The problems with promoting Ai generated Bible teaching

It never really occurred to me to use summarization for Bible passages and chapters, even though you can. I agree with you that this is something the exegete should be doing themselves. It's an important part of the bible study process.

However, I do find it extremely helpful to summarize chapters and subsections of books and of dictionary articles.

So for the first time, I actually used the Summarize feature to summarize passages within the Bible itself. I did Isaiah 66 in the NRSV. It's actually surprisingly good for a machine, especially since this chapter is mostly poetry with a lot of symbolism. It did better with the whole chapter than with just individually pericopes within the chapter:

Isa 66 (Whole Chapter)

The text emphasizes that true worship of God is not about physical sacrifices but about humility and reverence for His word. The Lord declares that He does not need a house built by humans, as everything belongs to Him. He looks favorably upon those who are humble and contrite in spirit. The text criticizes those who perform rituals without genuine faith, equating their actions to heinous acts. It assures that those who reject God's people will face shame, while the Lord will bring retribution to His enemies. The passage also speaks of the miraculous birth of Zion's children, symbolizing hope and restoration. God promises comfort and prosperity to Jerusalem, likening His care to that of a mother. The text concludes with a vision of judgment, where the Lord will come in fire to execute justice against the wicked. It highlights the gathering of nations to witness God's glory and the establishment of a new order where worship will be universal. Ultimately, it warns of the eternal consequences for those who rebel against God.

I agree with you that a preacher/teacher shouldn't rely on these summaries in teaching or sermon prep. But this is a great way to test your understanding of the passage after you've read it yourself. Using this to prepare sermons or bible studies I think would be too tempting for most, I myself would avoid using this summary if I were actually teaching this.

@Mark Barnes (Logos) Is this above summary using commentaries to help summarize the passage or is the AI language model able to handle this all on its own?

"WHAT ARE THOSE MINISTERS TO DO who have a slender apparatus? By a slender apparatus I mean that they have few books, and little or no means wherewith to purchase more. This is a state of things which ought not to exist in any case."

~ Charles Spurgeon

Though I am not vocationally a minister, I have used this quote with my wife on a few too many occasions. Particularly when she points out that it is not just Logos, but Kindle, and dead tree editions. 🙄

Sounds like many independent Baptists I know.

Yet, I have know of many preachers that had nothing more than their bible and preached for many years with that being their only source. One such person told me, "The bible sheds a lot of light on man's writings, if you understand it."

Please don’t talk to my wife about my book budget!!! LOL

Just joking of course!

Hmm this thread has taken a decidedly Western and modern turn. For how long and is how broad a geographic area did preachers have access only to a lectionary or a Bible - either of which might be solely by memory not in physical form? Have we gone too far in equating sermon material with book learning rather that wisdom grown within serious spiritual formation? Have you forgotten the Finnish Apostolic Lutheran Church, a pietist church that uses lay preachers - the two I knew best were a farmer and a carpenter.

You make a good point MJ. I think the difference is the faith community in which and from which the Gospel is lived and preached.

I recently left a church where a pastor committed suicide because he believed taking his anti-depressants revealed a lack of faith in God's ability to heal him. None of the pastors had any formal theological training. They all believed the KJV was the only inspired translation, and each had a strong anti-intellectual bias.

The question to me is not theological training but rather being raised up out of a community by God through the gift of a charism. The ministers and priests that I admire have two traits in common:

1. When they announced their vocation, their friends and family response was "of course" or "what took you so long to recognize"
2. When practicing their vocation, their views change as they counsel their flock … sometimes even requiring a change in denomination.

The concern I have for AI-generated sermons etc is people will quit going to the Lord and get from him what people need to hear. AI can spit out doctrinally pure theology, but that is death if God is not involved. That said, when God gives you something and you need to pull together references and whatnot that you have in mind quickly, AI is superb at doing that. I do it all the time. Unfortunately, if someone would look at my notes, they would have a hard time figuring out what I am saying because they are scattered and full of redundancy. AI does a superb job of sorting out my notes and putting them in a logical order. The point of concern is to not start thinking AI is God's voice. God can use AI to do all sorts of great things to help, but it is never a replacement for hearing from God, and that is where the danger is.

My first meaningful experience with AI was when, a number of years back, I was writing a paper on the crucifixion of Jesus in the Gospel of John, and my precocious 9-year old daughter asked if she could help. She'd been learning about doing "research" in school, and was convinced she could help me identify important contributions. I handed her several hundred printed pages of downloaded PDFs, exported ebook chapters, etc., and she got to work.

