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Steven Sample: On the Supertexts

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Make a list of all the texts in the whole world which are four hundred years old or more and are still widely read today. The first five are easy: the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita, the Pali Canon of Buddhism, and the analects of Confucious. Then, in rapid sucession, nearly everyone agrees to include: Plato's Republic Aristotle's Politics the plays of Shakespeare the plays of Sophocles Dante's Divine Comedy Homer's Illiad and Odyssey Montaigne's Essays Cervantes's Don Quixote Machiavelli's The Prince. After that, consensus becoes more difficult to achieve. . .The point is not whether the list contains twelve or twenty-four or even fifty entries; rather, the point is that the list is extremely short. Think of it: of all the hundreds of thousands of books, essays, poems, letters, plays and histories that were composed four hundred years ago or more, only a dozen or two are still widely read today. . .these supertexts ...
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Confessional Standards

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Historical Context Sometimes called the “Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed,” this expression of the Christian faith is the product of a century of heated debate around the person and nature of Christ and consequently, the nature of God. At the end of three hundred years of oppression and widespread persecution, a great turn came when the Roman Emperor Constantine declared the Christian faith legal for the first time by the Edict of Milan in 313 AD. As Roman Emperors had done in the past with conquered peoples, he convened a council of representatives from every major city in the empire to settle internecine disputes. In 325 AD, the council was convened in Nicaea, just outside of Constantinople. The Emperor himself presided, deferring to bishops and theologians from across the known world to deliberate the questions at hand. At issue was the teaching of Arius, a presbyter from Alexandria. In an effort to defend Christianity as a monotheistic religion, Arius presented the Trini...
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The Book of Common Prayer: Ordination

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You have heard, brethren, as well in your private examination, as in the exhortation which was now made to you, and in the holy Lessons taken out of the Gospel and the writings of the Apostles, of what dignity and of how great importance this office is, whereunto ye are called. And now again we exhort you, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you have in remembrance, into how high a dignity, and to how weighty an office and charge ye are called: that is to say, to be messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord; to teach and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lord’s family; to seek for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever. Have always therefore printed in your remembrance, how great a treasure is committed to you charge. For they are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his blood. The Church and Congregation whom yo...
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