of some higher, more [00:23:00] powerful nature were their fathers, he would not have said that the giants were their offspring. For it seems to me that he declared that the race of giants arose from the mixture of mortal and immortal. Again, when Moses speaks of many sons of God, and calls them not men, but angels, would he not then have revealed to mankind, if he had known thereof, God the only begotten word, or a son of God, or however you call him? But is it because he did not think this of great importance that he says concerning Israel, Israel is my firstborn son. Why did not Moses say this about Jesus also? He taught that there was only one God, but that he had many sons who divided the nations among themselves. But the word as firstborn son of God, or as a god, or any of these fictions which have been [00:24:00] invented by you later, he neither knew at all, nor taught openly thereof. You have now heard Moses himself and the other prophets. Moses, therefore, utters many sayings to the following effect, and in many places. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. How then has it been handed down in the Gospels that Jesus commanded, Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, if they were not intended to serve him also. And your beliefs also are in harmony with these commands, when along with the Father, you pay divine honors to the Son. End quote.
So, the apologetics move of switching to the Sathite view doesn't fix all of the problems and objections that they would have in these kinds of critiques. But, it removes [00:25:00] or distances the flood narrative, which is about judgment, and is that negative view of the Sons of God. Because at least Israel and David as God's son could be seen in a positive light.
This also demonstrates that even without a widely known or read Hebrew text, the translation Sons of God was not unknown and it seems to have been broadly given. In fact, Augustine will tell us that there are Greek and Latin manuscripts that have the translation, Sons of God. As far as anyone could tell, though, it was just a variant reading.
Okay, so now, Augustine. He lived from 354 to 430. Augustine's writings influenced a lot of theology in his immediate context, as we'll see. And more interpretations after him took a human view versus the interpretations that led up to him.
And [00:26:00] this is the case well beyond him. Because a lot of Protestants particularly took to the theology of Augustine. His most famous works are his Confessions and his book, The City of God. Augustine knew some Greek, Augustine knew some Hebrew, but he preferred Latin, and he thought that Jerome, who was translating the Vulgate from Hebrew to Latin, should just use the Greek Septuagint because Augustine thought that the Septuagint was inspired from God, and he really didn't seem to trust the Hebrew so much.
Augustine wrote a good bit about Genesis. There's actually five commentaries that you can point to where he talks in great length about Genesis. Often it's about the creation. He has a book called On Genesis, A Refutation of the Manichees. He has an unfinished literal commentary on Genesis. His [00:27:00] Confessions ends with commentary on Genesis 1. Then he has a later literal meaning of Genesis, where he takes Genesis 1 through 3 literally and not allegorically. And then we have Book 11 of The City of God, which really focuses heavily on Genesis. Why did Augustine care about the narrative of creation so much?
I'm going to read a quote from the introduction from my copy of On Genesis.. It says, quote, the reality of creation and the relationship between creature and creator underlie all religious acts. In the course of his conversion, Augustine gained an existential awareness of the meaning of creation. In the course of his conversion, Augustine gained an existential awareness of the meaning of creation. During his break with Manicheism, his assimilation of Neoplatonic [00:28:00] ideas and his final turn to the Church, he realized ever more fully and deeply that he had been created by God and that he possessed his own being only within a relationship to the Creator. Since God is being itself, on which all being depends, it is possible for human beings to choose freely between turning to God and turning away from God, and so determining their own self fulfillment. In Augustine's view, creation is destined to find its fulfillment through a return to God. The creator awaits the free response of his creature. For Augustine religion is simply the free and deliberate acknowledgement of human beings that, as creatures, they are ontologically dependent on God. End quote.
Okay. Let's talk a little bit about Augustine's history. When he was 19 years old, and he was out there exploring his options of faith, he rejected the Bible, [00:29:00] and he joined the Manichees. The Manichees identified with Christianity, but it also included elements of Zoroastrianism and Buddhism and a bunch of other things. And so really it was kind of a competitor to Christianity. It's potentially Gnostic. It's definitely dualistic. Its founder, Mani, had a vision, and he proclaimed a new truth, and he founded his own community, and Mani journeyed to India and then Persia.
