What Hath Silicon Valley to Do with Jerusalem?
What Hath Silicon Valley to Do with Jerusalem?
Introducing Image and Artifact: A Statement on Artificial Intelligence
Whatever the evangelical church has made of artificial intelligence so far, it has not made much theology out of it. Or at least much good theology. Responses have sorted into alarm and enthusiasm. The doctrines that actually govern the questions have mostly stayed off the table: the image of God, the nature of the soul, the limits of human making, the idolatry that crouches at the door of every technology we fashion and begin to trust. That absence is what prompted Image and Artifact.
The structure follows the three confessional documents produced by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy between 1978 and 1986: the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics, and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Application. Each uses the same architecture: a preface, a condensed summary, definitional groundwork, and a series of articles in the affirm/deny format. Writing "we affirm that... / we deny that..." forces you to work through exactly what each claim entails and what its proper contradictory is. The form produces a document that can be scrutinized, corrected, and extended, which is what I am hoping for.
Image and Artifact runs twenty-four articles. It begins with the Creator-creature distinction, since nearly everything else depends on getting that right, and works through the image of God, the direct divine giving of the soul, and the difference between a system that imitates the operations of mind and one that actually has one. The ethical articles on truthfulness, idolatry, and justice follow from those foundations. Transhumanism gets its own article, addressed as a counterfeit eschatology, the Tower of Babel rebuilt in silicon. The statement closes with the church's unique offices and means of grace: preaching, the sacraments, human communion, the singular mediation of Christ. Scripture provides the probantia dicta throughout, drawn from both Testaments, and the exposition engages Augustine, Aquinas, Tolkien, Ellul, and Scholem.
Scripture has already answered, in principle, every question artificial intelligence raises. The doctrine of creation covers what it means to make; the image of God covers what it means to be human; the ninth commandment covers deepfakes; the prophets' idol warnings cover what happens when men begin to trust the works of their hands. The task is application. The statement does not reach beyond that: it does not condemn computation, pretend the technology carries no genuine benefit, or prescribe public policy. Reflexive rejection simply hands the field to people with no theology at all.
This is a tentative text, and I mean it. Confessional documents are not the work of one person — the ICBI statements were not — and what I am publishing here is a draft for scrutiny. If an article is imprecise, or a denial overreaches, or an affirmation leaves something important unstated, I want to hear about it, with the argument from Scripture. Responses from those in pastoral ministry dealing with concrete cases, or from anyone persuaded I have missed something doctrinally significant, are especially welcome.
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