Mike

That's not MY position. I've said that all revelations belong to God. This would be in the family of God setting.... rural Ohio... not marketplace, not academia. As far as God owning absolutely everything... no... that's future. There are indications that the first century church got into "all things common." When an where Christians agree to do this, it's ok to do it. Usually that agreement deteriorates, though. Can you see how my position greatly differs from the rag you dragged in from the slush? In the market and academy plagiarism is stealing. In God's family the revelations are to be shared.

I often feel the way you do GoldStar. But later I cool down and realize something. What I realize is that the organizers here allow me to post pretty much anything. HOWEVER, I also must to be prepared to allow them say pretty much anything back to me. It can get pretty hairy, and surprisingly upsetting. No matter how thick my skin gets, it still hurts to have someone trash over or miss my points. With the freedom comes the fire. ....anyway that's how I handle it. Good Luck

I heard that BG came personally to the 1986 or 87 ROA and was very angry that TWI taught that SIT was not a gift. This was pretty well known, but got lost in the POP and all.

I agree. I found that hardly anyone took the "all things common" idea seriously. I was a little shocked at how far some were from thinking that way. I totally agree with you. But I was referring to 1940s and 1950s rural Ohio churchy people. I think they did it with books and pamphlets and things like that. That's my strong impression from all the history I've heard.

No. The I'm describing the two places where plagiarism matters. First place is the big book publishers and bookstores and the authors. The US Constitution makes special note of importance of intellectual ideas in this marketplace. Ditto with inventions. Here plagiarism means interfering with the market. It's like shoplifting or worse. The second place is academia where degrees and grades matter. Plagiarism undercuts the whole process. Our entire society rest on these two pillars, among others. I think all of the GreaseSpot arguments are valid for matters within these two major institutions. What VPW engaged in was never within these two institutions, though he had aspirations there. TWI never quite made it. In the early days it was VERY far from. It was a rural farmer country church family. Plagiarism doesn't matter there. What matters is the people get fed the Word.

Stealing only has meaning in the marketplace and the academy. Within God's family, it's share and share alike, all things common. Usually in our culture we don't allow this for many things, but for the teaching of the Word in rural farmland churches it was allowed. I don't believe it was stealing. This was not the marketplace and not the academy. How many times and ways do you want me to say that?

You have explained my point C) accurately here. I think it's cool it came out that way. I imagine God had foreknowledge of it. What a great (and humorous) way to inject His Word into the public domain.

Then there's C) where the new TWI is hesitant to enforce their inherited copyright on the books because they don't want anything like A) to come out in the courts. Those books were digitized around 2001 and widely distributed in .PDF files so they are now a defacto public domain item. Also, the film class was posted on FaceBook and YouTube for a while.

Correction: ALL of the SNS tapes and several other categories were NEVER copyrighted, and are now posted on the Internetarchive.org along with Bishop Pillai and a few other surprises. A TWI lawyer threatened to shut down the compilers of the set of mp3 recordings, but was backed off by the compilers' lawyer pointing out the lack of copyrights meant "back off." They backed off. I think the film class was not copyrighted until 1982. I would say both A) and B) are too distorted for me to endorse. My analysis is more PLACE oriented than person oriented. Plagiarism is bad in the marketplace of books and in the University setting. Plagiarism is meaningless in the family of God, especially a rural country church. Within the family A) is adaptable. I did hear some talk like B) when the film class finally was copyrighted.

I thought if I stated that I was going to limit myself to answering a few vwp related comments prior to mine. I thought everyone was to limit their vpw talk in Open.

WoW! I just read the article. Interesting. Seems plagiarism is complicated enough to have an entire website! I actually agree with most of the stated plagiarism ethics held forth here by posters.... when it comes to the marketplace of ideas and in the academies of learning which include science. I think TWI wanted to graduate from local church/family to the marketplace, i.e. real bookstores, as well as the academy, i.e. accredited colleges. But it failed. It just barely came up to those two levels in 1985, and then it blew up. Many say it didn't even barely make it. You can see that corporate desire in the baby steps they took to line up with copyrights and citations. But TWI actually, most of the time, was just a back woods church family. Plagiarism is not an issue here. There's no intellectual ownership in God's family, because God owns it. Of course, the market and the academy cannot recognize that. I can. I liked it the way it was for the early books. I think the marketplace and the academy are too stuffy. I hob-knob with professors and scientists, but I don't want to be like them. I self publish my books to my micro-market. I give away my intellectual property on FaceBook. That's me. Shorthair Hippie.

Well once again I was wrong. I thought that the Open or Doctrinal forums would be non-about-the-way and non-vpw. What happened to Bolshevek? His ideas were turning me on. I've heard others talk that way long ago. I've had some of the same thoughts.

I can distinctly remember a time in late 1971 or early 72 where I heard someone complain the vpw stole the pfal class from Bullinger's "How to Enjoy the Bible." I had just gotten my first PFAL book and I looked at their copy of Bullinger's version. I was SO GLAD for the simplicity and easy read vpw's version was. TOTALLY a better presentation for non-scholars.

Once again: when the ministry was simple farmers and townsfolk the citations of sources was informal and even personal. When the ministry was hippies the level of citation increased a little. When the ministry got a little more intellectual the citations increased a lot. I'm glad I did not receive those little booklets all cluttered up with footnotes. I had no need for citations. Just NONE. But haven't we been over this many times now? I'm tired of it. I was hoping for some insights and brainstorming on creative thought: real or illusion. A similar thing happened when I wanted to talk about proofs in general, and proofs others liked, but a vpw-free conversation was impossible there also.