There's a few Manichaean texts. There's a gospel, there's some epistles, and there's work that's influenced by First Enoch for sure. The origin of evil was very important to the sect. Mani was the final messenger who revealed the true nature of the world and how it can be made right again.
I'm going to read about some Manichaean ideas from Lexham [00:30:00] Bible Dictionary, which says, quote, In Manichean mythology, the universe consisted of two equal but opposite powers, light and darkness, or good and evil. According to Mani's beliefs, the darkness attacked the light, and the light called forth a champion, the Primal Man, or the First Man, who sacrificed himself to defend the light. Aspects of the Primal Man, who was made of light, became intermingled with the darkness. Which led to the creation of the material realm. Mani believed the universe consisted of matter restraining those scattered fragments of light. Since Manicheans believed living beings of all sorts contained particles of light, the Manicheans abstained from violence toward all living things, especially animals. End quote.
I'm going to read another quote [00:31:00] from my copy of On Genesis. Quote, the opening chapters of Genesis were the main focus of controversy between the Manichaeans and Christians, because faith in a single creator of the world was in direct opposition to the Manichaean dualistic cosmology. Manichaean critics of Genesis tried to prove that the biblical text was untenable. The anthropomorphic picture of God given there was absurd. And the question of the origin of evil was unanswerable on the assumption of a single good creator,. God. The Manachees expressly rejected a figurative allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament because only in light of this rejection did the strangeness and difficulty of the Old Testament text become really clear. The Manichaeus intended by their criticism to undermine the credibility of a church that took this questionable text as a document of revelation, thereby to dispose [00:32:00] the faithful for acceptance of the Manichaean message. In the case of Augustine, this maneuver was completely successful in the beginning. As a young student, he rejected both the text of the Old Testament and the authority of the Catholic Church. End quote.
And, of course, the Catholic Church there means just the Universal Church, not specifically the Roman Catholic Church.
Again, going back to Lexham Bible Dictionary, we have Manicheans influence on Augustine. It says, quote, Teachings of Augustine that partly derived from his encounter with the fight against Manichaeism include his views on scripture, election, the corporeal transmission of sin, the metaphor of the two cities or kingdoms, and Christ- centered spirituality. End quote.
So Augustine at first rejected the Bible and he fell into this sect of Manichaeans for about a [00:33:00] decade. Then he returns to Christianity. And so his theology when he became an orthodox Christian is very colored by his past association. But, not only that, we need to look at the political circumstances of Augustine's day. Because that has a massive impact here.
Augustine wrote the City of God between 413 and 426. This was a time when the Western Roman Empire was crumbling. The Visigoths had sacked Rome in 410 and there was mumbling about the idea that Rome was falling because of the influence of that evil Christianity.
Pagans were claiming this was happening because pagan worship had been abolished or neglected. Augustine's claim was that the city had actually been saved by Christianity and that otherwise it would have been completely destroyed. But the fall of Rome had to do with internal [00:34:00] moral decay. And so Augustine went on to use Rome as an allegorical model for the city of man. Remember I said that he's going to use a lot of allegory. So his book, The City of God, is about two societies. The city of God is the city of the elect, and the city of man is the city of the damned.
Now, let's think about that in relation to Genesis as well as Roman mythology. He equates Romulus and Remus with Cain and Abel. Romulus had founded Rome through fratricide, and so this was grounds for Augustine to critique Rome's moral foundation.
Romulus had murdered Remus to win the glory of founding this earthly city of greatness, because he was jealous and he wasn't going to share glory and prestige with his brother. So, for Augustine, we have the city of Man, and there's this zero sum [00:35:00] conflict in which there's not enough earthly goods to go around and share. So then we get violence and all of this other stuff that we see early in Genesis. And Rome was also itself founded on bloodshed, violence, conflict, competition, fratricide, and yet Rome managed to get to a height of power and grandeur. But this was all based on these immoral things.
