Wanderers Without Rest : Between Heaven and the Pit

Introduction

“The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose... In those days the Nephilim were on the earth. They are the heroes of old, those men of renown.”

The passage from Genesis 6:1–4 remains one of the most mysterious in the Bible : These few verses have given rise to conflicting interpretations: in the intertestamental Jewish tradition, developed notably in the Book of Enoch, they refer to fallen angels — the Watchers — who, by uniting with women, fathered a monstrous offspring, the Nephilim, whose wandering spirits became demons. In Western Christianity, by contrast, Augustine rejected this literal reading: the “sons of God” were not angels, but the line of Seth, and the Nephilim were merely powerful men, symbols of the increasing violence before the Flood. His position would become the theological norm: demons are not the spirits of giants, but the fallen angels themselves.

This divergence in interpretation is not merely a matter of exegetical curiosity: it touches the heart of the question of evil. Can there exist beings “evil by nature,” with no possible choice of good, or would that contradict God’s justice and goodness? The New Testament itself seems to echo the Enochic version: Peter and Jude speak of angels “chained in darkness until judgment,” while the Apocalypse describes angels bound and later released at the appointed time. If the fallen angels are thus restrained, then who are the spirits that still seem to act in the world ?

We propose to explore this question in four stages: first, the biblical and Jewish background of the Nephilim; then, the echo found in the New Testament; next, the patristic reception, from Justin Martyr — who preserved the Enochic reading — to Augustine, who imposed a symbolic interpretation; finally, a contemporary theological reflection which proposes to name these wandering spirits Planéthes, figures of evil as disorder and errance.

This investigation, far from being merely historical, finds a disturbing resonance in our present time. At a moment when humanity is questioning artificial intelligence, genetic manipulation, artificial wombs, and neural interfaces, the Nephilim emerge as an ancient figure of our own dilemmas : what becomes of a “creature” produced outside the order willed by God, unfinished and incapable of true freedom? The Planéthes, biblical shadows of wandering, thus become a spiritual mirror of the current threats.

I. The Nephilim in the Bible and Ancient Judaism

1. Genesis 6:1–4 — An Enigmatic Text

The biblical text grants only four verses to the Nephilim, yet their presence has left a lasting imprint on religious imagination. It reads:

“The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose... In those days the Nephilim were on the earth. These are the heroes of old, the men of renown” (Gen 6:1–4).

Two enigmas dominate:

• Who are the “sons of God” (bene elohim)? Are they celestial angels, earthly judges, or perhaps the descendants of Seth, the “faithful” lineage?

• What does the word Nephilim designate? Literally “the fallen” or “those who make others fall,” but should we understand them as giants, mythical heroes, or a symbol of the growing evil before the Flood ?

  
  

Jewish and Christian traditions would oscillate between these two poles: a literal reading and a symbolic reading.

2. Intertestamental Developments

In Second Temple Jewish literature — especially in the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 6–16) and the Book of Jubilees — the literal interpretation dominates:

• The sons of God are identified with the Watchers, angels sent to earth to guide humanity.

• Fascinated by women, they transgress their mission and unite with them.

• From these unions is born a monstrous offspring, the Nephilim — described as insatiable and violent giants who devour everything in their path.

• Upon their death, their souls become wandering spirits, condemned to haunt the earth: these are the ones tradition would come to call “demons.”

  
  

This account provides a mythological and dramatic origin to spiritual evil. Demons are not merely fallen angels; they are the souls of hybrid beings, doomed to errance.

3. Characteristics of the Nephilim

These traditions present the Nephilim as:

• Hybrids, neither fully human nor fully angelic.

• Violent, oppressors, destroyers of mankind and creation.

• Insatiable, ever craving flesh and blood.

• Wandering after death, unable to ascend to heaven or vanish like ordinary humans.

  
  

They embody absolute disorder — a “generation of confusion” that blurs the boundaries established by God.

4. A Possible Reading Today

At first glance, these stories seem to belong entirely to the realm of myth. Yet their symbolic power remains strikingly relevant: the Nephilim represent the anxiety over beings produced outside the natural order, neither fully free nor fully responsible, and whose very existence appears destined for evil. They echo our own modern dilemmas:

• What becomes of a creature when it is born of a transgression of the order willed by God ?

• What becomes of an “offspring” shaped through manipulation or a distortion of freedom?

