Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil (7 page)

That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house.

But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet. (Isa. 14:16–19)

Isaiah called Lucifer a
man
—giving strong indication that he believed that the “cast down one” had walked the earth in the flesh, had moved among mortals as one of them.
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Cyprian (200–258), a pupil of Tertullian, noted the specific use of the word
man
and used it as proof that the Antichrist—Lucifer—would someday come as a man. Aphrahat, a fourth-century Christian theologian from Persia, believed that Lucifer had already incarnated—as Nebuchadnezzar, king of ancient Babylon.
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But this phenomenal piece of evidence for the incarnation of fallen angels was brushed aside by the other Church Fathers—if they ever recognized it for what it was—who instead used the Isaiah passage to launch another debate: the pride-versus-lust controversy.

Christian writer Julius Africanus (200–245) first opposed the traditional story of the fall of the angels through lust. He even tackled Genesis 6, verses 1–4, about the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men”—a parallel to the Book of Enoch in approved Scripture. The pivotal verses read:

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

Julius Africanus preferred to believe that the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2 who “saw the daughters of men” and “took them wives” didn’t refer at all to angels, despite the fact that certain translations of the Bible in his day explicitly read “angels of God” rather than “sons of God.”
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Julius Africanus thought that the verse referred instead to the righteous sons of Seth who “fell” (in the moral sense) by taking wives of the inferior daughters of Cain.
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He formed his opinion in spite of the fact that both the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jude refer to angels who left their first (heavenly) estate (Jude 6),which Julius should have known, and also in spite of the fact that the term “sons of God” is elsewhere used in the Old Testament to indicate angels,
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which Julius also should have known.

The opinions of the Church Fathers soon flocked to this interpretation. In the early fourth century, the Syrian authority Ephraem also declared that Genesis 6 referred to the Sethites and Cainites—and therefore not to the fall of angels through lust.
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Hilary of Tours casually mentions the tale of the lustful fall of angels as if it were folly—“about which,” he says, “some book or other exists,” but notes, “We need not know those things which are not contained in the book of the Law.”
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Syrian theologian Theodoret simply called believers of the story in Enoch “stupid and very silly.”
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Then Jerome (348–420), Doctor of the Church and scholarly Hebraist, got into the argument. Jerome branded Enoch as apocryphal and declared its teaching similar to the Manichaean teachings—which Jerome emphatically denounced as heretical. These are Jerome’s words:

We have read in a certain apocryphal book [the Book of Enoch
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] that when the sons of God were coming down to the daughters of men, they descended upon Mount Hermon and there entered into an agreement to come to the daughters of men and make them their wives. This book is quite explicit and is classified as apocryphal. The ancient exegetes have at various times referred to it, but we are citing it, not as authoritative, but merely to bring it to your attention.... I have read about this apocryphal book in the work of a particular author who used it to confirm his own heresy. What does he say? He says: The sons of God who came down from heaven upon Mount Hermon and coveted the daughters of men are angels descending from the heavens and souls that desired bodies since bodies are the daughters of men. Do you detect the source of the teachings of Manichaeus, the ignorant? Just as the Manichaeans say that souls desired human bodies to be united in pleasure, do not they who say that angels desired bodies—or the daughters of men—seem to you to be saying the same thing as the Manichaeans? It would take too long to refute them now, but I merely wanted to indicate the coincidence, as it were, of the book that opportunely confirmed their dogma.
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Note the sarcasm of Jerome in his statement that the Book of Enoch “opportunely” confirmed the dogma of “Manichaeus, the ignorant”—as if to say that the author of Enoch was responsible for the supposed heresies of the Manichaeans. By implying that the teachings of the Book of Enoch were in cahoots with Manichaean doctrines, Jerome castigated the book severely.

Manichaeanism, a powerful competitor of the Church, was founded in about 240
A.D.
by a Persian visionary named Mani who claimed apostleship under Jesus Christ. Mani believed himself an embodiment of the promised Paraclete and preached a synthesis of several major religions including Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity. He also taught reincarnation and wrote a book (now destroyed) about the wicked giants.
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Needless to say, Mani was blacklisted by the Church—and he was martyred in southwest Persia by fanatical Zoroastrians.

Jerome’s statement that the Book of Enoch’s doctrines supported Manichaeanism certainly would have cast aspersions upon the book’s spiritual integrity. And not surprisingly, the core of Jerome’s argument is against the Manichaean doctrine that “souls desired human bodies to be united in pleasure”—which Jerome compares to the Enochian fall of the angels through lust, a teaching he rejected.

