Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 50/87

Now the flood could have occurred while Lamech was still living and reigning, so that it found him too, together with all other men—except those who were in the ark—as one to destroy. For it is not to be wondered at if, with the varying quantity in the number of years interposed, over so long an age from Adam to the flood, each of the two lines did not have generations of equal number, but seven through Cain and ten through Seth; for the seventh from Adam, as I have already said, is Lamech, the tenth Noah; and therefore not one son of Lamech, as with the others above, but several were recorded, because it was uncertain who would succeed him when he died, if the time for reigning had remained between him and the flood.

But in whatever way the order of generations from Cain runs down—whether through firstborn sons or through kings—this seems to me in no way to be passed over in silence: that, when Lamech was found to be the seventh from Adam, so many of his sons were counted up until the number eleven was filled, by which sin is signified. For three sons and one daughter are added. The wives, however, can signify something else, not what now seems to need commending. For we are now speaking of generations; but from whom these wives were born is left unsaid. Since, then, the Law is proclaimed by the number ten, whence comes that memorable Decalogue, the number eleven, since it goes beyond ten, certainly signifies the transgression of the Law and thereby sin.

Hence it is that in the tabernacle of testimony, which was on the journey of the people of God as it were a walking temple, eleven curtains of goats' hair were commanded to be made. For in goats' hair there is a remembrance of sins, on account of the goats that are to be at the left hand; and so, confessing, we prostrate ourselves in goats' hair, as if saying what is written in the psalm: 'And my sin is ever before me.' Therefore the offspring from Adam through the wicked Cain is closed by the number eleven, by which sin is signified; and that number itself ends with a female, from which sex the beginning of sin was made, through which we all die. And it was brought about that the pleasure of the flesh, which resists the spirit, should follow. For even Lamech's daughter herself, Naamah, is interpreted 'pleasure.'

But through Seth, from Adam to Noah, the lawful number ten is intimated. To this Noah three sons are added, of whom, when one had fallen, two are blessed by their father, so that—the reprobate being removed and the approved sons added to the number—even the number twelve might be intimated, which is notable both in the number of the patriarchs and in that of the apostles, on account of the parts of seven multiplied one by the other. For three times four, or four times three, makes that very number.

These things being so, I see that it must be considered and recorded how these two lines, which by their distinct generations intimate two cities—one of the earthborn, the other of the regenerated—afterward became so commingled and confounded that the whole human race, except eight persons, deserved to perish in the flood. CHAPTER XXI. For what reason, when Enoch, who was the son of Cain, had been mentioned, the narrative of his whole line was continued up to the flood; but when Enos, who was the son of Seth, had been mentioned, a return is made to the beginning of the human condition.

But first it must be observed how, when the generations from Cain were being enumerated, after mentioning before his other descendants that one in whose name the city was founded—that is, Enoch—the rest were woven on up to that end of which I have spoken, until that race and the whole stock should be destroyed by the flood; but when one son of Seth had been mentioned, Enos, before the others up to the flood had been added, a certain clause is interposed, and it is said: 'This is the book of the birth of men, in the day when God made Adam; in the image of God he made him. Male and female he made them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when he made them.'

This seems to me to have been interposed for the purpose that here again the reckoning of times might begin from Adam himself—a reckoning which he who wrote these things did not wish to make in the earthly city—as though God were thus admonishing him not to make the count. But why is there a return here to this recapitulation, after the son of Seth has been mentioned, the man who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God, except because the two cities were thus fittingly to be set forth—one through the murderer down to a murderer (for Lamech too confesses to his two wives that he had committed homicide), the other through him who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God?

For this is the whole and supreme concern, in this mortality, of the City of God sojourning in this world—the concern which had to be commended through one man, whom indeed the resurrection of the slain begot. For that one man is the unity of the whole supernal city—a unity not yet completed, but to be completed by this prophetic prefiguring sent ahead. Let the son of Cain, then—that is, the son of possession (and of what but earthly possession?)—have his name in the earthly city, because in his name it was founded. For he is of those of whom it is sung in the psalm: 'They shall call upon their names in their own lands'; and on account of this there follows what is written in another psalm: 'O Lord, in thy city thou shalt bring their image to nothing.'