So Augustine is saying that true citizenship of the city of God is an eternal thing, And he's not claiming any earthly human city can provide truth and good and morality like Rome would be claiming. The city of God has people who are living by a better standard. A standard of love, a standard of truth, and it's a city of people who love others because they love God. It's a city that is committed to justice, virtue, and [00:36:00] goodness. And these aren't necessarily separate cities, but they're mixed together today.
Augustine also uses the sons of God narrative in Genesis 6 to discuss mankind's fall into depravity and moral decline. Cain is the earthly city. And he worked against the heavenly city, Abel.
But the heavenly city can't be destroyed, and it's going to be renewed. And so we have the rise of Seth. And Genesis 6 is about the tension between the two lines. Seth and Cain, God and man, the heavenly city and the earthly city.
The City of God is dismantling the narrative that pagan deities would have any power. So, Augustine is not going to go into the highly supernatural Divine Council worldview interpretive route. But I think that saying he is anti supernatural is going too far. But the narrative of the two cities, or the two [00:37:00] societies that exist next to one another, fits really well within the Sethite view of Genesis 6, which is clearly not the ancient view, but we can see how Augustine's going there.
And in part, this is again because of a disconnect. Though the angelic view was most common before him, we saw how not everyone had the same ideas of that. And they certainly didn't understand the angelic view in the way that someone who was familiar with the Old Testament context would.
So you get Augustine who comes along, he sees all of the stuff going on, and he's trying to figure it out. An important point here regarding his influence, is that his writing was not just another homily or commentary, but it was a whole beautifully put together argument of philosophy and a historical treatise from Creation to the Eschaton.
And so kings and popes took this as an almost foundational [00:38:00] political document. And the fall of Rome has been a point of fascination for the West ever since it happened. In fact, probably all of this early material colored the narrative that there was a fall of Rome to begin with, that a city could fall. Like, we don't always talk that way when an empire or society collapses or whatever happens to it. But the Roman Empire gets special treatment, and it's called the Fall of the Empire, and that's really embedded in our psyche.
The message itself is very appealing and cross temporal as well, because stability is not found in our political climate, but rather in God, and yeah, that's a good message. And so it's very philosophically impactful. And keep in mind that his writing and his thinking, no doubt, went through iterations. And so, he might not always sound the same in every writing.
Let's go ahead and read [00:39:00] something from his book On Genesis, that was written before most of The City of God was written. This passage is going to be addressing the question of angelic intercourse. And he's using the term angel as messenger to say that even humans can be called angels. Like spiritual angels aren't embodied, however, he does acknowledge the reality of demons and how something might be going on between those demons and evil women. So, again, that's why I say he's not really rejecting all of the supernatural elements. He's just got an agenda here he's trying to meet. And this is another view of how the distinctions between entities get lost in translation when we're talking about angels and demons and how do we see all of that.
All right, so a quote from Augustine from on Genesis. He says, quote, The sons of God went into the [00:40:00] daughters of men, and they brought forth children. They also often ask how angels could have sex with the daughters of men, of whom the giants are said to have been born. Although some manuscripts, not only Latin, but also Greek, read, not, of the angels, but, of the sons of God. To solve this question, some have claimed that they were just men. And so, it could also be said of them that they were angels. Scripture, for example, says about John, who was a man, Behold, I send my angel before you to prepare your way.
But the problem is, you can read that in Matthew 11, 10, and note that most of our English translations are going to use the term messenger, because angel can be messenger.
Anyway, back to Augustine. But the problem is, knowing how giants were born through sex of men, or how they could be joined with women, if they were not men, but angels. With regard to the [00:41:00] giants, that is to say, very large and very strong men, I think that there is nothing strange in that they could have been born of men, because even after the flood, they existed. As a matter of fact, in our own day, there have been some individual humans, incredibly large, not only men, but also women. It is therefore more credible that righteous men called angels, or sons of God, moved by lust, sinned with women instead of angels who could not commit that sin because they lack bodies. Although certain demons have been evil with women, so many things are said and so by many people, that it is not easy to decide on an opinion in this question. End quote.
