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Jan 30 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
🧵 #TMSFiles

Did Peter Sammons (@DrDanger1689) plagiarise @Wikipedia in his course 'Doctrine of God and the Decrees' at @MastersSeminary?

I counted 10 separate instances where he read out, word-for-word, content from Wikipedia without any attribution:
drive.proton.me/urls/86YZ45GMD…
/1
In lecture 4.1 of 'Doctrine of God and the Decrees', Sammons reads Wikipedia's definition of 'Aseity' out loud, word-for-word, without any attribution.
/2
In lecture 4.3, Sammons reads the *entire* Wikipedia entry on 'Actus Purus' out loud, verbatim, without any citation of sources.
/3
In lecture 11.2, Sammons uses an older version of Wikipedia's article on 'Deism'. Again, he reads it out loud, word-for-word, without attribution.
/4
In lecture 11.3, Sammons uses Wikipedia's article on 'Semi-Pelagianism'. Spoken verbatim. No citation given.
/5
Equally in lecture 11.3, Sammons uses Wikipedia's article on 'Predestination'. Again, extensive verbatim repetition of what is in the Wikipedia article, with no attribution given.
/6
Wikipedia articles are published under the CCASL3 License, which means you must provide attribution when copying their content:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia…

@Wikipedia Did you provide a waiver to Peter Sammons to exempt him from needing to provide attribution?
/7
This course is publicly available online for $35 at:
institute.tms.edu/library/doctri…

You can verify each of the transcripts above by going to the respective lecture number and timestamp.
/8
Peter Sammons is currently Associate Professor of Theology at Master's Seminary:

tms.edu/faculty/peter-…
/End
FYI @johnmacarthur

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More from @thoughtful_orth

Thoughtful Orthodox Profile picture
Jan 3
In a stroke of irony, modern Thomists:

1. Want to fight secularism in the public square

2. By promoting arguments that do not include the Bible, Jesus, the Gospel or anything else distinctively Christian

↓
The core impulse behind secularism is to remove all explicit references to religion from the public square.

Meanwhile the point of Thomist arguments from 'natural reason' is to use what people naturally think, without any reference to a particular religion.

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If these two sound similar, that is because one (secularism) is a historical development from the other (promotion of 'natural reason').

More generally, they are both cases of man trying to live his life without any of those pesky direct commands from God.

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Dec 21, 2022
We naturally pass on what we value (worship) to our children.

This happens subconsciously and implicitly. They know us, see our priorities and pick them up automatically.

So we shouldn't be surprised when a society that worships sex ends up sexualising its children.
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The sexualizing of children today did not spring out of nowhere. It did not start 1, 5 or even 10 years ago.

It started in the 1960's.

The 'sexual revolution' was not just a social or cultural phenomenon. It was profoundly religious.
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Our predecessors decided to turn sex into a god and put him on the top shelf - above social norms, tradition and, yes, Christianity.

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Aug 9, 2022
As Christians, we need to come to terms with the fact that every non-Christian thinker in history has been God's enemy.
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When faced with an important historical thinker (such as Aristotle) Christians are tempted to lessen the impact of Romans 3:10, 13, 18:

'No one understands;
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We might think that certain *groups* of people are a little exempt: the great figures who shaped civilisation.

Or we might think that certain *aspects* of a person are exempt: their philosophy and politics are good, but their personal life was immoral.
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Jun 17, 2022
Neo-Traditionalism is any movement that seeks to revive the authority of a past human tradition, by simply appealing to the tradition itself.

At first, this looks like a humble admission that modern man has erred and can learn from the wisdom of his predecessors.
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When they resist, he claims that they are arrogantly putting themselves above the tradition.
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In fact, they are simply resisting the neo-traditionalist. They refuse to place his judgement above their own.

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Jun 16, 2022
Many Christians today are afraid of our modern, secular society.

So they seek refuge and resources in the Great Institutions, Great Traditions and Great Thinkers of the past.

They believe that men from the past are most suited to fight men of the present.
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When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.'

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↓
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'God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.'

- 1 Cor 1:27-28
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Jun 16, 2022
Scripture does not just condemn false teaching.

It also condemns teaching that is besides the point, speculative, full of opinions.
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Theologians are especially tempted to be distracted by the unknown.

Creating systems of thought with no more grounding in Scripture than a fantasy novel.
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But the role of a theologian is to teach God's people.

And the goal of teaching is to change us, mind and body, into the image of Christ.
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