About a week later she came back with the pile of papers and a big smile, announcing she had completed the task. I started thumbing through it, and was astounded at how smartly she had identified highly useful material. It wasn't perfect - she was 9 after all! - but she had devised a process for flagging things that seemed to be important, and was clever enough to hand me a set of suggestions that I could then cull in a matter of minutes instead of hours. Quite a few of those suggestions made it into the final paper, after I had gone through the prioritized materials myself and integrated them.

If you cut that week's worth of processing time down to a few seconds, that's basically what generative AI is. It offers the writer not a seasoned and trustworthy research assistant, but an extraordinarily productive junior assistant who can save you tons of time, and even come up with unexpected but useful ideas, but who nonetheless understand things on about the level of a cute 9-year old.

The portions of this court order dealing with the "Hancock Declaration" illustrate my concern about the use of the current generation of AI in research, and especially in drafting sermons. From the beginning of the first full paragraph on page 8:

"The irony. Professor Hancock, a credentialed expert on the dangers of AI and misinformation, has fallen victim to the siren call of relying too heavily on AI—in a case that revolves around the dangers of AI, no less. …"

hmmm… have we forgotten the words of Jesus Himself.. “He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.” - John 12:48. While we may read the books of men, there is only one book that we really need to know… that book, is the bible.

The use of AI, the use of commentaries, the use of other men's writings should only serve the purpose of helping us to understand the one book whereby salvation is promised, the bible. No other book, no AI can promise such as the bible promises. They are only tools to help us in our understanding of the only true word from God, the bible.

When we start depending on other men's writings, or AI then we have chosen to make the bible void of it's promises and turned our attention to the following of mere men and not the words of God.

IMHO…

That's an interesting document! However, I think it merits to quote the following paragraph as well (I put the most relevant parts in bold):

To be clear, the Court does not fault Professor Hancock for using AI for research purposes. AI, in many ways, has the potential to revolutionize legal practice for the better. See Damien Riehl, AI + MSBA: Building Minnesota’s Legal Future, 81-Oct. Bench & Bar of Minn. 26, 30–31 (2024) (describing the Minnesota State Bar Association’s efforts to explore how AI can improve access to justice and the quality of legal representation). But when attorneys and experts abdicate their independent judgment and critical thinking skills in favor of ready-made, AI-generated answers, the quality of our legal profession and the Court’s decisional process suffer. The Court thus adds its voice to a growing chorus of courts around the country declaring the same message: verify AI-generated content in legal submissions!

You wouldn't have your English Bible if not for men and women who relied on "other men's writings." I agree we need to approach the use of AI with care, but the same is true of any powerful tool.

That's fair, and just to be clear, I don't believe that all use of AI is inappropriate. My point is that the technology is less mature and reliable than much of the current hype would suggest - enough so that people who should know better are getting tripped up even in situations where they are fully aware that the stakes are high. I think this legal case is a great example of those dangers. (I also believe the judge was not so much recommending the use of AI as being very careful to clarify exactly what he was censuring, which was filing with the court materials that Professor Hancock had not personally verified.)

It makes perfect sense to me that FaithLife would begin incorporating AI into the Logos platform. I'm just unsettled by how quickly and thoroughly they jumped on the bandwagon and by the they way they seem to be applying it.

I don't want to find myself in Professor Hancock's position. But I know I'm not smarter than he is, and that I know less about AI than he does.

Ai is not just being used to assist Pastors in sermon prep. It will be replacing pastors completely.

There are already AI pastors which are intended to lead you in spiritual disciplines including prayer.

There are already real Pastors that are using AI models to “minister” to their congregations. I could post links but it is easy enough to find in search.

Would any of you feel that God would answer prayers for you given by AI? And if not, why are many pastors already utilizing these apps to replace true Biblical ministry?

The Bible gives qualifications for those who would become ministers. They are to have relationships with wives and children, and to be successful in those human relationships. They also have to have good reputations in and outside of the church.

AI by definition will never meet any of these qualifications because they all presume the minister is a real human.

I personally do not care if AI was trained on your pastors sermons. Once it becomes a spiritual guide or prayer partner, it has crossed Biblical lines into the realm of idolatry.

I too have no issue if others who like AI. But I suspect a congregation learning a sermon was largely AI, would deflate the speaker's credibility (not to mention 'why are paying this guy').

My own use, as earlier, is read the author. He/she's already layers of digestion with AI another.