Alright, So Augustine acknowledges the giants. But another thing he does is that he challenges the morality in Greek myths. If the gods were committing adultery, [00:42:00] then the Greek gods couldn't be very well displeased when humans commit adultery. So we've got a moral problem.
In the city of God, he says, quote, but whether Venus could bear Anais to a human father, Ancacy, or Mars beget Romulus or the daughter of Numitor, we leave as unsettled questions, for our own scriptures suggest the very similar question, whether the fallen angels had sexual intercourse with the daughters of men, by which the earth was at that time filled with giants, that is, with enormously large and strong men. At present, then, I will limit my discussion to this dilemma. If that which their books relate about the mother of Aeneas and the father of Romulus be true, how can the gods be displeased with men for their adulteries, which, when committed by themselves, excite no displeasure? If it's false, not even in this case can the gods be angry that men should really commit adulteries, [00:43:00] which, even when falsely attributed to the gods, they delight in, end quote.
All right, so let's get into the city of God with respect to Genesis 6. The sons of God and the daughters of men in the story of the city of God and the city of man. Now, this is philosophical, so it gets a bit dense and wordy. He's going to talk about beauty being good, but it's not the highest good.
And so, the lower form of good, which is the beauty of women, can be used as a substitute for the higher good of a higher form of beauty, if that makes sense. Beauty is a good thing, but you've got different levels of beauty, and physical beauty and lust is a lower level of beauty that can replace the higher level, and so you're not going to be as moral or virtuous and things like that. You're going to end up with moral problems.
Augustine is not going to deny that it's [00:44:00] possible for some spirit beings to have some sort of substance and to have some sort of intercourse with women. But he's very stuck on the terminology Sons of God, and he doesn't want to see the Sons of God as having vice or be fallen to the point that they could commit such a crime.
All right, so here is a long quote from the City of God. Augustine says, quote, 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 [00:45:00] 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. Beauty is indeed a good gift of God. But that the good may not think it a great good God dispenses it even to the wicked. And thus, when the good that is great and proper to the good was abandoned by the sons of God, they fell to a paltry good, which is not peculiar to the good, but common to the good and the evil. And when they were captivated by the daughters of men, they adopted the manners of the earthly to win them as their brides, and forsook the godly ways they had followed in their own holy society. And thus beauty, which is indeed God's handiwork, But only a temporal, carnal, and lower kind of good, is not fitly loved in preference to God, the eternal, spiritual, and unchangeable [00:46:00] good. It was the order of this love, then, this charity or attachment, which the sons of God disturbed when they forsook God, and they were enamored of the daughters of men. And by these two names, sons of God and daughters of men, the two cities are sufficiently distinguished, for though the former were by nature children of men, they had come into possession of another name by grace, for in the same scripture in which the sons of God are said to have loved the daughters of men, they are also called angels of God, whence many suppose that they were not men, but angels. 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, we made a passing reference to this question, but did not decide whether angels, inasmuch as they are spirits, could [00:47:00] have bodily intercourse with women. For it is written, Who maketh his angels spirits. 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 angelos, 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 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 experiences of others corroborate, that sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called incubi, had often [00:48:00] made wicked assaults upon women and satisfy their lust upon them, and that certain devils, called deuces by the Gauls, are constantly attempting and effecting this impurity, is so generally affirmed that it were impudent to deny it. 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 into judgment. I think he rather speaks of those who first apostatized from God, [00:49:00] 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. And the prophet Malachi, by a peculiar grace specially communicated to him, was called an angel. 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 they were not born, even in our own time, as I've 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 [00:50:00] size overtopped 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 were 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.
So, spiritual reality isn't denied, nor are giants in the form of larger than normal humans. There is a focus on the two groups of people who are living according to different morals. Those in the city of God were enticed by the lower good of physical beauty and desire and lust, so the city of man, or those with abased morals, can cause the occupants of the city of God to fall and abase themselves. [00:51:00] Prior to their fall into lust, they were having children to propagate themselves and to produce a city, but not in order to glorify themselves.
