But
this worldview has proven unlivable. People are still searching for
spiritual meaning. The rise of artificial intelligence has ushered in an
era of reenchantment, with AI proselytizers using unscientific,
mystical, and even religious language to describe the technology’s
transformative potential for humanity. They have likened their role as
midwives birthing a nonhuman supersentience or as prophets summoning
gods.
This reenchantment is not value-neutral.
AI is not being developed in an ideological vacuum. Rather, its design
is indelibly shaped by quasi-religious beliefs rooted in digital
gnosticism—a dualistic worldview that seeks transcendence over the
material world by leveraging digital technology.
Ancient
Greek Gnosticism viewed the material world as a cosmic mistake, a
prison from which to escape and ascend to a more true spiritual
existence by divining “secret knowledge.” For digital gnostics, the
limitations of embodied life are existentially vexing. Every
inefficiency, from the ordinary frictions of community to the
inevitability of death, must be overcome through technology. And the
downstream implications—for both the church and religious belief in
America—are legion.
More than 80 years ago, C. S. Lewis issued this warning in The Abolition of Man:
“There
is something which unites magic and applied science [technology] while
separating them from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of
old the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to
objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and
virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality
to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.”
AI
is the digital gnostic’s messiah. It offers every user the gift of
knowledge and power, untethered from wisdom and virtue. So much so that
artificial general intelligence (AGI) has been called humanity’s “last
invention,” after which it will supposedly be able to do all future
inventing for us. If so, our “technological Rapture” is just around the
corner.
Digital gnosticism then, is the “good
news” that we will be saved by merging with the machine, allowing AI to
optimize us for eternal life (as in Bryan Johnson’s “Don’t Die”
movement) or using AI to project our consciousness across the universe.
I
wish I could say this was science fiction, but these are genuine
beliefs flooding a culture now lacking the gravitational pull of
Christianity at its center.
This is why the
church is needed more than ever. As I wrote in The Reason for Church,
“the church is not merely the sum of individuals who believe the same
thing and live in the same geographic area. Every church is a living,
breathing embodiment of the gospel story” (emphasis added).
As
such, weekly worship is a “strange, thin place between a fallen world
and the God who helps us make sense of it all.” It’s no wonder that
widespread dechurching has only made people more desperate for meaning
and less discerning in where to search for it.
Recently,
a Google employee at our church who works with AI asked the students in
our youth ministry, “Where do you go when you have questions you don’t
think your parents will be able to answer?” About a quarter of them said
ChatGPT. We already trust online influencers more than institutions,
and 42 percent of adults use AI for emotional support. Digital
divination—trusting a chatbot to tell us the truth about reality—doesn’t
require a leap of faith.
But what if our
divining isn’t a digital facsimile? What if there are ghosts in the
machine? Scripture reminds us that the spiritual world is just as real
as the material one. God exists, miracles happen, and angels and demons
are at work. Because we wrestle “against the spiritual forces of evil in
the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:15), we can’t categorically dismiss
reports that, as Rod Dreher put it, “evil discarnate intelligences use
[AI] to communicate with people.” If the cardboard and plastic of a
Ouija board can be a gateway to dark spiritual forces, why not digital
ones and zeros?
Whether AI is merely reflecting
our superstitious hopes and fears back at us or there is a ghost in the
machine, Deuteronomy 18 wouldn’t list using mediums, divination, and
necromancy as “abominations to the Lord” if there were no spiritual
risks.
Digital gnosticism will ultimately prove
just as futile as secular materialism. We are creatures made of dirt
and breath. We will never transcend our need for the fullness of
existence. And in Christ, we have it.
Because
American individualism has always been more than a little gnostic, we
often see our union with Christ as a merely spiritual reality. We treat
church as optional, but it never would have occurred to Paul that one
could be spiritually in Christ without fully and physically abiding in
Christ’s body. It is only in the church, Paul says, that “the manifold
wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the
heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10).
If we want to be
reenchanted by the gospel and inoculated to digital gnosticism, we will
need a rechurching even greater than our dechurching. We can start by
devoting ourselves to a local church and participating in the ordinary
means of grace—Word, sacrament, and prayer. In our gathered worship and
witness, we rehearse the drama of redemption. In serving our neighbors
and loving our enemies, we resist artificial intelligence with
otherworldly love.
AI may offer “a shadow of
the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col. 2:17,
ESV). God loves us too much to let us go on existing without him. That’s
why I believe reenchantment will include a greater openness to the
gospel. It is therefore the church’s task—nay, privilege—to welcome
digital gnostics into a true and better enchantment.
Brad
Edwards is the lead pastor at The Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado.
He is the author of CT’s Book of the Year, The Reason for Church, and
cohost of the podcast PostEverything.
Edwards' book The Reason for the Church is Christianity Today's 2025 Book of the Year
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