“I believe plagiarism is a sin, but of course, I believe there is such a thing as sin.” Douglas Wilson

Tonight I want to call your attention to another one of the 70+ images that Rachel Miller uploaded ten days ago: Page 530 of Omnibus III: Reformation to the Present (eds. Douglas Wilson & G. Tyler Fischer; Veritas Press, 2006). In today’s example, appended below, the Omnibus editor filched his text from sparknotes.com, and once you get past the array of yellow, pink, gray, blue, peach, and green, which color-coordinates how the plagiarist wove the copy together, please notice the peach-highlighted plagiarized statement of faith:

“Christ, who gave His life for the greater glory of mankind.”

This particular instance of plagiarism is slightly more problematic for the Omnibus editors because of what it means. Most Christians recognize this as a chief article liberalism, or universalism, and most Christians understand that this tenet denies what the Bible actually teaches about the death of Christ — namely, “the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.” (Galatians 1:3–4.) The death & resurrection of Christ is the foundation of Christianity. It is the hope of all Christians, for we believe that God judged our sins in Christ on Calvary. The Lord Jesus died in our stead that we may live forever. This is the gospel of God. It is the teaching of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. It is the teaching of the apostles, the Church Fathers, the Reformers, and I suspect many believed it was the teaching of the so-called Classical Christian Education movement. However, this instance of plagiarism nullifies the biblical doctrine of the death of Christ in order to advance liberal dogma: “Christ, who gave His life for the greater glory of mankind.”

This particular instance of plagiarism is also problematic for the Omnibus editors because of how the thief reworded the plagiarized caption. This was not a sloppy cut & paste job where the editor blindly copied from his browser to his text editor, as with other cases. Rather, the plagiarist finessed the text, including the sentence at hand, to give it his own touch. Notice how SparkNotes uses the word humankind, saying, “Christ, who gave His life for the greater glory of humankind”; but Omnibus says mankind, stating, “Christ, who gave His life for the greater glory of mankind.” Someone with editorial responsibility in the Omnibus project dropped the two letters hu. This doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence; it simply demonstrates calculation.

Therefore, if we take the Omnibus at face value, we may conclude that Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, and Tyler Fischer believe that “Christ . . . gave His life for the greater glory of mankind.” This would mean that neither man understands the Christian faith, or possibly both men deny the Christian faith, and both men should be removed from office — Doug Wilson from the office of minister and Ty Fischer from the office of headmaster. However, if we give these men the judgment of charity, we could argue that neither man bothered to read the textbooks that each claimed to edit. This may sound unkind, but Doug Wilson has established a pattern of claiming he didn’t read the books he edited. He did this with Southern Slavery As It Was; he did it again with A Justice Primer; and we should expect him to make a similar claim regarding the Omnibus: “I never saw a final transcript of the book before it went to press,” or the like.

However they explain this, if they ever explain it, the good news for Douglas Wilson, Ty Fischer, and Veritas Press is that Christ gave his life for the sins of the world — even the sin of plagiarism.