In November 2022, OpenAI released the now wildly popular ChatGPT, which it styles as “an AI-powered language model … capable of generating human-like text based on context and past conversations.” The platform raised, and continues to raise, all sorts of ethical questions, which we do not have time to delve into now.
More recently, Christian programmer Nils Gulbranson released Biblemate.io, a “Christian” version of ChatGPT, which promises to offer biblical answers to life’s difficult questions. Gulbranson recalls asking lots of questions in Bible studies growing up and googling various difficult topics to find differing opinions on them. He remembers digging through sermons and scouring YouTube to find answers that satisfied him. When he started working on Biblemate.io, he hoped that it would become the answer-giving platform he wishes he’d had as a teen..
Biblemate.io relies on an ever-growing database of sermons, books, and academic articles to inform its answers. When asked how Biblemate.io differs from ChatGPT, he answered, “The big difference from ChatGPT is that it’s a model grounded in a biblical and theological view of the world.” He hopes that the platform will prove useful to pastors writing sermons, church volunteers producing Bible study guides, and teens who want to investigate biblical truth. The benefit of the platform, he argues, is its ability to simplify answers to complex topics. “You type in a hard-to-understand theological concept, and it would dumb it down and explain it to you the way you would to a five-year-old kid.” Biblemate.io, he says, promises “responses rooted in unwavering biblical truth.”
Gulbranson is not alone in seeking to provide a Christian alternative to ChatGPT. Joe Suh is the engineer in charge of Pastors.ai, a chatbot that draws on library sermons to answer people’s questions. “I wanted to be able to ask my pastor some very personal questions,” he explained. “How should Christians think about divorce? How do we love our LGBTQ+ neighbours? Questions I would be a little shy to ask in person. Now we can do that, because it’s read hundreds of hours of sermons.”
How should Christians think about artificial intelligence platforms like Biblemate.io and Pastors.ai? What purpose might these tools serve in the Christian walk and the life of the local church? Ought we to view them with excitement or scepticism?
As I have said, the popularity of these platforms raises a host of interesting theological, philosophical, and ethical questions. But Christians should realise that, however they think about artificial intelligence, it will never serve as a replacement for the community of the local church—because the church is about more than information.
Artificial intelligence platforms work quite simply: Input a question about the information required and the system outputs the information you need. It’s all about trading information. While some Christians treat church similarly—it’s about getting my sermon for the week, whether in person or via live-stream—God’s design for the church is quite different.
Paul described the church as “a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). A “pillar” is designed to support, while a “buttress” serves to strengthen. According to Paul, then, the church is not designed merely to output information, but to support and strengthen “the truth.” Without the church, God’s truth will not be supported and strengthened. This is not because God’s truth is incapable of standing on its own; it’s just the way that God has designed it to be. The church is central to God’s intentions for the truth.
Artificial intelligence platforms, no matter how informed by a Christian worldview, treat truth as little more than information. If the AI has access to sufficient, correct information, it is perfectly capable—it is thought—of offering correct answers. This thinking overlooks the God-designed relational design between his truth and his church.
In her upcoming book, The Ballot and the Bible, Kaitlyn Schiess warns, “The words of the Bible are not open to any and every interpretation, in part because they are intended to be interpreted in a particular context: the gathered people of God.” I think she is right: God intends truth to be considered and interpreted in community. Christianity is not about “me and my Bible.” The church is God’s ordained custodian of the truth.
This does not mean that the church is the infallible source or interpreter of Christian truth, as the Roman Catholic tradition might insist. Indeed, Paul emphasises his writing (v. 14) as the truth of which the church is the custodian. The church does not determine truth, but it does firmly support God’s truth in a world that opposes truth. “Every church,” writes Philip Ryken, “is a pillar that helps to bolster the truth of Jesus Christ by holding it up for the world.”
Since God has appointed the church as “a pillar and buttress of the truth,” Christians should be careful of outsourcing their interest in truth to things that are not the church. Christian truth is best supported and strengthened in the context of a church community. To divorce oneself from this community is to weaken one’s grasp of and commitment to the truth. No artificial intelligence will ever replace the local church as a pillar and buttress of the truth.
It might be helpful at this point to ask how the church serves to support and strengthen the truth. Entire sermon series could be preached on this, but consider, briefly, five ways in which this is true.
First, the church supports and strengthens the truth by believing the truth. The church must be a community committed to “believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets” (Acts 24:14). God has given us his authoritative truth in the written Scriptures and the church should be a community of people committed to the authority of that written truth. A church that disregards truth in favour of worldly popularity has forsaken its role as a pillar and buttress of the truth.
Second, the church supports and strengthens the truth by obeying the truth. Jesus pronounced a blessing on those “who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28). It is fruitless to profess belief in the truth if we are not committed to obeying it. God’s truth often runs contrary to popular narrative, but the church is a community of people committed to obeying what God’s truth has revealed, or else it has abandoned its role as a pillar and buttress of the truth.
Third, the church supports and strengthens the truth by defending the truth. Paul understood that God had placed him in the Christian community “for the defence of the gospel” (Philippians 1:15). God expects his community to not only believe and obey his truth but to actively defend it against those who would assault it. We live in a world that opposes truth on every side, and the church is the community that God has appointed to defend that truth. A church that does not do so has neglected its role as a pillar and buttress of the truth.
Fourth, the church supports and strengthens the truth by living the truth. This is closely aligned to obeying the truth, but Paul said that Christians are to “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour” (Titus 2:10). It is the church’s task to show God’s truth to be attractive to a watching world. This cannot be done, as so many churches try to do, by compromise. Instead, the church should live God’s truth in such a way that it gives the aroma of Christ to those who are interested in truth. A church that is obnoxious and mean-spirited in its commitment to the truth has discarded its responsibility to be a pillar and buttress of the truth.
Fifth, the church supports and strengthens the truth by proclaiming the truth. The church’s primary responsibility is to make disciples of Jesus Christ in all nations. It does this through evangelising, baptising, and discipling converts under Christ’s authority (Matthew 28:18–20). A church that does not declare the truth of which it is a custodian is a church that has deserted its responsibility to be a pillar and buttress of the truth.
Asking questions is good and healthy, and seeking the correct information in answering those questions is necessary to Christian discipleship. While AI may serve a purpose, Christians should never displace the church in their quest to know the truth, for the church, by God’s design, is a pillar and buttress of the truth.