What did the early Christians say?

The second century writers and theologians, Tatian[1], Clement of Alexandria[2] and Tertullian, the second century Christian scholar who introduced the term “trinity” [3] all agree with Irenaeus[4] who interpreted the “sons of God” to be angels and wrote:

“…unlawful unions came about on earth, as angels linked themselves with offspring of the daughters of men, who bore to them sons, who on account of their exceeding great were called Giants. The angel…taught them…every sorcery and idolatry, hateful to God; and when this was come into the world, the affairs of wickedness were propagated to overflowing, and those of justice dwindled to very little.”[5]

The “Septuagint,” meaning “seventy,” which refers to the approximate number of men that were involved in its creation, is the Koine Greek version of the Old Testament. It was translated in stages between the 3rd and 1st centuries before Christ. The Jewish translators translated “sons of God” with the Greek word angelos meaning “angels.” This version of the Old Testament played an important role in the early Christian’s understanding of Genesis 6. According to historian and researcher, Robert I. Bradshaw, so widely held was the view that “sons of God” referred to angels that no Christian writer challenged this interpretation until the third century AD.

In the middle of the second century a Christian writer by the name of Julius Africanus suggested that the “sons of God” were Sethites. That is, the sons of Seth (see Gen 4:26). According to Bradshaw, “From that point on the view that the Sons of God were purely human - the descendants of Seth - began to dominate.”[6] It was held that the daughters of men were the daughters of the ungodly line of Cain. In this view, God punishes the Earth because of the intermarriage of the so called godly line of Seth and the ungodly line of Cain.

Then in the fifth century, a very influential, theologian known as Augustine of Hippo,[7] wrote in his book The City of God that he agreed that the “sons of God” were the genealogical line of Seth. He interpreted Genesis 6 to mean that the male offspring of Adam through Seth were "the sons of God," and the female offspring of Adam through Cain were "the daughters of men." He believed that the “intermingling of the bloodlines” had corrupted the pure religion of what he called “the godly Sethites.” Through the Reformers of the 1500’s this view prevailed.

Without a doubt, John Calvin was the most influential of the Reformers. Calvin, who relied heavily on Augustine’s writings when developing his own theological framework, wrote:

“…the world was then as if divided into two parts; because the family of Seth cherished the pure and lawful worship of Good, from which the rest had fallen…since the greater part [of mankind] had prostituted itself, either to an entire contempt of God, or to depraved superstitions; it was fitting that the small portion which God had adopted, by special privilege, to himself, should remain separate from others. It was, therefore, base ingratitude in the posterity of Seth, to mingle themselves with the children of Cain…Moses points it out as the most extreme disorder; when the sons of the pious, whom God had separated to himself from others, as a peculiar and hidden treasure, became degenerate.”[8]

This view is still held by many in the Reform tradition,[9] most of whom are close adherents to Calvinism. This quote found in the Commentary on the Old and New Testaments by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown is typical of many theologians to this day:

“By the former is meant the family of Seth, who were professedly religious; by the latter, the descendants of apostate Cain. Mixed marriages between parties of opposite principles and practice were necessarily sources of extensive corruption. The women, religious themselves, would as wives and mothers exert an influence fatal to the existence of religion in their household, and consequently the people of that later age sank to the lowest depravity.”[10]

Calvin wrote, “That ancient figment, concerning the intercourse of angels with women, is abundantly refuted by its own absurdity; and it is surprising that learned men should formerly have been fascinated by ravings so gross and prodigious.”

Or perhaps it is because they were in fact, “learned men” who could not ignore the abundance of evidence supporting the fact that the “son’s of God” who “saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and...took them wives of all which they chose” were the fallen angels as reported by Peter[11] and Jude[12]. Perhaps these “learned men” considered the inspired writings of these two to have been “gross and prodigious” ravings.

J. Timothy Unruh writes in his article THE DAYS OF NOAH and the “Sons of God:” “Thus, all reasonable doubt insofar as the context, language, and plain exegesis of Genesis 6:1-4 is concerned, is removed regarding the intent of the writer to convey the concept of angels, fallen angels no doubt, acting in opposition to God's will. This also was the meaning placed on the passage by the Greek translators of the Septuagint, by Josephus, by the writer of the ancient apocryphal book of Enoch, and by all the other ancient Jewish interpreters and the earliest Christian writers.”