But let the son of Seth—that is, the son of resurrection—hope to call upon the name of the Lord God; for he prefigures that society of men which says: 'But I, like a fruitful olive in the house of God, have hoped in the mercy of God'; and let him not seek the empty glories of a name famous on earth; for blessed is the man whose hope is the name of the Lord, and who has not regarded vanities and lying follies. The two cities, then, being set forth—one in the reality of this age, the other in the hope of God—as though they had gone forth from the common gate of mortality, which was opened in Adam, that they may run on and run out to their distinct, proper, and appointed ends, the reckoning of times begins;

in which other generations too are added, a recapitulation having been made from Adam, from whose condemned origin—as it were one lump handed over to deserved damnation—God makes some vessels of wrath unto dishonor, others vessels of mercy unto honor; rendering to the former what is due in punishment, granting to the latter what is not due in grace; so that even from this very comparison of the vessels of wrath the supernal city, which sojourns on earth, may learn not to trust in the liberty of its own will, but to hope to call upon the name of the Lord God.

Since the will in a nature which was made good by the good God—but mutable, since made by the immutable, because made from nothing—can both turn away from good, so as to do evil (which is done by free will), and turn away from evil, so as to do good (which is not done without divine help). CHAPTER XXII. On the fall of the sons of God, captivated by love of the women of an alien race, whence all but eight persons deserved to perish in the flood. With the human race, then, advancing and increasing by this free choice of the will, there came about a commingling, and, with iniquity shared, a certain confusion of both cities. Which evil again found its occasion from the female sex;

not, indeed, in that manner as at the beginning (for it was not by any deceit that those women persuaded the men to sin even then); but, from the beginning, those women who had been of depraved morals in the earthly city—that is, in the society of the earthborn—were loved on account of the beauty of their bodies by the sons of God, that is, by the citizens of that other city sojourning in this world. Which beauty is indeed a gift of God; but for that very reason he bestows it also on the wicked, lest it should seem a great good to the good. And so, the great good and the proper good of the good being forsaken, a fall was made to a very small good—not proper to the good, but common to good and bad;

and thus the sons of God were captivated by love of the daughters of men, and, in order to enjoy them as wives, sank down into the morals of the earthborn society, forsaking the piety which they had kept in the holy society. For thus the beauty of the body—a thing indeed made by God, but a temporal, carnal, lowest good—is wrongly loved when God is set after it, God the eternal, inward, everlasting good; just as gold is loved by the avaricious when justice is forsaken, with no sin in the gold, but in the man. So it is with every creature. For since it is good, it can be loved both well and ill: well, namely, when order is kept; ill, when order is disturbed. This I briefly said in some verses in praise of the Paschal Candle: 'These are thine, they are good, because thou, being good, didst create them.'

'Nothing of ours is in them, save that we sin in loving them, the order being neglected, for thy sake who art the creator.' But if the Creator is truly loved—that is, if he himself, and not something else in his stead which is not himself, is loved—he cannot be loved ill. For love itself is to be loved in an orderly way, by which that which ought to be loved is loved well, so that there may be in us that virtue by which one lives well. Whence it seems to me that the brief and true definition of virtue is 'the order of love'; on account of which, in the holy Song of Songs, the bride of Christ, the City of God, sings: 'Set love in order within me.' The order of this love, then—that is, of charity and affection—being disturbed, the sons of God neglected God and loved the daughters of men. By which two names each city is sufficiently distinguished.

For neither were those others not sons of men by nature; but they had begun to have another name through grace. For in the same Scripture, where the sons of God are said to have loved the daughters of men, the same are also called angels of God. Whence many think them to have been not men, but angels. CHAPTER XXIII. Whether it is to be believed that angels of spiritual substance, captivated by love of beautiful women, entered into marriages with them, from whom giants were created. This question, mentioned in passing in the third book of this work, we left unresolved: whether angels, since they are spirits, can have bodily intercourse with women. For it is written:

'Who makes his angels spirits'—that is, those who are by nature spirits, he makes to be his angels, by enjoining upon them the office of announcing. For he who in Greek is called angelos, which name in its Latin declension is rendered angelus, in the Latin tongue is interpreted 'messenger.' But whether by saying 'And his ministers a burning fire' he consequently added their bodies, or whether it means that his ministers ought to burn with charity as with a spiritual fire, is ambiguous. Yet that angels have appeared to men in such bodies that they could not only be seen but even touched, the same most truthful Scripture testifies.