This is true and while I believe there are concerns with AI - I'm not sure that the "AI Sermons" would be the top of my list - Why? I have known and seen the preaching of another person's sermon (whether historical preacher like Spurgeon, popular preacher or when a pastor visited a conference and preached a message from the conference to the congregation….

Is an AI sermon much different than that type of "Sermon Prep" or the Sermon websites and IIRC Sermon subscription services?

Well, good question. I just finished my book on the cOC's development. One of the arguments they got into, was whether the Holy Spirit was personally indwelled vs the Bible itself. I'd assume ones beliefs would impact an AI sermon vs a preacher's (as to whether any difference).

That's a way to think about it as well…. I was commenting more towards the fact that the pastor/preacher that relies on the sermons of others - whether AI or another preacher was not practicing actual 'Sermon Prep' but more rehearsing a speech prepared for them…

I don't think that's any better. (Or at least not much better - I do trust Spurgeon a bit more than I do GPT-4.) I can see a legitimate use for sermon outline books as a tool to help a very inexperienced preacher learn how to get started, or as a quick way to see how someone else approaches a topic. But any preacher who uses someone else's sermon as a crutch to avoid the hard work of preparing their own message loses all credibility with me.

@Frank Sauer

 I have known and seen the preaching of another person's sermon

There are multiple denominations with books of approved sermons to be read in services where no qualified preacher is available.

That's a bit different. It's essentially the low-tech equivalent of playing a pre-recorded sermon. That makes perfect sense if you don't have a qualified preacher available. But going the other way, I'd have a problem if our congregation's minister lip-synced to an audio recording of someone else's sermon.

Proper training for a deeply flawed tool is an admonition to avoid it.

"Western and modern turn"?

Please define what you mean and how it relates to this discussion.

This is where the deception and evil come in. It is imperative that we are born-again, grounded in God and Christ, and that grounding is based on his word. If you approach AI for help in research and whatnot, and that is not a bad thing, but the word of God is not already richly dwelling in you, then you will be deceived by what AI can spit out. AI may not intentionally try to deceive you, but it is built on the collective wisdom of men which is foolishness to God. A couple of years ago when AI became the buzzword, I knew that it was going to be used for evil, and pastors with no real relationship with God and his word were going to use AI for getting their sermon content. Even if theologically sound, it is still death to both the pastor and his congregation because God's spirit is required. Knowledge in and of itself without the Spirit is death. These things must happen. The deception must come. We, God's people and mouthpieces, need to cling to his word in this dark hour and steer his people carefully around the landmines of deception in this world and especially in the visible Church. In the Western Church, the arrogance and attachment to that golden cup of poison in the whore's hand that sits on the beast is and will continue to cause many to remain blind and they will be led down the path of destruction. It is sad. I don't know how Jeremiah or Ezekiel kept a sound mind in their day. Well I do, but they had to have a lot of grief and sorrow because of the spiritual state of the people that were religious but their hearts were far from God. This is where we are folks.

You can thank the "collective wisdom of men" for the fact that you don't have to learn Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek to read your bible.

I thought I did - for many centuries only the extremely wealthy could afford books if books were available. In many contexts the ministers had memorized the text rather than having a copy to pour over. Similarly, people on the margins linguistically may still have only partial Bibles. The assumptions regarding the availability of texts and the training of ministers and what AI would/would not replace is hopelessly Western and modern. It does not consider what assistance AI could bring to a semi-literate culture.

Churches will not need to send missionaries to foreign lands. They can send robot pastors

"It does not consider what assistance AI could bring to a semi-literate culture." I had never considered this, and I have an MA degree in Anthropology.

@Mark Allison

You can thank the "collective wisdom of men" for the fact that you don't have to learn Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek to read your bible.

Thanks Mark for bringing up the issue of translation. Maybe it is because of my own lack of understanding, but I have yet to see how AI is going to help people learn and study original language languages.

I can easily picture how that AI could be programmed to translate from original languages into another target language. But wouldn’t that require training the AI in original language literature ? and I’m sure none of the big mainstream corporate companies that are investing in AI have any interest in Bible study or translation.

this question also leads to another question of mine, which is how is Lagos max going to help people learn and to study original languages using AI?

I have asked this question before here on the forums and never got much of a response. And I’m not seeing any real enlightenment on the part of Logos as to how AI might be used in the area of original languages. They already have a translator and I suppose that the translation feature could be improved using AI.

But how could AI be used to help students of original than the traditional methods of memorization and practice?

