Now Are We the Sons of God – Part 1

The “strange” events of Genesis 6 make perfect sense in the light of Genesis 3.

Why do so many serious theologians persist with peddling a story that reads like third-rate fanfic? The debate over the identity of the “Sons of God” in Genesis 6 reveals a common flaw between writers of fan fiction and those saints who get sidetracked with tales of angels and demons. That flaw is the sad inability, despite a deep appreciation for the source material, to put an actual finger on its pulse. While such people are enthralled by the explicit accoutrements of the original narratives, they mistake these external features for the heart of the story rather than recognizing them as mere elements through which its implicit purpose is expressed, the props through which the actual story is told. Put simply, they have read the “letter” of the narrative but missed the point of the story, which generally sums up the human condition and its fascination with the visible gifts of God over God Himself, who is Spirit.

A prime example (although more extreme) would be the failure of Roman Catholics, despite a love for the Scriptures, to discern the difference between the apostolic doctrine and the obviously fraudulent inventions that attached themselves over the centuries to its streamlined hull like a disfiguring patina of stubborn crustaceans. Any fool should be able to tell the difference between these fabricated stories and the Word of God, if not by divine inspiration, then at least through some basic logic. The fanciful tale in the “Gospel of Thomas” of the boy Jesus making clay birds come to life is so obviously out-of-character with the Jesus revealed in the Scriptures (a man who never performed a miracle for Himself, always included some didactic element) that it exposes a misunderstanding of both the purpose of Jesus and the purpose of miracles. And this is without even taking into account that turning water into wine in Cana is explicity said to have been His first miracle (John 2:11). While this is an extraneous example, even the central extrabiblical doctrines of the Roman magisterium are like the Disney Star Wars sequels—although big-budget and global, you just know that they are not canon. They have only the appearance of the real thing (2 Corinthians 11:14; 2 Timothy 3:5).

Of course, the apostles themselves faced the same challenge—centuries of ridiculous “Jewish fables” (Titus 1:13-14) written by rabbis who apparently, like modern scholars, needed to publish regularly in order to keep their jobs and credentials as authoritative “fathers,” and so made stuff up just to look busy. As Jesus said of them, they knew the Scriptures but they did not know the truth (John 5:39-40; 2 Timothy 3:7). Like Jews today, they failed to comprehend the significance of all the precious oracles in their possession (Romans 3:1-2). The same could be said of most modern Christian academics.¹See Babel Academy.

When Jesus came to fulfill the Law, He not only fulfilled it but also gave us the key to all of its bizarre stipulations. The Jewish rulers were seeing everything in Moses and the Prophets come to fruition before their eyes and yet they refused to recognize it. Incredibly, the inspired hermeneutic which Christ bequeathed to His apostles continues to baffle wooden-headed scholars today. While they honor the Word, they obstinately refuse to think in images. They think only like lawyers when the text also requires the sensibilities of the novelist, poet, artist, and architect. This makes them frustratingly dense. Some of the (supposedly) toughest passages of the Bible have simple explanations.

For instance, when will Jesus stand on the Mount of Olives and split it in two (Zechariah 14:4)? He already did. Like Moses (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28), He pronounced blessings for those whose hearts were circumcised like flesh by the Law (Matthew 5:1-12) and He pronounced curses for those who hardened their hearts like stone (Matthew 23:1-39). Olivet was thus spiritually “split in two,” to the north and the south like barren Ebal and fertile Gerizim (Deuteronomy 27:11-13), that the sons of Abraham according to the Spirit might enter the heavenly country as the Sons of God.²This is also the implicit context of the two mountains in 1 Samuel 17. See David, Goliath, and the Body of Moses.

This also explains Paul’s logic in Romans 3:5-9, a passage upon which New Testament scholars are still breaking their teeth, mostly because they do not recognize the covenantal significance of AD70 as the pouring out of the curses of the Mosaic covenant upon Israel.³For more discussion, see The End of Israel: Jesus, Paul & AD70. Jesus’ Gospel was a sword that would divide the Jews in two, just like the sacrifices in Genesis 15. Whether a Jew believed and was saved (Gerizim) or disbelieved and was condemned (Ebal), God would be justified in His words and blameless in His judgment (Psalm 51:4). When Israel according to the flesh was divided down the middle, God would be vindicated in both halves of the sacrifice. Likewise, God was vindicated when Israel was glorified (made fertile) under the faithful obedience of Solomon, and also vindicated when Israel was destroyed (made barren) for blaspheming His name among the nations. But even in the case of the latter, it was the curses of the Law that cut away the “barnacles” from the Messianic line in order that the Abrahamic promises might be fulfilled (Galatians 3:19).

The point here is that way too many “scholars” seem utterly unable to follow the biblical narrative. This is a symptom not only of a refusal to learn the visual language of biblical typology but also of the related failure of reading the Bible as a series of isolated incidents. Even when they do join the dots, they do not begin in Genesis 1, and so the resulting picture they have drawn from the text is not the one that God has given us.

The proponents of the “fallen angel” reading of Genesis 6, like those amateur fanfic hacks, manage to scrape together some semblance of support from the Scriptures but seem oblivious to how “out-of-character” their story is as an intended explanation. Like Jewish apocalyptic literature, the often heretical but always kitschy Roman Catholic add-ons, or the KJV-esque counterfeit escapades of Jesus in the Book of Mormon, these adoring extensions of the Bible cloak themselves in the language and trappings of the sacred texts in order to give them a veneer of authenticity. But the internal logic, the unseen principle that governs the originals, having been unperceived, is missing from the pretenders. Including the relatively recent critical scholarship that has exposed not only how blatantly fraudulent is the Quran but also how politically-motivated was its hurried, slapdash assembly, the authors of all of this substandard religious fan fiction have not comprehended the driving force of the biblical narrative—its very soul.

For all of these reasons, the fact that this “fallen angel” narrative has seen a revival among many Reformed folk who really should know better is very disturbing. Such gullibility exposes a gaping hole at the heart of our biblical theology, and the only remedy for that is a visit to the “lost world” of early Genesis with the eyes of Jesus. Instead of glorying in the “image” and subsequently misinterpreting the “word,” as Adam did, allowing the devil to “fill in the gaps” and exchange the truth of God for a lie (Romans 1:25), we must discern the mind and character of God in the events.

The assertion that the “Sons of God” were fallen angels, “gods” who had been members of the divine council of heaven, is only plausible if we fail to take the covenantal context into account. In other words, if we take it out of context, we can easily use it to fashion a foundation for a very different story than the one which the Bible tells us. It becomes a lens through which we view all subsequent events in a distorted way.

The error is understandable. The text is so brief that any reader is left with numerous questions. As in Eden, God intentionally leaves “gaps” in the narrative because He refuses to spoon-feed us. Like Adam, we are expected to meditate on the text in order to increase our understanding and spiritual maturity. However, the reason for the frustrating lack of details that would have avoided the questions altogether is that the answers are found in the preceding chapters. Even at this early stage, these momentous—and apparently bizarre—events reveal the significance of what has gone before, and vice versa. Ignorance of the “train tracks” laid down in Genesis 1-5 explains why the theological freight train of so many expositors, ancient and modern, goes crashing off the rails in Genesis 6.

READ PART 2.

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