  
  

This ancient framework is essential for understanding what follows: it not only sheds light on the New Testament, but sets up a tension with the Augustinian interpretation, which refuses to admit the existence of beings doomed to evil by nature.

II. The New Testament and the Enochic Echo

1. The Fallen Angels “in Chains”

Two passages in the New Testament appear to directly echo the tradition of the Book of Enoch, referring not merely to rebellious angels, but to fallen angels already punished and confined:

• 2 Peter 2:4:“For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into gloomy pits of darkness and committed them to chains to be kept until the judgment…”

• Jude 6:“And the angels who did not keep their proper position but abandoned their own dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains, in darkness, for the judgment of the great day.”

  
  

These two parallel verses explicitly evoke fallen angels who are “in chains,” deprived of freedom of action. They confirm the Enochic narrative, in which the Watchers—guilty of having transgressed the limits of their nature—are punished by being imprisoned until the final judgment.

2. The Apocalypse and the Bound Angels

In the Book of Revelation, John describes a scene in which “four angels” are bound at the great river Euphrates, and then released at the appointed hour to strike humanity (Rev 9:14–15). Once again, we encounter the image of angels held captive, restrained by God until the moment of their unleashing.

2.1. “It would have been better for him not to have been born” — The Echo of Enoch in the Words of Jesus

On the evening of the Last Supper, Jesus speaks this striking word about Judas:

“The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had never been born.”(Matthew 26:24; Mark 14:21)

This statement is not a moral hyperbole. It has deep roots in Jewish apocalyptic language, particularly in the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 38:2; 48:6), where similar expressions are used concerning sinners and the spirits born of the unnatural union of the Watchers:

“It would have been better for them had they never been born.”

From this perspective, to exist without orientation toward God, or to be born of a corrupted begetting, is a greater tragedy than non-existence itself. Jesus takes up this language: in applying it to Judas, he casts him as an apocalyptic figure, destined for an existence turned in upon itself.

The very fact that Jesus uses Enochic vocabulary — despite the Book of Enoch not being part of the Jewish or Christian canon — shows that this tradition was not marginal. It nourished the religious imagination of the time and belonged to the shared symbolic language of apocalyptic thought.

Far from incidental, this reference underscores how deeply Christ situates himself within that context: he speaks the language of Jewish apocalypses, and assumes their imagery to express the depth of the spiritual drama.

3. Theological Consequence

These passages raise a decisive question:

If the fallen angels are already “in chains,” as stated in Peter, Jude, and Revelation, then who are the spirits active in the world today—those that seduce, possess, and lead humanity astray?

The Enochic logic provides an answer: the angels are punished and restrained, but their monstrous offspring—the Nephilim—upon death, left behind wandering spirits. These are the ones that continue to act.

4. A Tension with the Augustinian Interpretation

This perspective conflicts directly with the Augustinian solution. For Augustine, demons are simply the fallen angels themselves, not another category of spirits. But the New Testament, through its direct references to “bound angels,” seems to lend more weight to the ancient version that Augustine sought to discard.

This is why we argue that the New Testament seems to confirm the internal coherence of the Enochic tradition: the Watchers are imprisoned, but errant forces continue to act in the world. This tension will become central in the patristic reception that follows.

III. Patristic Reception: Between Justin and Augustine

1. Justin Martyr and the Logic of Demonic Imitation

In the 2nd century, Justin Martyr explicitly adopts the tradition found in the Book of Enoch. In his Apologies, he explains:

• The fallen angels (Watchers), seduced by women, begot monstrous offspring—the Nephilim.

• These hybrid beings, both spiritual and carnal, became insatiable and violent.

• After their death, their souls persisted as wandering spirits, identified as demons.

  
  

“But the angels, transgressing this ordinance, humbled themselves to unite with women and begot children, who are what are now called demons.Furthermore, they subsequently enslaved the human race — through magical writings, through the fear and torments they inflicted, and by teaching men to offer sacrifices, incense, and libations, which they themselves came to crave, having been enslaved by the passion of desire. And thus they sowed among men murders, wars, adulteries, debauchery, and every kind of vice.” (Apologies)

For Justin, this origin accounts for the corruption of the world: demons are perverse imitators of God. They mimic prophecies and sacraments in order to blur the truth:

• Perseus mimics the virgin birth.

• Asclepius counterfeits the healings of Christ.