And since there is a very widespread report, and many affirm that they have experienced it, or have heard of it from those who had experienced it and of whose trustworthiness there could be no doubt, that Silvani and Pans, whom people commonly call incubi, have often shown themselves wanton to women and have sought and accomplished intercourse with them; and that certain demons, whom the Gauls call Dusii, persistently both attempt and effect this uncleanness—as so many and such persons assert that it would seem impudent to deny it—I do not dare to determine anything from this: whether some spirits, embodied in the airy element (for this element, even when stirred by a fan, is felt by the bodily sense through touch), can also undergo this lust, so that in whatever way they can, they mingle with women who feel it.

Yet I would never believe that the holy angels of God could in any way have so fallen at that time; nor that the apostle Peter spoke of these when he said: 'For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but, thrusting them into the prisons of the gloom of hell, delivered them up to be reserved for punishment in the judgment'; but rather of those who, first apostatizing from God, fell with the devil their prince, who first cast down the first man through envy by serpentine fraud. But that men too were called angels of God, the same holy Scripture is a most abundant witness. For of John also it is written: 'Behold, I send my angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way'; and the prophet Malachi, by a certain proper—that is, properly imparted to him—grace, was called an angel.

But this troubles some, that from those who are called angels of God, and from the women whom they loved, we read that there were born not men of our kind, as it were, but giants. As though, forsooth, bodies of men far exceeding our measure—which I have also mentioned above—were not born even in our times. Was there not, a few years ago, when the destruction of the city of Rome that was wrought by the Goths was drawing near, at Rome a woman, with her father and her mother, who by a body in some sort gigantic far surpassed all others? To see her a marvelous concourse came from every quarter. And this was an object of the greatest wonder, that both her parents were not even so tall as men we have been accustomed to see who are the tallest.

Giants, therefore, could be born even before the sons of God, who were also called angels of God, mingled with the daughters of men—that is, of those living according to man—namely the sons of Seth with the daughters of Cain. For the canonical Scripture also speaks thus, in which book we read these things, whose words are these: 'And it came to pass, after that men began to be many upon the earth, and daughters were born unto them; but the angels of God, seeing the daughters of men that they were good, took to themselves wives of all whom they chose. And the Lord God said: My spirit shall not remain in these men forever, because they are flesh. But their days shall be a hundred and twenty years.'

'Now there were giants upon the earth in those days, and after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they begot to themselves; those were the giants, men named from of old.' These words of the divine book sufficiently indicate that already in those days there were giants upon the earth, when the sons of God took as wives the daughters of men, while they loved them as good, that is, as beautiful. For it is the custom of this Scripture to call those who are comely in body 'good' also. But after this took place, giants were also born. For thus it says: 'Now there were giants upon the earth in those days, and after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men.' Therefore both before, in those days, and after that. But as for what it says: 'And

they begot to themselves,' it sufficiently shows that before, ere the sons of God thus fell, they begot to God, not to themselves—that is, not with the lust of coition dominating, but with the office of propagation serving; not a household for their own pride, but citizens for the City of God; to whom, as angels of God, they might announce that they should set their hope in God, like to him who was born of Seth, the son of resurrection, and hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God; in which hope they might be, together with their posterity, coheirs of eternal goods and brothers, under God the Father, of his sons. But that those were not so angels of God that they were not men, as some think, but were beyond doubt men, the Scripture itself declares without any ambiguity.

For when it had been stated beforehand that 'the angels of God, seeing the daughters of men that they were good, took to themselves wives of all whom they chose,' it was at once added: 'And the Lord God said: My spirit shall not remain in these men forever, because they are flesh.' For by the Spirit of God they had been made angels of God and sons of God, but, declining to lower things, they are called men by the name of nature, not of grace; they are also called flesh, as deserters of the spirit and, by deserting, deserted. And the Septuagint translators indeed called these both angels of God and sons of God; which indeed not all the codices have, for some have nothing but 'sons of God.'

