So I have had quite a few discussions lately with some of my friends about the giants, Nephilim, or whatever you want to call them, and what their nature is, so I thought I'd put my arguments here all in one place.
To begin with, let's look at Genesis 6, the passage that really started it all:
'When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. ' v. 1-4
The crux of the debate centers around what we take "sons of God" to mean in Genesis 6, and depending on our understanding, how such an act would take place. For the first question, there are two general answers: fallen angels or men. The fallen angels camp is divided into two smaller subdivisions, with one believing that angels themselves had children with humans and the other that men possessed by said fallen angels had children with others, and the two seem to be about equal in popularity. The human camp is also divided, with some thinking they are the children of Seth's line and others that they are just godly men who took wicked wives, but the Sethite view is, in my experience, far more popular.
With that said, it is relevant to note how the language is used in the Old Testament. Of the eight other times the phrase "sons of God" or similar are used in the Hebrew (and Aramaic, in Daniel's case), there is one that the Christian tradition generally interprets as referring to men (and to which I would also agree), but the others are all clearly referring to angels, either fallen or not.
In addition, it would be unwise to constrain ourselves to only that phrase, because, in my view, there are numerous places which all seem to testify to this fact of fallen angels having their way with mankind in order to beget monstrous children. The first is in the report of the 10 unfaithful spies regarding the land of Canaan:
"'And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.” But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”' Numbers 13:27-33
In this report, we see the Israelites speak of great giants, the sons of the Nephilim, also called the sons of Anak, who are then identified with certain tribes: the Amalekites (see this post I made on them too!), Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Canaanites. I also would like to note, I chose my words very carefully when I called them the "unfaithful" spies rather than the "lying" spies, because Caleb and Joshua don't say that the others are lying, and in fact, nowhere in the scriptures does it testify that they were lying! Rather, there response is in the next chapter, where they say,
'“The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.” ' Numbers 14:7-9
They do not say that the other spies lie about the people's strength nor their heritage, but they proclaim that Israel can defeat these giants by the power of God.
This presence of the giants in Numbers 13 is significant because if the Sethite view is to stand, it makes no sense for there to be any Nephilim after the flood, since the children of Cain would have all died out. The less popular view that it was simply the faithful intermarrying with the wicked could work, but that too seems strange, since "the faithful" was largely consistent of the children of Israel, so it seems strange to have whole nations made up of such a people. In addition, it also doesn't really work, since we see numerous pious figures (even our Lord Himself) whose genealogy traces back to such unions.
This reading also plays into the rules for Israelite warfare in Deuteronomy. Throughout the book, there are only certain nations which the Israelites are told to completely destroy, which just so happen to be those same nations which the unfaithful spies named as giants. In this way, the reason these nations were singled out is because they were emissaries of the demons on earth.
There is far more one could write (and much more that has been written) on this subject, so for now, I'll move on from Old Testament exegesis and into that of the New, which is equally as clear in its testimony to the nature of these beings. The first, and I'd say the clearest text is Jude 6-7:
'And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.'
I don't have a whole lot to say about this text, but in summary, there were angels who left their position, and according to St. Jude, these committed sexual immorality comparable to that of Sodom. In addition, it is significant that He compared the sins of the angels to those of Sodom, since in that city, men sought to have their way with angels.
The next passages about it are from the two epistles of Peter, starting with what I think is the least clear of the bunch,
'For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. ' 1 Peter 3:18-20
In this passage, we see testimony of spirits who are trapped in a gloomy prison because they were unfaithful in the days of Noah. While some (Luther included) believe that its referring to the spirits of men, that is a significantly less reasonable interpretation than the idea of it referring to angels. If it refers to human spirits, the reference to the days of Noah makes no sense. Why would St. Peter choose to bring it up, rather than just referring to the souls of all the wicked? Why would our Lord go specifically to the wicked in the days of Noah but seemingly neglect those of Sodom, the Canaanites, etc.? If we instead read this passage as referring to those demons which begat Nephilim, it makes significantly more sense. Of course, this isn't the strongest argument, but I don't think it's insignificant.
The passage from 2 Peter is a bit clearer, though not quite as explicit as Jude:
"'For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, '" 2:4-10
One could argue that the rebellion of the angels mentioned isn't related to that of Noah, but that seems to betray the structure of the passage. I would argue that there seems to be two parallels going on here, between the stories of Noah and Lot. In both cases, they are the single righteous man dwelling in the midst of a wicked nation (the Nephilim and the Sodomites respectively). If we interpret it this way, then it falls under the same category as the 1 Peter passage, that is to say, it makes little sense to mention angels sinning in the days of Noah if you aren't referring to Genesis 6. In addition, the end of the passage is also significant, since St. Peter says that their sins are "indulg[ing] in the lust of defiling passion and despising authority," which seems to be directed at both the days of Noah and Lot, as well as "not trembl[ing] as they blaspheme the glorious ones," which is definitely referring to both cases. In this way, it certainly seems like St. Peter is using two comparisons of sexual sins and rebelliousness related to the angelic powers rather than three with two related (angelic rebellion, Sodom) and one unrelated (Noah).
Now, with all of that said, I think it is useful to get into the arguments against this view as well as debate the Sethite view. One of the most prominent argument against the view of the sons of God being angels is in Our Lord's words in Matthew 22:30,
'For in the resurrection they [the saints] neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.'
While I think this is relevant to the conversations, there are a few ways I think one can take it and still easily hold to the demonic offspring interpretation. The first is that it specifically refers to the "angels in heaven." That is to say, the angels aren't unable to procreate in heaven, but they are virginal by choice and thus do not procreate. Another idea in the same vein is that the angels can't procreate by nature but the demons do so with man through wicked magicks and that the angels in heaven don't haven because they remained in their offices. These both are assuming that angels are doing so by themselves with a single other human at a time. However, with the view that it is men who are possessed and working with demons, this verse really isn't an issue. The demons are aware they can't procreate, so they make use of human procreation, using their power to warp the humans born to have bodily and/or spiritual deformities. While this may all seem like speculation, I would say it really falls more in line with apologetics, formulating explanations for seeming "contradictions." Instead of throwing out a historic interpretation (and it is the most ancient Christian interpretation), I am trying to explain how it is in line with other texts. In addition, this was also just how many pagan cultures did things. There were (and still are) numerous pagan societies which valued those possessed by a god, whether seeing them as a prophet, priest, or even king. This culminated in a very common ritual in which the one possessed would conceive a child with another and then the child would be considered to have three parents: the father, mother, and god (whether divine or human). This is why some ancient figures like Gilgamesh were said to be 2/3 god--his father was a king (who was basically a god, think Pharaoh of Egypt), his mother was a cult prostitute, and his mother was possessed by a goddess.
As for the Sethite view, I think it is plausible if we had only the book of Genesis to work from, but that isn't how the scriptures work. The immediate context is most important, but when that is ambiguous, we look to other passages for aid. In this way, the most exegetically plausible interpretation, based on the wealth of evidence, is that it was angels, not men.
In a side point, I would like, for a moment, to white knight for the Sethites. It is often repeated that "no church father until Augustine held to the Sethite view!!!1!" This, however, is simply not the case. Aphrahat the Persian Sage, a lesser-known church father of the 3rd century, is the earliest that I have seen hold to it, as well as the theological giants (pun intended) of Athanasius of Alexandria and Ephrem the Syrian. While the angelic view is still the more historic of the two, it is simply a historical fiction that Augustine was this great innovator, as he often has the reputation of being.
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