• Dionysus caricatures the messianic vine.

• The mysteries of Mithras parody baptism and the Eucharist.

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Likewise, the Nephilim are a parody of divine begetting: whereas God begets his eternal Son, the fallen angels produce a monstrous, unfinished, and wandering offspring.

2. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Lactantius

Other Church Fathers take up this tradition as well:

• Irenaeus of Lyon (Against Heresies, I, 10,2) speaks of the traditions about the giants as a sign of the disorder preceding the Flood.

• Tertullian († c. 220) offers a detailed account of the fallen angels and their corrupting role.

• Lactantius († c. 320) also refers to the demonic origin connected to apostate angels.

  
  

All of them, to varying degrees, preserve the Enochic echo: demons are not merely fallen angels, but hybrid spirits—the result of transgression.

3. Augustine and the Doctrinal Break

With Augustine († 430), a decisive shift takes place. In The City of God (Book XV, chapter 23), he rejects the literal reading of Genesis 6:

• The “sons of God” are the descendants of Seth.

• The “daughters of men” belong to the lineage of Cain.

• The Nephilim are not hybrids, but violent and renowned men.

  
  

His motivation is clear:

• Angels are pure spirits: they possess neither bodies nor seed, and therefore cannot procreate.

• It was also necessary to avoid any resemblance with pagan myths of gods uniting with mortal women.

  
  

Augustine thus unifies the doctrine: demons are exclusively fallen angels. This position, taken up by the Scholastic tradition and affirmed by Thomas Aquinas, would become the standard in the Latin West.

4. Two Irreconcilable Traditions?

We are thus left with a profound divergence:

• Ancient tradition (Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian):→ demons = wandering spirits born of transgression.

• Augustinian tradition:→ demons = fallen angels, and nothing more.

  
  

The first is consistent with certain New Testament passages (2 Peter, Jude, Revelation 9). The second prevailed out of concern for theological clarity and the defense of divine goodness.

This tension—between ancient memory and doctrinal clarification—opens the way to a contemporary theological reflection, which we now propose, focusing on the nature of evil and on the figure of the Planéthes (see Chapter IV): these wandering spirits that escape traditional categories.

IV. Toward a Theology of Spiritual Errance

1. The Nephilim as Intermediate Figures

In the perspective of Enoch and Justin, the Nephilim are not fallen angels but the fruit of a transgression. They occupy a grey area of ontology:

• Too spiritual to die like humans,

• Too carnal to return to heaven.

  
  

Their existence is fractured, incapable of integration.

These beings possess no true freedom: they cannot choose God, but neither can they vanish. They symbolize what Augustinian theology would later define as privation: a form of existence without intrinsic consistency, a parasitic distortion of created being.

2. A Proposed Name: Planéthes

To avoid terminological confusion, it is necessary to distinguish these spirits from what Catholic doctrine strictly calls “demons” — that is, fallen angels who have freely chosen to rebel against God. These belong to the hierarchy of pure spirits, and their theological identity is clearly defined by Tradition and the Magisterium.

However, the beings born of the transgressive union narrated in the Enochic tradition — the Nephilim, whose existence continues after the Flood in the form of wandering souls — do not belong to this category. They did not choose evil by a personal act of freedom, but are the fruit of a corruption, condemned to errance for lack of a true spiritual home.

To designate them, I therefore propose the term Planéthes, from the Greek planētēs, meaning “wanderers” or “vagabonds.” This name does not grant them the status of full-fledged creatures, nor that of free persons: it describes their post-Flood condition — that of residual, unfinished spirits, finding neither rest nor direction. The Planéthes are not “demons” in the dogmatic sense of the term, but a symbolic and interpretive category: they represent disorder, perverted imitation, and parasitic existence without proper substance.

3. Symbolic and Theological Value

Far from constituting a new dogmatic category, the Planéthes must be understood as a symbolic figure:

• They help to interpret obscure passages in Genesis and the New Testament.

• They represent the logic of evil as disorder and privation: not a full and willed being, but a corrupted and incomplete existence.

• They also shed light on spiritual experience: adversarial forces do not create, they imitate and deform.

  
  

4. From Socratic daimōn to the “Unclean Spirits” of the Gospel

In classical Greek, the word daimōn bore no inherently evil connotation. It referred to an intermediate power — a kind of spiritual being, neither god nor man, responsible for transmitting signs or inspiring decisions. Socrates himself spoke of his daimōn as an intimate voice warning him against error, never inciting him to evil (Plato, Apology, 31d). The term thus belonged to the realm of spiritual mediation, not of darkness.

