The Shepherd of Hermas – Visions, Virtue, and Forgiveness

Discover The Shepherd of Hermas (Greek: Poimēn tou Herma), a Christian literary work of immense popularity in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries, which almost earned a permanent place in the New Testament canon. Compiled in the mid-fourth century, the Codex Sinaiticus includes it alongside the familiar 27 books.

This long and complex text, consisting of 114 chapters (about as many lines as Paul’s letters and Hebrews combined), is a key source for understanding early Christian ethical life. It is organized into three parts: five Visions, twelve Mandates (commandments), and ten Similitudes (parables).

The narrative begins with Hermas, a formerly enslaved man in Rome. His initial visions feature Rhoda, his former owner, who appears to chastise him for entertaining lustful thoughts, driving Hermas to despair over his sins. He is consoled by the aged woman, who is revealed to be the Church. Her most significant revelation involves constructing a tower (the Church), where believers are stones, illustrating the central theme: the urgent necessity of repentance before the end comes.

The work takes its name from the appearance of Hermas’s second divine guide, the Angel of Repentance, who is dressed like a shepherd. The Shepherd delivers extensive ethical instruction on diverse topics, including belief in God, sincerity, purity, marriage, anger, and self-control. The text famously features the contrasting influence of the Angel of Righteousness and the Angel of Wickedness living within a person—an image that evolved into the modern "shoulder angel and devil" trope.

Theological insights are equally profound and complex. Hermas stresses ethical living and moral integrity, endorsing a synergist soteriology where both works and faith are necessary for salvation. Crucially, the Shepherd instructs that for post-baptismal sin, God grants repentance only one time. Though widely regarded as authoritative by figures like Irenaeus and Clement, the Shepherd held a contentious place in the canonizing Church. Some later figures, like Athanasius, relegated it to a tool solely for instructing new converts. Its eventual exclusion may also stem from its unique, somewhat detached content: it contains no explicit references to Jesus Christ by name and presents a “Son of God” character whose nature is described in terms that some later readers linked to adoptionism.

Tune in as we explore why this profound moral allegory of "the last chance" was essential for early believers and how its unique theology shaped, and ultimately tested, the boundaries of Christian thought.