Each fall I teach a course on the ancient church and a seminar on patristics. For the first half of the seminar, we use Michael Holmes’s third edition of the Apostolic Fathers, a collection of texts mainly from the second century. It did not begin to come into existence as a collection until the seventeenth century. It is not as if there has always been a collection of texts, as we have them today, known as the Apostolic Fathers. Holmes has done a terrific job with this volume. It has useful, well-written introductions. Each text contains a clear, accurate English translation with Greek (and sometimes Latin, Armenian, and Syriac) on the facing pages. It is well bound and a joy to use.

Today, however, we covered the Shepherd of Hermas. Last week was Barnabas and next week is Diognetus, so I suppose a little suffering is good for the soul. The Shepherd (Ποιμην), comprised of 114 chapters, is by far the largest document in the collection. It is also by far the most bizarre. Its date, original setting, and authorship are in doubt. The external evidence would seem to suggest the second half of the second century. It is possible there are connections to Rome, but internal evidence might suggest other locations. There is debate over whether there was one author or multiple hands. Evidently, the work was composed/compiled over an extended period. In contrast to Barnabas (before the Shepherd) and Diognetus (after the Shepherd), there is very little mention of Christ. It is replete with references to the Spirit, but there are only a couple of mentions of the Son of God. Nevertheless, this work was evidently well received by some important figures in the early church (e.g., Irenaeus), and it was widely copied and read.

You may not be surprised to learn that there is almost no good news in the Shepherd. There are, however, a great number of visions (revelations), fascination with the judgment, and a great deal of morality. Here is the point: A year or two ago, someone pointed out in another seminar that this book reminded him of some aspects of contemporary evangelicalism—fascination with eschatology, ongoing revelation, and morality. Then the light went on. It is therapeutic, moralistic apocalypticism. There is an evangelical group in Southern California that has made a living propagating just this recipe for decades.

It was popular, then, for the same reason the Left Behind series is popular. It offers an explanation of the seeming absence of God in history. About the same time the Shepherd appeared, the first neo-Pentecostal movement, Montanism, would appear in the ancient church for similar reasons. People felt the absence of direct, special revelation and unique apostolic demonstrations of power. In other words, it was a way to ameliorate the pain of living in the interregnum, the period between Christ’s ascension and his visible, glorious return.

As distressing as it is to reread the Shepherd every year, it is salutary. It reminds me that Solomon was right: There is nothing new under the sun. The apostolic period was no golden age, and neither was the second century. It is not true that if we could only get back to the second century, everything would be well. The Shepherd is evidence that it would not be so. We would no sooner leave behind the Left Behind series only to find it again (or before! Time travel is confusing, isn’t it?) in the second century.

This is not to say that we could not learn a thing or two from the second century. Diognetus provides a brilliant pattern for negotiating what seems to most mere mortals to be a post-Constantinian age. What message do we Christians want to send to the pagans around us? Diognetus worked that out in some detail and said it as well as can be said.

We can also learn a good deal about public worship. In our age we seem bent on including as much of the popular culture as possible in our services. Judging by Justin, the Didache, and other sources, it seems as if the early church was mindful that what takes place in public worship should be distinct from daily life. This was one of their reasons for excluding instruments from public worship. They regarded the use of instruments as pagan and inappropriate for Christian worship. It is not entirely clear what they sang, but the evidence seems to be that they sang God’s Word in response to his Word read, preached, and made visible in the sacraments.

They made a distinction between what is sacred (unique, holy, set apart) and what is shared (common or secular) with the surrounding culture. They treated worship and Christian instruction as sacred, but they did not attempt to sacralize those aspects of daily life they shared with the unbelieving world around them, even though the Christians had a quite different explanation for the meaning of the world around them than did the pagans.

Romanticism is the quest to recover a certain tense feeling; it is the turn to the subjective, to experience. History is one of the cures for it, but history is no license for skepticism or bitterness. Yes, the Shepherd was popular, but we also have Ignatius, Polycarp, and others who testify that the teaching and practice of the apostles was not lost.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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