He makes a further point about the verse that says that God's Spirit will not abide with men. And Augustine takes that to mean that the angels or sons of God are men. The argument is, by God's Spirit, these men are made into angels and sons of God. So, when God removes his Spirit, they are now just ordinary men, and not sons of God, of the city of God.
Augustine mentions an interpretation by Aquilla, who says the translation should be sons of the gods, which, for those who are aware of the Hebrew terms, technically that's a translation you could make, because of the word Elohim.
Augustine then uses Jesus words in John 10, about Psalm 82, to [00:52:00] say, hey, look, yep, men can be called gods, so of course they can be called the sons of the gods.
So really note that he's using all of this stuff as proof texts, meaning he's stripping them of the meaning inside their own passages in order to use them for his own purposes. That's what he's doing. Augustine discounts apocryphal fables, of which he clearly means 1st Enoch. He admits it contains some truth, but it's mostly made up. It's partly true because Jude references it, and that's interesting because up above we read how he's denying the angelic spiritual view of Peter, right? In other words, he's denying that Peter is using 1st Enoch or referencing it.
It's always Jude who's mentioned in these early quotes, and it's not Peter, probably because Jude's reference is more of a quotation and so you can't deny [00:53:00] the source, whereas Peter's is an allusion, so it's harder to see or you can do like Augustine did and pretend it refers to something else.
All right, I want to read one more long quote from the City of God. Augustine says 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 the 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 into the daughters of men. Therefore, there were giants both before, in those days, and also after that. And the words, They bear children to them, show plainly enough, that before the [00:54:00] 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 just 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 the 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 being men, as some suppose, Scripture itself decides, which unambiguously declares that they were men. For when it had been first stated that the angels of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took [00:55:00] 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 Aquilla, whom the Jews prefer to the other interpreters, 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 [00:56:00] 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 you are children of the Most High. 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 [00:57:00] 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. 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 [00:58:00] 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 of 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 [00:59:00] of much moment to the wise men, whose blessedness lies in spiritual and immortal blessings, in far better and more enduring gifts, in the good things that are peculiar property of the good, and are not shared by good and bad alike. It is this which another prophet confirms when he says, There were 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. End quote.
Okay, there at the end he was quoting Baruch 3 26 through 28. Augustine's theology was deeply intertwined with the social, political realities of the fall of Rome, as well as his previous experiences with a sect that was not [01:00:00] Christian, but only Christian adjacent.
And so all of that led him to develop these ideas and philosophical concepts where he wanted to address human suffering and divine providence and the role of the church in providing hope amidst all of that chaos. So this was polemic, pastoral, apologetic, philosophical, allegorical, and again, it's just not literal, grammatical, historical in that way.
Although he did use literal interpretations, and he used grammatical and historical arguments. This interpretation dismantles the grammar and the historical interpretations. And so if you want to go with a literal, grammatical, historical interpretive method, Augustine's not the way to go here. As we talked about last time, allegorical methods of interpretation can be insightful, and I think there's a sense in which we can take the implications he's [01:01:00] making in a good way. We just don't need to do it in a propositional way that removes the literal, historical, grammatical meaning of the text.
Besides, the story of the spiritual sons of God contains the idea that this did lead to corruption of humanity and led them away from God. And so we can use his allegory of the two cities to acknowledge that there's something that passes away, there's something that's enduring, and our hope is in the thing that endures.
What we shouldn't do is try to take an allegorical interpretation and then turn that around to make that the literal interpretation, right? Okay, here's the process. We have something literal, even if that something is described metaphorically or figuratively, like the creation account, right? There was a literal creation by God himself. Then we have allegory or [01:02:00] metaphor or figurative description, which is, again, what we have in, say, the creation account. That is described in figurative terms, because the metaphorical concepts help us to see the meaning and the reality behind the literal event.
Okay, so then we acknowledge that the metaphorical description is describing a literal reality. But we should not go on to confuse the literal and metaphorical and say the metaphorical is now the literal. I mean, that would be like saying. Yeah, there's a literal creation account, and it was described in terms of cosmic temple, so that now that we understand that as the purpose and intent by God in creation, and then we turn around and say that creation is God's temple, and that's the only way we can see it or understand it, and that God didn't actually create a world or a universe, but he created this big [01:03:00] building. But it's so big, we can't see it very well because it's cosmic.
