Pilot launch Pilot: 2 courses are open now; the other 148 are being checked. Details
PT8E

Christianity and Artificial Intelligence

Practical Theology Elective 58 lectures about 17 hours of reading English Program
Home › Curriculum › Practical Theology › PT8E Christianity and Artificial Intelligence

You can read the lectures without signing in. Enrolling is for tracking progress and earning a certificate.

Sign in to enrol

Review by summary → Open the course map →

Free certificate promotion: course certificates issued up to November 30, 2026 (New York time) are free. Afterwards a course certificate is planned to cost US$10.00; track certificates stay free. A certificate that has been issued is never taken back.

Twenty units on the one technology no seminary curriculum anticipated. The course does not treat AI as a gadget to bless or ban; it treats it as a mirror held up to the doctrine of the human person, and asks what breaks and what holds.

Part I (ch. 1-5) lays the anthropology: what AI and AGI actually are and are not, whether machine intelligence threatens or merely misreads the imago Dei, what in a human being is not a computation, the promise and danger of calling humanity a 'co-creator,' and the Babel narrative as the church's oldest resource for thinking about technology that works. Part II (ch. 6-10) turns to justice and the body: algorithmic bias measured against biblical mishpat and tsedaqah, labor displacement and the ethics of neighbor-love, transhumanism against the resurrection of the body, medical AI and a theology of life, and the stewardship demanded by a technology no one fully controls. Part III (ch. 11-15) is pastoral practice: AI in sermon preparation and the question of the Spirit's illumination, the real limits of a chatbot's care, whether digital fellowship is koinonia, AI in discipleship and Christian formation, and church administration. Part IV (ch. 16-19) closes on the largest claims made for and against the technology: the consciousness debate, the technological singularity read against biblical eschatology, what theological education must become, and - last - the pastoral identity that no machine can occupy.

Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible. Where Christians of different traditions genuinely disagree - on the soul, on the resurrection body, on eschatology, on what counsels a pastor may outsource - this course names who holds what rather than picking a winner.

Chapter 0

Introduction: Why Seminaries and Pastors Must Reckon with Artificial Intelligence

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Technical and Philosophical Foundations of AI and AGI

Chapter quiz Chapter 1 Quiz — The Technical and Philosophical Foundations of AI and AGI
Chapter 3

Chapter 3: What Makes Us Human - Reason, Emotion, Soul, and Relationship

Chapter quiz Chapter 3 Quiz: What Makes Us Human: Reason, Emotion, Soul, and Relationship
Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Tower of Babel - The Theological Ambivalence of Technological Progress

Chapter quiz Chapter 5 Quiz: The Tower of Babel — The Theological Ambivalence of Technological Progress
Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Labor and Economic Displacement - The Ethics of Loving One's Neighbor

Chapter quiz Chapter 7 Quiz: Labor and Economic Displacement — The Ethics of Loving One's Neighbor
Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Generative AI and Preaching - The Authority of the Word and the Illumination of the Spirit

Chapter quiz Chapter 11 Quiz — Generative AI and Preaching: The Authority of the Word and the Illumination of the Spirit
Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Machine-Mediated Care and the Limits of AI Pastoral Counseling

Chapter quiz Chapter 12 Quiz — Machine-Mediated Care and the Limits of AI Pastoral Counseling
Chapter 14

Chapter 14: AI and Discipleship - Christian Formation in the Age of Automation

Chapter quiz Chapter 14 Quiz: AI and Discipleship - Christian Formation in the Age of Automation
Chapter 16

Chapter 16: The Debate over AI Consciousness and Christian Spirituality

Chapter quiz Chapter 16 Quiz: The Debate over AI Consciousness and Christian Spirituality

Assessment

Midterm exam Midterm Examination — Christianity and Artificial Intelligence (Chapters 1-9)
Final exam PT8E Final Examination: Christianity and Artificial Intelligence (Chapters 10–19)