VroniPlag Wiki - Case 28, Theology

I can barely keep up here ... Earlier this week, VroniPlag Wiki published case 28,  a dissertation in theology, approved by the University of Tübingen. In this rather bizarre case (but in a way, they are all bizarre in their own ways) the submitter already has a dissertation in medicine. And since he is working on spiritual healing, he just includes that dissertation here, without reference.

VroniPlag Wiki disregarded this in its page count, as there is a slight chance that the advisors accepted this. The medical doctorate is not included on the CV for Tübingen, but the Dr. Dr. is proudly displayed on web pages where the submitter is active.  There are about a quarter of the rest of the pages with plagiarism. A third of these pages include plagiarism on over 75 % of the pages.

Plagiarism in the Pulpit?

The Christian German-language online news portal idea.de has a story about plagiarism in the pulpit. Seems many preachers do a lot of "borrowing" from the Internet. I know my pastor does, I sometimes note down a few good words from his sermon and google where he got this one from.

It seems, though, that there are portals that are expressly made for copying sermons from: Göttinger Predigten, for example. They even now have a weekly Lutheran sermon in English available free of charge.

idea.de goves the theological basis for sermon reuse:

• Jesus notes in Matthew 10:8: "Freely you have received, freely give." [Note: this is, of course, the basis for the Open Access movement]
• Irenäus von Lyon (135-202) noted that a preacher is not the owner of his sermon, since God is the Creator.
  
• The Heidelberg theologian Rudolf Bohren records in his book on sermons, Predigtlehre: "Since there is no intellectual property in the Church of Jesus Christ, I am free to take from others what I need." He also advises that "an ungifted preacher will work much more and better if he uses a good sermon from someone else than if he fails with a self-written one."
  
• The Lutheran pastor for City-Church and Publicity in Esslingen, Peter Schaal-Ahlers deduces from this: Plagiarism from the pulpit contributes to quality assurance within the German Lutheran Church.
  

I don't think it is a problem to get inspiration from other's sermons, but to copy & preach does seem a bit distasteful. In any case, an interesting defense.