This year at CT, we’ve been focusing (understandably so!) on questions around artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI tools—models like Grok and Claude that use prompts to create original text or images. In addition to many of the stories in our July/August issue, our online coverage has recently taken on what ChatGPT means for Christian education, the efficacy of AI prayers, and whether churches should use AI tools to answer seekers’ questions.
But AI also underlies many of the technologies we’ve come to think of as more mundane, including dating apps. “I had similar experiences with apps to what is described and ended up finding my current spouse through offline means from a personal connection,” wrote Wes Hurd of Washington, DC, in response to reporter Harvest Prude’s story on algorithmic matchmaking, “What Algorithms Have Brought Together.”
So how can the church actually help young people connect with each other? Speed dating programs? Swing dancing and pickleball? “I think the cure for this is not necessarily new programs or paradigms,” Hurd added, “but a restoration of soul care, pastoral care, and relationality between pastors and the people who come to their churches.”
We’ll keep covering these interplays at the heart of AI discourse—between the digital and the embodied, new interventions and steadfast tradition—in the months ahead.
Kate Lucky, senior editor, features
What Is (Artificial) Intelligence?
Kudos to Christianity Today for raising thoughtful questions, including the vital starting point “What is intelligence?” How can we navigate AI if we can’t first define human intelligence? That said, I was surprised the roundtable didn’t include experts in human intelligence. Behavioral scientists have grappled with this. While definitions vary, psychology offers well-established frameworks—like Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences, Robert Sternberg’s wisdom-based models, and John Flavell’s work on metacognition—that speak directly to these questions. The lack of consensus in psychology reveals the profound complexity of the issue. Ignoring these insights risks reinventing the wheel without a clear foundation, perpetuating guesswork even while raising thoughtful questions. This may be one of Silicon Valley’s core missteps: developing AI without grounding in theological, philosophical, or psychological understandings of what it means to be human. Yes, biology and psychology have at times been at odds with an imago Dei framework—but even through secular insights, God’s truth can shine.
Stephanie Wilsey, Beaver Falls, PA
A possible Christian definition of intelligence is the ability to make righteous choices before God. This, we believe, is where our greatest utility, happiness, or well-being lies. If we stick to the definition above, it is hard to imagine how AI systems will ever be able to optimize their own well-being in the way just described. To ascribe this sort of intelligence to AI would be nonsensical. The increase in human well-being that AI can bring will always be limited and instrumental. AI can make our lives more comfortable, and that is of course a very commendable end. It may even be pleasing to God. But even so, artificial intelligence will always be only an instrument in effecting the choices we have to intelligently make ourselves. And AI can certainly not bring us to where our ultimate happiness or utility lies: in the full realization of the kingdom of God. That is something that not even human intelligence and the rational choices it implies can bring about.
Johan Serré, Berlaar, Belgium
When We Make Intelligence In our Image
AI in its current infancy is already capable of great feats of intelligence. I am surprised that Timothy Dalrymple rejects the ability of AI to create intelligent beings. Even if he is ultimately correct and AI creates something less threatening, I can easily imagine AI (and its human guides) creating a humanoid with fake skin, blood, and bones but with supercognitive ability. It might not be a genuine being, but we’d be easily fooled by a fake. If we find it impossible to recognize an altered photograph right now, the former scenario is not far off. The challenge is much greater than simply refusing to anthropomorphize AI.
Andrew Cornell, Dresden, Ontario
I am an AI researcher, a Christian, a signer of the Southern Baptist statement on AI, and currently writing a book on computer and AI ethics. I have been warning people about “science-fiction AI” for decades. I regularly have the weird experience of being squelched in conversations because I actually know how chatbots work and people don’t like me spoiling their fantasies. If we ever do make a conscious machine (which I do not see any way of doing), we will not have created consciousness, only transplanted ours into something else.
Michael A. Covington
Unlearning the Gospel of Efficiency
As a scientist working for a biotech company, I have witnessed AI take a prominent seat in our corporate goals since a couple of years ago. The aim is to boost efficiency as we have slowed hiring due to economic headwinds. That’s why I found Kelly M. Kapic’s reflection so refreshing. It’s a vital reminder that our human flourishing is not dependent on productivity, but rather on a relationship with a loving and faithful God.
Jane Hui, Vancouver, British Columbia
God Remembers in Our Dementia
I see this daily in my work with hospice. Much grief would be mended by acknowledging what’s changed and loving what remains.
@therobbyortiz (Instagram)
We have been walking this journey with our mom for the past seven years. There are and have been many tears of anger (at the disease and God) and sadness as we watch her continue to suffer and decline. This has challenged my faith like no other.
@kdebeer63 (Instagram)
This article appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Responses to Our July/August Issue".
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