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/ai-bible-translation/

There is some valid insight here - I wonder how many of said semi-literate ministers have access to consistent, stable internet access to benefit from any AI assistance…. As taking for granted stable, consistent access to the web could also be viewed in the modern/Western (or at least developed) worldview…

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/ai-bible-translation/ Here's the link @Mark Allison posted.

Thanks Frank! No matter what I do, I can't make my links hyperlinkable! I add a space after, but that doesn't help.

Are you seeing the small popup after hitting the space bar at the end of the link?

No. I'm using Safari on a Mac. Perhaps that's the reason?

Possibly - if you have pop-ups blocked, I'd try allowing them on the Logos site

To me, AI is different in degree but not in kind from many other things that already exist. If you use a sermon outline from a random book without properly letting the text shape you personally, that makes me uncomfortable. If you have a friend who has read a book already and you ask them for a chapter summary to decide whether you are interested in reading it yourself, I don't see an issue. The fact that AI can enable us to do the same things faster does not change what is ethical and what is not.

Our church has a ministry supporting frontier Bible translation, where many people groups do not have a written language. One of our members is a computer programmer and created an app that lets translators upload their work as they go, and provide it to the indigenous group immediately. After consultation with translators and church planters, they decided to set it up as an Android app, because cheap cell phones charged off solar panels are becoming extremely common, even in some of the most remote places in like the world like Papua. Something like 15 different translators have started using this system since launch a little over a year ago.

Agree with your first view and the second "outreach" testimony is awesome!

Technology has a lot of risks, but I was amazed to see the way God has used it for unreached peoples! There are lots of caveats, like the need to use AM radio quality audio because of the expense of internet access, and a feature in the works to let people share updates from person to person for where it is not available or is inconsistent. But the future of access is staggering.

Before pasting your link, tap the insert media icon. It looks like an empty HTML tag. <> and is just to the left of the paper clip icon.

BTW the article you linked too is very interesting.

Yes, AI is an excellent tool for Bible translation. I am personally using it for that exact reason to translate the LXX.

Septuaginta, hg. v. Alfred Rahlfs, zweite, verbesserte Auflage, hg. v. Robert Hanhart, © 2006 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart

But it is important that the translation is not accepted at face value. It helps to have a working knowledge of Greek too if doing it from a Greek translation. And to check everything against the 4 available translations in English, if doing an English translation, which I am. I think the Gospel Coalition article makes a lot of good points about this:

"That draft can then be used by translators to complete a final translation. In other words, previously translated portions of Scripture are used by AI to generate drafts of other portions of Scripture that are then checked and developed by translation teams."

That is my approach. I am acquainted with some of the folks at Seed Company and they are doing this too out in the field for other languages. AI in and of itself is neither evil nor good. The person using it determines how AI will be used. Just like guns do not kill people, people kill people with guns.

Once AI is in full control of the antichrist, that will be a different story. It will be evil then, and possibly before then.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/ai-bible-translation/

@Todd Sumrall

Once AI is in full control of the antichrist, that will be a different story. It will be evil then, and possibly before then.

Well, that escalated quickly…

I like your humor.

That is where it is heading and there is nothing funny about it.

I think you missed the point … your discussion was pretty much all positive, and then at the end, disaster. How you framed your point.

But I agree, maybe from a differing perspecitve. Even 25 years back, we used neural nets in business analysis and projections. And in presentations, our software had to be 'translated' into human terms for fellow executives. They were well educated, etc, but the machine could accomodate far more factors/influences than the human mind normally can.

And therein lies the problem … the confidence of the human mind, versus the power of silicon. Humans can't not rely on their minds. I've not seen much theological discussion on that … the presumption that the conscious struggling 'mind' is the basis for judgment.

Logos AI, alternatively, delivers 'knowledge' … the old gnostic solution. For old Logosians, that was George's point.

I'm guessing you're not a post-millennialist.

I am still amazed when I see people can't see what is plainly happening in the here and now in this world and how plain it has already been described in the Bible. I know that our, by this I mean the Western Church, is drunk on this world, and drunk on the poison that is in that golden cup that is in the whore's hand that sits on the beast. I was reading 2Peter chapter 2 this morning and more than once the phrase "there will be false", "Many will", "the way of truth will be", "will exploit" and phrases like this over and over in that chapter. This is just a sample of what is in 2 Peter chapter 2. The fact that this is just the way things are and these things are going to be progressively getting worse at an accelerated pace in my generation, does not give me any happiness knowing this even though we are told that this is the reality of the age we live in. I just wish people could see what is happening in the unseen realm more clearly. It is just not possible when we are drinking from that whore's cup and are drunk.