Slaves of God/Christ: narrated total devotion in the apocryphal Acts of Peter

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the Roman Empire, there was a trend to formulate total devotion to a deity as being a slave to a master. My contribution analyses how this relationship is elaborated in the Acts of Peter, a late second-century Christian apocryphal text. As Christianity was still an emerging religion, total devotion was not a given but a quality that needed to be nurtured as it was continuously under threat. The narrative of the Acts of Peter illustrates the nature of the right relationship with Christ and God, but it also highlights the dangers of earthly patrons and heretics. Finally, in line with the insights of Atran [2016. ‘The Devoted Actor.’ Current Anthropology 57 (Supplement 12): S192–S203], it shows that martyrdom, that is, to die for Christ, to die like Christ, is the ultimate form of Christian total devotion.