In the New Testament, however, this word undergoes a radical transformation. The daimonia are no longer inspiring spirits, but hostile powers, “unclean spirits” (pneumata akatharta) that torment humans and oppose God. Jesus often refers to them, but not to explain their origin — he reveals their activity: they possess, they wander, they destroy — and above all, their subordination to him.

The Gospels portray them as:

• dwelling in the body of a possessed man at Gerasa, identifying themselves as “Legion” (Mark 5),

• wandering “through arid places, seeking rest and finding none” (Matthew 12:43),

• compelled to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God (Luke 4:41),

• expelled by a single word or through prayer (Mark 9:29).

  
  

These portraits echo the Enochic tradition in key ways: spirits condemned to wander, so desperate for embodiment that they beg to enter a herd of pigs. Yet Jesus does not linger on their origin; he reveals their fate: to be cast out, scattered, rendered powerless.

5. “Christ Cast Out Demons” — A Language That Does Not Exclude the Ancient

Interpretation

The Gospels repeatedly declare that Jesus “cast out demons” (daimonia, pneumata akatharta). The apostles themselves adopt this concrete, pastoral language, describing Christ’s visible action upon the spiritual forces that tormented humanity. Yet nothing in this vocabulary excludes the interpretation already held by Christians in the 2nd century.

Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, and other Church Fathers understood “demons” not as a single, abstract category, but as a diverse group of spirits stemming from corruption: fallen angels, wandering souls of the Nephilim, parasitic powers.

For them, Christ expels all of these — whether fallen angels or the monstrous remnants of their transgression.

It is Augustine who, for the sake of doctrinal clarity, reduced the notion of demon to that of a fallen angel: a precise definition that shaped Western theology. Yet this doctrinal clarification does not mean that the Church rejected the possible existence of Nephilim: it merely refined the primary meaning of “demon,” without closing the door to other symbolic or subordinate categories. Nothing prevents us from seeing the Nephilim — or Planéthes — as a subcategory of “unclean spirits”, fruits of corruption, distinct from fallen angels in the strict sense.

In this light, saying that “Christ cast out demons” does not contradict the ancient intuition — it actually confirms it: Jesus overcame all wandering powers, regardless of their origin. Augustinian theology chose clarity, but it did not abolish the depth of the ancient myth, which still has the power to illuminate our debates.

6. Spirits Without a Home, Even in the Bodies of Pigs

The Gospel of Mark recounts that Jesus, in Gerasa, encountered a man possessed by a “legion” of unclean spirits. These spirits, brought face to face with the Son of God, claim neither freedom nor dignity: they seek only a place to exist. And their plea is striking:

“Send us into the pigs, so that we may enter them” (Mark 5:12).

This is a confession of their condition: beings without a home, they are willing to take refuge even in impure animals. To survive, they are ready to inhabit the vilest flesh. Their hunger is so desperate that they no longer distinguish between man and beast: any body becomes a temporary refuge.

This detail sheds light on their true nature. Unlike the fallen angels who once chose to rebel, these spirits lack the fullness of personal freedom. They do not possess the strength of choice — only the compulsion of errance. They are not persons, but hungry shadows, simulacra of existence desperately seeking a material host.

Thus, Jesus, far from engaging them as responsible interlocutors, grants their request — not out of indulgence, but because their very misery reveals their incapacity for conversion.

This act may be understood as a kind of paradoxical mercy: Christ, knowing that they are incapable of freedom, does not judge them as persons but treats them as what they are — wanderers doomed to dissolution. Their end, plunging with the pigs into the sea, manifests the inescapable outcome of their existence: a descent into nothingness.

In this light, the Planéthes appear for what they are: not adversaries equal to God, but ghosts without freedom, begging for shelter even among swine.

Their pitiful supplication before Jesus reveals that their power is nothing more than a fleeting usurpation, and that their wandering always ends in the abyss.

V. Theological Limits and Possible Openings

1. The Scandal of Evil “by Nature”

If we follow the tradition of Enoch and Justin, the Planéthes appear as beings predestined to errance and evil. Not because they chose it, but because they were born of an original transgression. Here lies the central theological difficulty: how can such existence be reconciled with the goodness and justice of God? Can God permit a creature to be born without freedom, condemned from the beginning to dwell in shadow ?

