Not only mastery of technique and personal spirituality, but also pastoral familiarity is necessary. I’m not simply preaching, but I’m preaching to a particular people who have unique problems and concerns. My sermon on the same passage to the same congregation will change in a different time. My sermon on the same passage in the same time will change if given for a different congregation/audience.
Failing to discern audience is a huge issue in preaching. As Craig Barnes says preaching involves bringing the subtext of the scripture to bear on the subtext of the audiences life.
This is well said and in general I agree. I think my problem with AI and/or plagiarized sermons is not so much about originality as it is about responsibility. The preacher is taking responsibility for the Word and faith as they are expounding on it and that’s something a language model (or an absent and unnamed author) can’t do.
That is helpful, yes. Would you distinguish between reading a sermon by an absent-but-acknowledged author from these two cases, or is there still a problem in your view? (to be clear I'm very skeptical of using AI in sermons and certainly anti-plagiarism where norms of plagiarism exist)
I think reading a sermon with attribution can fit what I think of as "responsibility" here. Even so, while I want always to be orthodox and to preserve the deposit of faith, I don't really think of preaching, liturgically, as mere transmission. "I'm preaching this non-original sermon because I think it is suited to the needs of this particular community at this particular time" is fine, but most of the time an imperfect or ungainly homily preached specifically for the particular community of listeners is better than a classic composed for a different context (provided it meets some basic standards of teaching). But that's a different question from the one that prompted this essay. "Originality" in a literary sense shouldn't be a priority of preaching.
Not only mastery of technique and personal spirituality, but also pastoral familiarity is necessary. I’m not simply preaching, but I’m preaching to a particular people who have unique problems and concerns. My sermon on the same passage to the same congregation will change in a different time. My sermon on the same passage in the same time will change if given for a different congregation/audience.
Failing to discern audience is a huge issue in preaching. As Craig Barnes says preaching involves bringing the subtext of the scripture to bear on the subtext of the audiences life.
This is well said and in general I agree. I think my problem with AI and/or plagiarized sermons is not so much about originality as it is about responsibility. The preacher is taking responsibility for the Word and faith as they are expounding on it and that’s something a language model (or an absent and unnamed author) can’t do.
That is helpful, yes. Would you distinguish between reading a sermon by an absent-but-acknowledged author from these two cases, or is there still a problem in your view? (to be clear I'm very skeptical of using AI in sermons and certainly anti-plagiarism where norms of plagiarism exist)
I think reading a sermon with attribution can fit what I think of as "responsibility" here. Even so, while I want always to be orthodox and to preserve the deposit of faith, I don't really think of preaching, liturgically, as mere transmission. "I'm preaching this non-original sermon because I think it is suited to the needs of this particular community at this particular time" is fine, but most of the time an imperfect or ungainly homily preached specifically for the particular community of listeners is better than a classic composed for a different context (provided it meets some basic standards of teaching). But that's a different question from the one that prompted this essay. "Originality" in a literary sense shouldn't be a priority of preaching.