I'll try to find one. Years ago I had all that stuff at arm's length, but no more. Meanwhile, the series of editions to RHST is an example of tweaking. The original from Styles was tweaked in places, then RHST was tweaked in places, and so on for 7 editions. The other books got many minor tweaks, but they were called Printings instead of Editions.

That long transcript shows that he first had to work the 5-senses research. The primary revelations regarded what to include and what to exclude. Tweaking little fixes. He said that some of his sources also got revelation. What kind did they get? Origination type of divine dictation? Or sorting through prior sources like vpw? I don't know.

I can vaguely remember Word Wolf bringing up contradictions in vpw's stories, involving train trip timing and maybe also book burnings or at the dump. That can happen with anybody. As far as revelations go his public record is that it was skimpy. I knew old timers who said he talked a little privately about some visions. But his personal revelations were not a prominent part of his teaching, like they are with some preachers. *** I wonder if all true original creative thinking is given by revelation. Or is it just some, and the rest is mechanically cranked out? From many scriptures the glory of man and the grandeur of man's intellect is portrayed as illusory. I wonder if we can really think creatively in this sense.

Here's another passage about receiving direct revelation: "But there was a hunger in my heart and God said He'd teach me the Word if I'd teach it, but I had to study, I had to work. And revelation begins--this is why I know this so well--revelation begins where the senses cease. What you can know by your senses, God expects you to know. He expects you to study the work that have already been worked out. Men like Bulinger; men like Stevie Ginsberg; God expected me to work those men and countless others. But, He taught me how to get the error out when there was any. And out of that process He taught me then, what was truth. And when there was no way of knowing it, and I'd researched to my fullest ability--tried to find out, then, if there is no other way, He showed it to me by direct revelation."

What he said verbally and privately was different. He could be totally wrong also. What he committed to tape and print was a lot different. If you search GreaseSpot for “SNS Tape #214” you’ll find a long transcript on this towards the end of page 10 of the thread “The Wierwille Legacy: Who Will Write The Book?” That transcript is the 1965 tape I mentioned above. You can see the two kinds of author in his depictions there. Here is but one: “And so I'd read the Word; I'd read it--I'd read it. Then I'd work, start looking--start working, and as we began working this Word of God, is when light began to dawn. And wonderful things that God did for us, He brought men and women across our paths who came just at the right time to help us in our light--men who had gone so far, but no further. But God brought these men so that we could go further because these men brought light. Men like Rufus Mosely; men like E. Stanley Jones; men like Albert Cliff; men like Star Daley; God brought all of these men and others--many of them, across our pathways, just at the right time to add to this revelation and enable us to walk on the Word and understand it.” The early academic orthodoxy get a totally different depiction.

We've heard here that they were mavericks. I think they got revelations. I think they were cutting edge and outside the orthodoxy. I think it was the official professors and the established church positions that he dumped and burned. Years later his search brought him to these other "non-theological" authors.

PFAL p. 119,120 The first word in II Timothy 2:15 is “Study.” The very first thing a person must do to rightly divide The Word is study. He is not told to study commentaries or secular writers; he must study The Word. If we are ever going to rightly divide The Word, we have to study The Word and not what people say about it. For years I did nothing but read around the Word of God. I used to read two or three theological works weekly for month after month and year after year. I knew what Professor so-and-so said, what Dr. so-and-so and the Right Reverend so-and-so said, but I could not quote you The Word. I had not read it. One day I finally became so disgusted and tired of reading around The Word that I hauled over 3,000 volumes of theological works to the city dump. I decided to quit reading around The Word. Consequently, I have spent years studying The Word – its integrity, its meaning, its words. That’s from the book. The film class may have differed a bit. It looks to me there was only one type of book he burned. The orthodoxy of his education and church upbringing. I think he was discouraged by them in 1942 when he realized there was no authoritative text or translation anywhere. He mentions other books later in his search that helped him. I think Bullinger, Styles, Kenyon would fit here. *** But we've argued these points endlessly here. Let's get back to ORIGINALITY.

I have access and will check. But I'm MUCH more interested in the idea of creative thought in general.

E-gads, Bolshevik! I'm agreeing with you almost too much! *** I thought this thread was in the Doctrinal forum, but I just noticed it’s Open. Either way, I’m more into the Philosophy being presented here, so I will limit myself to these remarks on vpw and the claim he hid his sources and deceived us into thinking they were his own. In the earliest days the authors of his books were certainly known to the whole tiny ministry. Their books would be read and even sold there. Sometimes the authors were invited to HQ to speak. I feel there was a feeling of communal first century “ownership” of ideas afoot there, and it included the authors invited. It was an “all things common” thing. God was the real owner and they were all about doing His work, not in blowing their own horn. They were all advertising for each other in an intra-ministry network of cutting edge authors. In 1965 on a SNS tape (transcript posted) he cited many of his early sources. He did this often on tapes. In the 1972 book WLIV vpw cites more sources AND clearly explains (and has been often posted here) that he did NOT originate the ideas, and that he only put them together. In the later 70s ad early 80s, as the ministry grew a little out from the early anti-intellectual mode, more formal citations were used in the new books. Songbook use was also brought in line to modern formalism. *** Now back to the FASCINATING philosophy involving creative thought.

Bingo!

Was it Einstein who claimed he saw farther because he stood on the shoulders of giants? Or was he quoting that? Or stealing it?