Church Father Chrysostom (346–407) took the case against Enoch one step further. Who were those “sons of God” in Genesis 6? Certainly not angels, says Chrysostom. He thought that opinion was totally absurd and refuted it with vigor. To quote him in his own outraged words:

Here is, first, the most audacious idea, of which we are going to show you the absurdity, by presenting to your meditation the true meaning of the Scripture, so that you do not listen to those who utter such blasphemy.... They say that it is not men that are referred to here, but angels, and that it is the angels that are called “sons of God.”... It would be folly to accept such insane blasphemy, saying that an incorporeal and spiritual nature could have united itself to human bodies!
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With Chrysostom, the problem presented by the Book of Enoch finally gets fully defined. It was not
really
just a question of whether angels fell through pride or through lust—it was the bigger question of whether angels ever took on human bodies at all in their fall.

This very issue—the descent of the angels into the physical world through lust—infuriated Chrysostom and caused him to issue his judgment of the “insane blasphemy” of the account in the Book of Enoch. Chrysostom’s edict that angels were spiritual and men were physical (and never the twain should meet) was ratified by Caesarius of Arles, who also insisted that angels were incorporeal and therefore could not have mated with women.
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But the final axe was yet to fall upon the Book of Enoch. Filastrius, in the late fourth century, condemned the teaching in Enoch as actual heresy. In his long list of heresies, of which Enoch’s account of the Watchers is heresy number 108, Filastrius declared:

There is no doubt that the angels, who were cast down from heaven, are not similar to human nature, if only because to suggest such a thing would be blasphemy and contrary to the law.... Moreover, if he who thought it to be correct that the angels, having been transformed into the flesh, sinned in such a way that they remained in this very flesh or thus did such carnal deeds—this one discerns history with a convoluted logic.
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Doubtless the threat of having one’s logic “convoluted” by such a “blasphemy” turned many away from the Book of Enoch.

The issue was settled once and for all with the logical and technical arguments of Augustine (354–430), who rejected the tale of the fall of angels through a physical lust and mating with women as implying an impossibility for angelic natures. In his
City of God,
Augustine declared:

We made a passing reference to this question, but did not decide whether angels, inasmuch as they are spirits, could 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.... However, the same trustworthy Scripture testifies that angels have appeared to men in such bodies as could not only be seen, but also touched. There is, too, a very general rumour, which many have verified by their own experience, or which trustworthy persons who have heard the experience of others corroborate, that sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called “incubi,” had often made wicked assaults upon women, and satisfied their lust upon them; and that certain devils ... 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 ... 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.
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Augustine continues with a long proof that the phrase “sons of God” in Genesis 6 refers to the righteous sons of Seth who married the daughters of Cain, reaching the same conclusion as Julius Africanus—an escape route used by most Fathers to avoid the admission of the incarnation of angels. He concludes:

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-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, and 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 [but angels], are properly judged by prudent 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.
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Augustine had decided the issue. After his time, the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 are no longer angels but simply the sons of Seth, the “daughters of men” being Cainites. This has since become the standard interpretation of Catholic and Protestant exegetes down to the present day.
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And the controversy over the likelihood of fallen angels incarnating as men was laid to rest for centuries.

What do Church theologians think of Enoch’s tale today?
A Catholic Dictionary of Theology
calls the story in Enoch that angels could assume bodies a “wild improbability.”
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The
New Catholic Encyclopedia
points out several times that the Book of Enoch is based on a “misinterpretation of Genesis 6:1–4.”
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The nature of angels, it declares, is completely spiritual.

The logical conclusion of this premise of the incorporeality of angels was also noted by Thomas Aquinas, who with Augustine would not allow that angels could have any other sin than pride or envy—sins not dependent upon body or sense.
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In this view, therefore, angels simply cannot commit gross sins through bodily passion because their nature is not “bodily.”

The question that the Church could never answer was, How on earth could incorporeal angels mate with corporeal daughters of men? Rather than admit that the angels must have incarnated in flesh bodies to perform the task, the Church Fathers, as we have seen, preferred to say that the angels weren’t angels at all, but the descendants of Seth, thereby ousting Enoch’s story in its entirety. Besides, the fall of the angels could be completely (and easily) explained by the rebellion of a proud archangel.

The Church’s fourth-century Synod of Laodicea struck another sharp blow against the Book of Enoch’s angelology—this time, against the
good
angels in the book. This council, two centuries earlier than the one which banned Origen’s views on angels becoming men, decreed that the only angels which could be named were Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, who are the only angels mentioned in the Church’s Scriptures.
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The council also “prohibited by a canon that prayer should be offered to angels” on the grounds that “it was a species of idolatry and detracted from the worship due to Christ.” A commentary notes that the synod held its meeting at Laodicea in Phrygia because the people there believed angels to be defenders of the Law and were therefore supposedly “worshiping” them.
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