From the Pastor’s Study
From the Pastor’s Study
Artificial Intelligence Writers
April 12, 2023
“God's justice is a perfect justice. He is not swayed by human emotion or opinion. His decisions are based solely on His divine wisdom and knowledge. He is the one who judges all things and decides what is right and wrong. He is the one who holds us accountable for our actions and gives us the opportunity to make things right with Him.”
The above paragraph was not written by me but was generated using artificial intelligence (AI). Sometimes called “AI Writers” or “AI Generators,” these programs, when prompted with a given topic, generate a few paragraphs relating to that topic. I had asked the program to generate a few paragraphs on the topic of “God is just,” and the above paragraph is the second of five. As I read through the mini-paper which had been generated by the computer, I was quite impressed. Although the writing style leaves much to be desired, the computer did generate five coherent paragraphs that, at first reading, seemed to be fairly close to what the Bible teaches about the topic, “God is just.”
There has been some controversy surrounding AI Writers, particularly in high schools and universities. It is quite possible for students to submit a paper generated by a computer and claim that it is their own work. I am sure that schools are creating rules and laws similar to those regarding plagiarism (submitting someone else’s work as one’s own) which will prohibit students from simply typing in a few words and letting the computer do the rest.
Even pastors could potentially use AI Writers to generate sermons, and one of my Facebook friends did just that. He submitted a topic for a sermon, and the computer generated something that, with a few modifications, he could have used as a sermon. “It wasn’t the worst sermon I have ever read,” he said, “and I could have used it almost in its entirety in a Sunday service.” He didn’t do that, but he was curious if it was possible. I imagine that some unscrupulous pastors might do that very thing, for I have known pastors who have plagiarized sermons to present them as their own. Both plagiarizing and using an AI Writer to produce a sermon are wrong, as we would all agree.
But there is another problem with the products of an AI Writer. As I mentioned, I was quite impressed with what the computer gave me with regard to the topic of “God is just,” but there were some problems with the theology. Note the last line of the quote: God “gives us the opportunity to make things right with Him.” That is incorrect, at least according to Scripture, for Scripture is quite clear that we cannot make things right with God, no matter what we do. It is God who makes things right with us by sending Jesus to this world to die in our place. Technically, while God’s justice is satisfied in that punishment for sin is meted out, and justice is served because of the cross, it is no justice for Jesus that he take the punishment that belongs to us. In fact, when someone is punished for the crimes/sins of another, that is the opposite of justice. The AI Writer probably would never include the idea that we are freed from the consequences of our sin when Jesus bears them on himself. Justice is not served in that case, for we should be punished for our own sins, rather than Jesus receiving the punishment for us. Thus, the AI Writer, although it produced something that sounds right on first reading, does not fully understand God’s grace through Jesus Christ. What the AI writer produced was outright heresy false teaching), and heresy destroys the gospel.
I thought, perhaps, that if I did a bit more “research” and used the AI writer to speak to a similar topic, I might get some better information. I gave the AI Writer the words, “substitutionary atonement,” and once again in a few seconds I received four paragraphs relating to the fact that Jesus became our substitute when he died on the cross. This time I was disappointed by what the computer gave me, for it seemed that it repeated the same ideas over and over, and it seemed that most of the sentences were lifted from other websites (plagiarized) and presented in a somewhat logical manner. And, sadly, the level of writing was of that of someone in Grade 4 who was copying and pasting from the Internet.
I have to be honest that even while there were weaknesses in both mini-papers generated for me by the computer, I was quite impressed that a computer was able to come up with as much information as it did and then produce into a readable and coherent form.
That being said, I was alarmed that the computer produced something that clearly contradicts the teachings of Scripture. I don’t know how the computer generated its mini-paper, but I suspect that when given a topic, it accesses thousands (perhaps millions) of websites, takes sentences out of them, and then forms them together into a somewhat coherent whole. I’m guessing that without the sheer volume of information in cyberspace the computer could not create even a sentence on a given topic.
The problem with this is that the computer is using the writings of others to generate its ideas. This is a similar problem that we could see at the time of the Reformation more than 500 years ago. Scholars were relying on other scholars and quoting them to make arguments, and that was leading the church to deviate from the truth. Martin Luther, as well as many others, returned to Scripture and rediscovered what the Bible had to say. In his most quoted speech, Here I Stand, Luther said that in order to know God’s will and way, one needed only the Bible which was divinely inspired. Human authors can lead us astray, and we are easily led by them. Luther determined to base his understanding of God and salvation only on Scripture, and for that he was expelled from the church.
It could well be that the church is heading toward a similar situation as the one we find in the time of the Reformation. Certainly any pastor who relies on the computer to generate a sermon is not only sinning but could be considered lazy and a fool. At the same time how many times don’t we find ourselves turning to the Internet to give us understanding? And, even more pervasive are the multitude of devotionals (many of them excellent) which we read in lieu of Scripture for our daily devotions. Certainly we can be blessed by the teachings and insights of others, for they can help us understand God’s Word, but we must return always to revealed Scripture as that on which we stand.
One thing is certain: my computer does now know Scripture, and it is not well-versed in good theology. It simply relies on others for their input, and, because it does not evaluate that input against Scripture, it becomes guilty of producing heresy (false teaching). At one time heretics were burned at the stake. I don’t think I’ll burn my computer, but I won’t allow it to write my sermons either.
Pastor Gary