But Aquila, whom the Jews prefer as a translator above the rest, rendered them neither 'angels of God' nor 'sons of God,' but 'sons of gods.' Both, however, are true. For they were both sons of God, under whom as Father they were also brothers of their own fathers; and sons of gods, since they were begotten of gods, with whom they themselves too were gods, according to that saying of the psalm: 'I have said: Ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.' For with good reason the Septuagint translators are believed to have received the prophetic spirit, so that, if they changed anything by its authority and said otherwise than what they were translating, neither would there be doubt that this too was divinely said. Although in the Hebrew this is reported to be ambiguous, so that it could be interpreted both 'sons of God' and 'sons of gods.'

Let us therefore pass over the fables of those scriptures which are called apocryphal, for the reason that their hidden origin was not clear to the fathers, from whom the authority of the truthful Scriptures came down to us by a most certain and well-known succession. For in these apocryphal writings, even though some truth is found, yet on account of much that is false there is no canonical authority. That Enoch, the seventh from Adam, wrote some things divinely we cannot deny, since the apostle Jude says this in a canonical epistle.

But not without reason are they not in that canon of the Scriptures which was kept in the temple of the Hebrew people by the diligence of the succeeding priests, except that on account of their antiquity they were judged of suspect trustworthiness, nor could it be discovered whether these were the things which he had written, since they were not produced by such persons as would be found to have rightly preserved them through a series of succession. Hence those things which are produced under his name and contain those fables about the giants—that they did not have men as fathers—are rightly judged by the prudent not to be believed to be his;

just as many things are produced by heretics under the names of other prophets, and more recent things under the names of the apostles, all of which, under the name of apocrypha, have by diligent examination been removed from canonical authority. Therefore, according to the canonical Scriptures, Hebrew as well as Christian, there is no doubt that there were many giants before the flood, and that these were citizens of the earthborn society of men; but that the sons of God, who according to the flesh were propagated from Seth, declined into this society, justice being forsaken. Nor is it to be wondered at that even from them giants could be born. For not all were giants, but rather there were certainly many at that time, more than in the other ages after the flood.

These it pleased the Creator to create for this reason: that even from this it might be shown that not only the beauties, but also the magnitudes and strengths of bodies, are not to be greatly esteemed by the wise man, who is made blessed by spiritual and immortal goods, far better and more enduring and proper to the good—not goods common to the good and the bad. Commending which matter, another prophet says: 'There were those famous giants, who from the beginning were of great stature, skilled in war. These the Lord did not choose, nor did he give them the way of knowledge; but they perished because they had no wisdom, they perished through their thoughtlessness.' CHAPTER XXIV. How it is to be understood, that the Lord said concerning those who were to be destroyed in the flood:

'Their days shall be a hundred and twenty years.' But what God said—'Their days shall be a hundred and twenty years'—is not to be taken as though it were foretold that after this men would not exceed a hundred and twenty years in living, since we find that even after the flood some exceeded five hundred; but it is to be understood that God said this when Noah was near the end of his five hundredth year—that is, was passing the four hundred and eightieth year of his life, which Scripture in its custom calls five hundred, generally signifying by the name of the whole the greatest part; for in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the flood took place. And thus the hundred and twenty years were foretold as the future life of the men who were to perish, after which had passed they would be destroyed by the flood.

And it is not without reason believed that the flood was thus brought about, since there were no longer found on earth those who were not worthy to undergo such a death as was wrought in vengeance upon the impious—not that such a kind of death does anything to the good who are at some time to die, which could harm them after death; yet none of those whom holy Scripture records as propagated from the seed of Seth died in the flood. Now the cause of the flood is divinely narrated thus: 'The Lord God seeing,' it says, 'that the wickednesses of men were multiplied upon the earth, and that everyone diligently thinks in his heart upon evil things all the days, then God thought, because he had made man upon the earth, and reconsidered, and God said:'

'I will blot out man, whom I have made, from the face of the earth, from man even to the cattle, and from the creeping things even to the birds of heaven; for I am angry that I have made them.' CHAPTER XXV. On the anger of God, which no inflammation disturbs from its unchangeable tranquillity. The anger of God is not a perturbation of His mind, but a judgment by which punishment is laid upon sin. His thought, moreover, and reconsidering of things to be changed is an immutable reason. For God does not, like a man, repent of any deed of His, whose decision concerning absolutely all things is as fixed as His foreknowledge is certain.