And, uh, maybe Washington, D. C. is the holy of holies or something. Yeah, no, no, no, no. I, I mean, I like to joke that where I live in the American Intermountain West, It's like the promised land here. We live in mountains, we live in the west and not the east, but come on. It's really just happenstance. Although it does amuse me. Mountain time is God's time because God lives on the holy mountain, right? You see, that's the thing. You can't really push metaphor to be literal. It describes the literal, but it is not THE literal. If it was, then it would no longer be a metaphor.
Okay, so let's go ahead and wrap all of this up and see where we are at. The reason that Augustine in particular has been so influential in this is not that he was the first [01:04:00] or the earliest or even most prominent person who took a human view of Genesis 6. He didn't make it up, but rather his writing has had such an enormous and broad impact, especially on ecclesiology and philosophy and development of doctrine and all of these things that are really core to the institutional church. And it wasn't just about dry doctrine and historical fact either, but he emphasized a theology of relationship, which tapped into the psychology of desire and what that means.
And so, even if we disagree on his propositional facts, what he says can still be important and impactful. While those of us who espouse the Divine Council worldview tend to give an emphasis on things like idolatry in a technical sense, and the worship of corrupt deities who are judged by Christ, it's still the case that we have to look squarely at our own [01:05:00] desire, and ask ourselves, where do we place it? Where does our desire lie, and where does it lead us? Is it in ourselves, or is it directed to God? Are we building lives that are centered on things that pass away, or are we building lives that are centered on that which endures? Are we moved by fear and lust and the need to control, or are we moved by love, justice, and seeking to restore virtue? All of that stuff is good, and that comes directly from Augustine's work.
He totally took things the wrong direction historically, but that doesn't mean his work is worthless. And again, taking the metaphorical doesn't mean we have to discount the literal. The best allegory is going to be based on a literal history that is actually not the same as the allegory. If it was the same, then what would be the point? Allegory helps us probe [01:06:00] at the meaning of a literal event. It helps us understand the meaning and purpose, and it's the meaning and purpose that actually matter more than the dry historical events. And that's why allegorical interpretation doesn't have to be this terrible thing.
But we have to be careful not to discount that literal historical past, because that past is how God has interacted with the world. Now all of that is not to say that it hasn't likewise done damage to a better understanding of the text and what's going on in our world in the past and today. By discounting the reality of the gods, we risk not seeing what's right in front of our faces and also practical steps we might be able to take in our particular circumstances. And, so, as in many things, it's not an either or, it's a both and.
Alright, so I would like to get into later [01:07:00] theology and the impact of Augustine and some quotes there, but that will have to be for another time. Maybe. I mean, technically I've achieved my goal of showing how the primary view of Genesis 6 changed from angelic to human and why that's so influential, but you guys have been awesome and I know a lot of you have really enjoyed the historical breakdown. So, I might do at least one more episode with historical quotes, because they're fun and they do take some digging into research and some work there, but I'm not going to complain about that.
And by the way, if you're interested in my doing this with another passage, please feel free to shoot me some suggestions. Genesis 1 is probably a given, but we could do more passages about the flood. The Tower of Babel, Deuteronomy 32, and Psalm 82 are probably really big contenders for this. So if you guys have anything else, I would love to hear that. But for now, we're going to [01:08:00] wrap up today's episode and I appreciate you guys for listening.
Thank you guys for interacting with me online. Please come join me on Facebook and follow my page and like everything and intentionally do that because Facebook is really dumb. But I'm also on X. I'm on Instagram. I have my newsletter. You can contact me through Facebook Messenger. You can contact me through my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com. All of those things. And a really big shout out to all of you who financially support me, because that's a really needed thing for me, and I deeply, deeply appreciate it.
Okay, so next week I'm not gonna be having anything on this series. It will be a different topic but it will probably be of great interest to many who are interested in the Divine Council worldview. So you can look forward to that. And with that, I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.
