Abstract

Abstract:

This article explores the identity work in which Commodian engages through his acrostic Instructiones. In particular, it evaluates the content, rhetoric, and structure of the work to establish that Commodian sought to cultivate in his readers a totalized and uncompromising Christian worldview predicated on a deep-seated humility through which the Christian’s individual judgment is always and everywhere suspect, whereas God’s is paramount. Commodian argues that Christians must subordinate all other identities to their identities as Christians, and to subordinate their own judgment to the law of God as expressed in scripture. He underscores this argument by offering an acrostic scaffolding for his poetic treatise, one that signals the existence of a higher law and that resonates with contemporary expectations of divine communication and spiritual authority. This article, then, offers a new reading of Commodian’s Instructiones, expands our understanding of the possibilities of Christian identity in third-century North Africa, and presents a novel argument about the possible uses of acrostic in Late Antiquity.

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