But if Scripture did not use such words, it would not in some manner more familiarly insinuate itself into every kind of men, for whom it wishes to provide—so as both to terrify the proud and to rouse the negligent, to exercise those who seek and to nourish those who understand; which it would not do unless it first inclined itself and in some way descended to those who lie low. As for the fact that it announces the destruction of all earthly and flying creatures, it is declaring the magnitude of the coming disaster; it is not threatening ruin upon living things devoid of reason as though they too had sinned. CHAPTER XXVI. That the ark, which Noah was commanded to make, in all respects signifies Christ and the Church.

Now indeed the fact that God commanded Noah—a righteous man, and, as the truthful Scripture says of him, perfect in his generation (not, to be sure, as the citizens of the city of God are to be made perfect in that immortality wherein they shall be made equal to the angels of God, but as men can be perfect in this pilgrimage)—that he should make an ark in which he might be delivered from the devastation of the flood together with his own, that is, his wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law, and with the animals which entered the ark to him by God's command: this is without doubt a figure of the city of God on pilgrimage in this world, that is, of the Church, which is made safe through the wood on which hung the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

For the very measurements of its length, height, and breadth signify the human body, in the truth of which He was foretold as about to come to men, and did come. For the length of the human body, from the crown to the soles, is six times as great as the breadth, which is from one side to the other, and ten times as great as the height, the measure of which height is in the side, from the back to the belly: as if you should measure a man lying down, supine or prone, he is six times as long from head to feet as he is broad from right to left or from left to right, and ten times as long as he is high from the ground. Whence the ark was made three hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth, and thirty in height.

And the fact that it received a door in its side is assuredly that wound, when the side of the Crucified was pierced through with a lance; for by this those who come to Him enter in, because from there flowed the sacraments by which believers are initiated. And the fact that it is commanded to be made of squared timbers signifies the stable life of the saints on every side; for whichever way you turn a square, it will stand. And the other things which are said in the construction of that ark are signs of ecclesiastical realities. But to pursue them now would be long; and we have already done this in the work which we wrote against Faustus the Manichaean, who denied that anything concerning Christ had been prophesied in the books of the Hebrews.

And it may indeed happen that someone may expound these things more aptly than we and others have done, provided nevertheless that all the things which are said are referred to this city of God of which we speak, on pilgrimage in this malignant world as in a flood—if he who expounds does not wish to stray far from the meaning of him who wrote these things. For example, if someone, regarding what is here written, 'You shall make it with lower stories of two and three decks,' should not wish it to be understood as I said in that work, namely that the Church is gathered from all nations, called 'two-decked' on account of the two kinds of men, that is, the circumcision and the uncircumcision, whom the Apostle also calls in another manner Jews and Greeks;

and 'three-decked' because all the nations were restored after the flood from the three sons of Noah; but should instead say something else that is not foreign to the rule of faith. For since He willed that the ark should have dwellings not only in the lower parts, but also in the upper (and these He called 'two-decked'), and in the upper parts of the upper (and these He called 'three-decked'), so that from the bottom upward a third habitation should rise: here too may be understood those three things which the Apostle commends, faith, hope, and love;

or there may be understood, much more fittingly, those three fruitfulnesses of the Gospel, thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold: so that in the lowest part dwells conjugal chastity, above it widowed, and higher than this virginal—and whatever better can be understood and said according to the faith of this city. This I would say also concerning the other things which are here to be expounded: that although they are discussed in more than one way, they are nevertheless to be brought back to the one concord of the catholic faith. CHAPTER XXVII. That concerning the ark and the flood we must not agree either with those who receive only the history without allegorical signification, nor with those who defend only the figures, rejecting the historical truth.

Nevertheless no one ought to think either that these things were written in vain, or that only the truth of the deeds done without any allegorical significations is here to be sought, or, on the contrary, that these things were not done at all but are merely figures of words, or that—whatever they may be—they in no way pertain to the prophecy of the Church.