This is precisely the objection formulated by Augustine. For him, it was inconceivable to admit any angelic generation of flesh and blood: angels are pure spirits, incapable of begetting. More fundamentally, God cannot create beings who are evil in essence.

It was therefore necessary, in order to safeguard the coherence of the faith, to interpret Genesis 6 symbolically: the “sons of God” are the descendants of Seth, the “daughters of men” those of Cain, and the Nephilim are simply powerful, violent men.

2. The Path of Biological Marvels

Today’s scientific knowledge, however, allows us to sketch another reading. We now know that phenomena such as parthenogenesis exist in certain species. Nothing, then, prohibits—at least within the bounds of theological speculation—the idea that rebellious spirits might have provoked biological manipulations through natural causes, without creating a human soul, which God alone can produce.

This would not constitute a spiritual begetting, but rather a preternatural prodigy: a perversion of the created order, in which spiritual forces act not as creators, but as counterfeiters. This connects to the role traditionally attributed to the Dominions (kyriotētes)—those angels mentioned by Saint Paul (Colossians 1:16; Ephesians 1:21), who are charged with overseeing the material order. If fallen Dominions corrupted their mission, they could indeed have diverted that order to produce deviant forms of life.

We better understand how Justin could assert that demons imitate the work of God even in the flesh: parodying the virgin birth with Perseus, the Eucharist with Mithras, or even procreation through these giants.

Moreover, we must remember that even these deviant beings do not represent an absolute evil. Their mere existence, though twisted and parasitic, still manifests a trace of perfection: to exist is already to reflect being, which comes from God. Similarly, theology has never claimed that Satan himself is “absolute evil”: he remains a creature, and therefore good in his essence, even if his will is entirely corrupted. Evil never subsists by itself; it is merely a privation, a distortion of an original good. Thus, the Planéthes bear this same ambiguity: they did not choose God, yet their being still testifies—however faintly—to a certain participation in the created order, which is never wholly destroyed.

3. A Hybridization Without a Future

If this is the case, the Nephilim were not creatures willed by God, but parasitic beings, the fruit of an unnatural manipulation. Their bodies may have been real, but their souls—if one can speak of a rational soul—bore the mark of incompleteness:

• Incapable of dying like men,

• Incapable of choosing like angels,

• Condemned to errance after the Flood.

  
  

The Planéthes are not persons in the full theological sense, but shadows of creaturehood. Their existence illustrates the logic of evil as privation and imitation: a force that distorts, but does not create.

4. Shadow Bodies and Tangible Appearances

The Augustinian difficulty—“How could spirits beget?”—finds echoes in two traditional sources.

• Succubi and incubi: Medieval tradition speaks of spirits capable of assuming a dense, tangible form, capable of seducing and manipulating living matter. Thomas Aquinas explains that they do not create life, but transport or divert human seed. These are not miracles, but preternatural prodigies—effective illusions forged by deceptive spirits.

• Biblical apparitions: Abraham receives three “men” and shares a meal with them (Gen 18). In Sodom, the inhabitants want to possess the angelic visitors (Gen 19). Tobit travels with Raphael, who eats and drinks at his side. The women at the tomb see a young man clothed in white (Mark 16:5). In all these accounts, angels assume a tangible bodily appearance, able to speak, act, and even share food.

  
  

These witnesses converge: a spirit can don a body of shadow that functions like real flesh. From this, the Enochic tradition becomes conceivable: the Watchers did not create life, but they distorted the natural order through simulacra so powerful that even the processes of generation were diverted.

In Conclusion

The path of the Planéthes does not contradict Augustine’s vigilance—it nuances it:

• Angels do not create.

• God does not will beings doomed to evil.

• But rebellious spirits may corrupt creation biologically, producing incomplete existences.

  
  

These existences are not “demons” in the dogmatic sense (fallen angels), but rather remnants of disorder: simulacra, incarnate illusions, spirits without freedom and without a future.

VI. Contemporary Resonances

1. The Hunger of Spirits Without a Home

The Gospel describes the wandering of unclean spirits in these terms:

“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none” (Matthew 12:43).

