PLAGIARIZED THEOLOGY

Before the advent of AI, plagiarism was the English teacher's reigning "bane of existence".

I spent hours warning students against plagiarizing the work of other authors. 

From a lawyer's perspective, plagiarism is theft of intellectual property. And it carries a penalty. 

It is not illegal to steal ideas, of course - those are there for the taking - but one cannot "borrow" someone else's words or even their sentence structure. (You don't avoid a charge of plagiarism by using a thesaurus to swap out a few of the original words with their synonyms.)

I would often push the possibility of legal consequences of "copying and pasting" to instill a bit of fear in my students.

But my real concern over any student copying his source was that it proved the student had been lazy and had not really gained understanding of the concepts under review. 

This is the reason English teachers repeat the refrain "Put this in your own words". It is proof of comprehension.  

So the first problem with plagiarism is that the student has not actually learned anything at all.

A second and related problem sometimes occurs: With no understanding of his own, the student has no way to judge his source's expertise or veracity. He can only hope it is valid and relevant information. Every English teacher heaves a great sigh at finding Wikipedia in a student's bibliography. 

I say all this to draw a parallel to how theology and doctrines are conveyed and "learned" by most Christians: 

• Being able to parrot your sources - books, podcasts, or your own preacher - does not prove you have true comprehension. You will not be able to fool the Teacher. 

• Worse yet, if you possess no independent, firsthand understanding of Jesus or Scripture, how do you know you can trust your sources?