In Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic Blade Runner, Harrison Ford plays an LAPD bounty hunter who hunts “replicants,” bioengineered humanoids that are identical to adult humans except with vastly superior intellect and strength. When Ford’s character is told to “retire” a replicant, he faces the initial task of discerning whether the subject before him is human or not. Christians may soon be asking a similar question: Are the sermons and Bible lessons we’re hearing human or not?
The advent of ChatGPT and other accessible AI programs has thinkers positing all the ways it can aid, or even replace, our work. A pastor’s work isn’t immune from this danger, because ChatGPT can produce surprisingly good sermons. At the time of writing, the content that AI programs produce is superficial and basic, but the programs can accurately explain and apply a text from Scripture.
At present, AI appears to produce factual sermons that lack emotion and passion. But it’s only a matter of time until AI programs can better approximate human emotion and depth in their responses. So will human-authored sermons only remain relevant until the next advance in the algorithm? No.
No matter how advanced language-modeling AI becomes, it’ll never replace great sermon writing and preaching. Here’s why.
Great Preaching Is ‘Logic on Fire’
Replacing pastor-prepared sermons with those prepared by AI is categorically impossible. Doing so ignores what the sermon is and requires.
Christians may soon be asking, Are the sermons and Bible lessons we’re hearing human or not?
What is preaching? Here’s how Martyn Lloyd-Jones answered this question: “Logic on fire!” He explained that preaching is a marriage of reason and spirit. It’s not merely a transfer of information; rather, the mind is on fire with the Holy Spirit’s filling.
Remember what the Lord promised his people: “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:15). These are leaders reminiscent of David (1 Sam. 13:14) who shepherded the people as God shepherded him. Matthew Henry explained, “Pastors after God’s own heart . . . make it their business to feed the flock . . . as David fed them, in the integrity of his heart and by the skilfulness [sic] of his hand” (Ps. 78:72).
If a sermon is “logic on fire,” then both its preparation and delivery require a mind and heart that the Holy Spirit empowers to love God and love people. Let’s break this down.
1. Sermons require communion with God.
In Ephesians 1:17, Paul prayed that the church might have “the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of [God].” John Stott reminds us Paul’s description of knowing God is more nuanced than the common Greek understanding. Paul wrote of a knowledge that’s both rational and experiential.
Following the Greek understanding, knowledge is based purely on rationality. But in the Hebrew understanding, knowledge also includes love. We’re beings that long for what J. H. Bavinck called “Wirbildung,” the cultivation of we. We long for love that draws us into a bond that transcends the self.
Ultimately, this longing is only satisfied by a knowledge of God based on love.
2. Sermons require knowledge of people.
When I began in ministry, an older friend told me, “Shepherds smell like sheep.” His meaning: the pastor’s preaching ministry becomes more effective in proportion to the time he spends with people. An awareness of their needs, doubts, and aspirations guides the application of biblical texts. Witnessing how God has worked in people’s lives over the course of years will season the counsel, encouragements, and exhortations. The most effective sermons aren’t just the product of theological training but also of pastoral experience.
3. Sermons require the anointing of God.
No AI, even one trained in all the world’s theological libraries, can replace the pastor-prepared sermon. Lloyd-Jones pointed out that, despite all their theological knowledge, the apostles were routinely described in the book of Acts as being filled with the Holy Spirit in their preaching. This unction, anointing in the Spirit, must begin in the pastor’s preparation. Great sermons won’t be written by ChatGPT and then delivered by a passionate preacher. No, preparation and unction are symbiotic and complementary. “The right way to look upon the unction of the Spirit,” wrote Lloyd-Jones, “is to think of it as that which comes upon the preparation.”
Can AI fulfill all these requirements?
God Doesn’t Fill Machinery but Men
As Joe Carter thoroughly explains, language-modeling AIs such as ChatGPT imitate something they’ll never truly possess: a first-person experience of God and his world.
AI technologies lack the key requirement needed for great sermons. They lack a mind filled with the Holy Spirit.
Joshua Rasmussen, a philosopher of the mind, argued that artificial intelligence lacks the building blocks for thoughts and feelings—it lacks a mind. So while ChatGPT or Google’s LaMDA might be able to convincingly give a third-person explanation of the world, even in a manner like you and I are able to articulate it, they don’t have the first-person experience of being part of the reality they’re describing. Their “intelligence” is artificial, which means “not in the sense of having conscious awareness of intelligence, but rather just having a functional kind of advanced programming.”
For this reason, AI technologies lack the key requirement needed for great sermons. They lack a mind filled with the Holy Spirit. As E. M. Bounds wrote in Power Through Prayer, “The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men.”
People have argued that ChatGPT lacks heart in its sermons, a limitation that will disappear as it better approximates human emotion. But that’s not the core of the issue. AI will never replace human-authored sermons because it lacks a mind that knows God and is empowered by his Spirit—a mind the Holy Spirit illuminates and sets ablaze, a heart that knows and loves God, and a soul that delivers embodied knowledge to his people.
The Gospel Coalition