This saying casts a sudden light upon the condition of the Planéthes. They have no dwelling, no true purpose, no rest. Their only desire is to inhabit a body—any body—even if it means begging to enter a herd of pigs (Mark 5:12). This detail, far from being picturesque, reveals their misery: incapable of genuine freedom, they do not seek God, but merely matter to parasitize.

Their hunger is carnal, their existence errant, their destiny the abyss. Jesus grants what they ask—not to honor them, but because they no longer stand as responsible interlocutors: they are pleading shadows, and their end is the fall into the sea.

2. Modern Figures of Hybridization

This ancient biblical narrative finds an unsettling echo in modern testimonies of so-called “abductions,” studied by John E. Mack and other researchers. Men and women recount being taken by entities seeking to generate hybrids. Without deciding on the material reality of these accounts, the comparison is striking: we encounter once again the logic of Enoch — powers that divert the order of generation to produce a distorted, wandering offspring.

Whether in ancient myths or contemporary reports, the underlying motif is the same: the anxiety over the appearance of beings begotten without being willed by God, without true freedom, without any future of salvation. The Nephilim thus become a universal parable: the story of a begetting that does not give rise to life, but to a shadow of creaturehood.

3. The Logic of Imitation

Justin had already perceived it clearly: rebellious spirits invent nothing; they imitate and corrupt.

• They imitated the virgin birth with Perseus,

• The healings with Asclepius,

• The messianic vine with Dionysus,

• The Eucharist with Mithras.

  
  

Always the same strategy: to blur prophecy by offering a counterfeit.

That same logic repeats itself today.

• Artificial intelligence imitates human language but does not think.

• Deepfakes mimic faces in order to deceive.

• Genetic experiments mimic generation but risk producing mutilated life.

  
  

Like the Planéthes, these creations are reflections without substance, existences that mimic reality without ever matching it.

4. An Apocalyptic Reading

The Book of Revelation reminds us that certain angels are bound, held in reserve until the day of judgment (Revelation 9:14–15). This detail reveals a crucial distinction between two types of adversaries:

• The fallen angels, already judged and chained.

• The wandering spirits, left to roam the world, homeless, until their annihilation.

  
  

Thus, the “demons” that Jesus casts out are not necessarily the great rebels of old, but these remnants, fragments of incomplete beings, still wandering the earth as vestiges of original disorder.

It then becomes clear why this old Genesis narrative now regains such singular relevance. In a world where man is able to fabricate artificial intelligences that imitate without consciousness, where we dream of artificial wombs and genetic manipulations capable of altering human nature, the question of the Nephilim becomes prophetic. It tells us this:

Any attempt to beget without God risks producing modern Planéthes — beings without freedom, shadows doomed to errance.

Conclusion

The myth of the Nephilim, far from being a marginal curiosity of the Old Testament, opens a space of reflection where exegesis, theology, and our most current concerns converge. In its ancient version, it expresses the fear of a corrupted begetting, of a life that is born but does not attain freedom. In its Christian development, it becomes a parable of all that rises up against Christ without ever equaling his truth—for evil does not invent, it imitates and deforms.

By distinguishing the Planéthes from “demons” in the strict dogmatic sense—i.e., fallen and rebellious angels—we have brought to light a symbolic figure of errance: unfinished spirits, the fruit of transgression, without dwelling or orientation. This category, purely hermeneutical, is not meant to add a new article to the Creed, but to remind us that evil can also be understood as a privation of being, as a simulacrum that mimics life without ever truly possessing it.

And this ancient language finds a striking echo in our present. Today, mankind discovers itself capable of manufacturing entities that resemble him without truly being him: artificial intelligences that imitate speech, genetic manipulations that rewrite the code of life, artificial wombs or robotic surrogates that promise to dissociate childbirth from the maternal body. These feats are not evil in themselves: rightly ordered, they may serve human dignity and alleviate suffering. But they also harbor a danger: that of giving birth not to persons, but to simulacra, to existences amputated of freedom, to shadows of humanity.

It is here that the myth of the Nephilim retains all its theological significance. It does not condemn progress, but it warns: to beget without reference to God, source of the soul and of freedom, is to risk producing modern Planéthes—wanderers without orientation, the fruit of knowledge without wisdom.

Christ, in casting out unclean spirits, showed that these shadows cannot withstand his light. Their power is illusory, their hunger pathetic, their destiny the void. But their existence remains for us a parable: there is no true life without freedom, no true begetting without God.