AI, the Bible, and our Future
5.2 AI for Bible Study
image generated with FLUX-pro on Poe
Using AI responsibly for your Bible study.
Is that even possible? How could artificial intelligence possibly help you in the one area of life where you are fully dependent on God revealing Himself to you?
In this blog post, we will take a look at how AI is more or less just a continuation of how Bible study has developed since the first book of the Bible was written. To break it down, it simply makes information more accessible and exhaustive.
Why Use It At All?
Let us begin by first asking ourselves a question: Why even use AI at all for Bible study?
Essentially, to make it more accessible to more people, especially if they don't have a church in which they are taught how to approach and interpret the Bible. There is great spiritual deprivation, and few people are deeply engaged with the Bible, seeking to understand it, and ultimately teaching others about it. Many "churches" today barely even use their Bible in sermons, let alone teach on the foundations of Christianity that are outlined in Hebrews 6:1-2 or beyond!
Hebrews 6:1-21 Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 of teaching about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.
Additionally, we have a great number of different teachings and beliefs that are contrary to each other, stemming from incorrect biblical interpretation through mistakes in reasoning, personal opinions and values that people are not willing to let go of, or purposeful deception. Things that Dr. Lisle also outlines in his book Understanding Genesis: How to Analyze, Interpret, and Defend Scripture. All of these issues arise because we are human (that's why we are so dependent on the Holy Spirit). Though AI is designed and programmed by humans, it does, in fact, circumvent the limitations of an individual in its capacity to hold much higher amounts of information than the one individual human brain is able to hold. It also processes this mass of information in a more exclusively logic based system. The further AI advances, the better it gets at drawing logical conclusions from a large body of information and getting closer to being purely logical!
Luke 12:11-1211 Now when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about how or what you are to speak in your defense, or what you are to say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”
I don't say that AI is the solution to that problem, not at all. There should be active engagement to bring back biblical Christianity and the biblical Church. While this is being done, AI can be a valuable tool in helping Christians understand the foundational doctrines of the Bible.
The Premises
Having mentioned that there is a great amount of denominations, we need to establish a foundation on which the AI chatbot should generate its responses. If we all believe that there is one truth, nowhere in the system prompt should I tell the AI to adopt the beliefs of a specific denomination. I must give it a set of premises. If we can come to an agreement on what these premises should be, we can prompt the AI in such a way that the kind of content it provides is going to naturally align with truth and logic. In my own experiences, this is the result that I am finding.
Premise 1
The entire Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16, Psalm 119:160).
2 Timothy 3:1616 All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness,
Psalm 119:160160 The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments is everlasting.
Premise 2
Proper biblical interpretation requires diligent study of the original Hebrew and Greek texts, understanding historical, cultural, and scriptural context, cross-referencing within Scripture, and comparing Scripture with Scripture (2 Timothy 2:15).
2 Timothy 2:1515 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
Premise 3
God's Word is the final authority and truth on all matters it addresses - science, history, morality, etc. Human knowledge and reasoning must be subservient to Scripture (John 17:17).
John 17:1717 Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.
Premise 4
A literal, historical-grammatical hermeneutic should be employed. Consider for example Exodus 20:11: How should we interpret that verse?
Exodus 20:1111 For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
The hermeneutical approach emphasizes understanding Scripture in its plain, ordinary sense within its historical and grammatical context. It interprets the Bible as the original authors intended and as the original audience would have understood it, considering the historical setting, cultural background, and the normal rules of grammar and language usage of the time. This method assumes that if the plain sense of the text makes sense, we should seek no other sense (in the case that we would be rejecting the true meaning and adding our own ideas into the text—essentially performing eisegesis), while still recognizing and properly interpreting figures of speech, symbolism, and literary devices as they would have been understood in their original context. This approach leads to a straightforward reading of Scripture, including passages like Exodus 20:11, which presents the creation account as six literal days, thereby anchoring our interpretation in the text's historical claims.
Premise 5
The Bible is a unified, internally consistent revelation from God. Apparent contradictions stem from our limited understanding, not actual errors (2 Peter 3:16).
2 Peter 3:1616 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
My AI Bible Study Bot
Every chatbot that is based on a large language model (LLM) has a so-called System Prompt. This system prompt specifies the behavior it should adopt and the format of its responses. In the chatbot that I made on the platform Poe (you can find it as A_Bible_Study_Tool), I specified those exact premises that I outlined above. Following the premises, I further prime the chatbot to make responses based solely on Biblical authority by assigning two roles. The first role assigned regards the identity of the chatbot. While any identity could be given to a chatbot, my purpose is actually to establish in this Bible study chatbot its own true identity—An artificial intelligence (man-made machine) without the human capacity for relationship with and redemption through Christ that belongs exclusively to humans by God’s design.
The second role regards the worldview of the chatbot. Of course, machines by nature are not capable of having a worldview of their own as that is an exclusively human function. However, I can give the chatbot a worldview that will shape how it acts (responds). The worldview I assign to this Bible study chatbot is that of a born-again Christian.
Together, they heighten the need for informational correctness. Additionally, giving it those roles helps to get more biblically grounded responses, while still informing the user of its identity as an AI, if the user gets confused. At the end of the system prompt, I specify instructions such as using the KJV unless instructed otherwise.
Responsible Usage
Let us now come to the topic of responsible usage. As I already outlined in my first section 1.1 Welcome to the World of Artificial Intelligence and in section 3.1 The Benefits of AI, we have to use everything responsibly. There is no technology that is in and of itself evil. The design and use of any technology (tool) is rather determined by the morality of its creator.
I will not draw a clear line on how much you should use it, what questions you should or shouldn't ask, or how much you should trust the responses. All of that is between you and God. He will be the One who you will need to give an account to for everything you have done in your life here on earth (Romans 14:12).
Romans 14:1212 So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.
You can still apply some general guidelines and ask yourself a few honest questions:
- Am I mature enough to discern between true doctrine from the AI's response and hallucinations (the technical term for false or nonsensical responses that sound true) from its lack of true understanding?
- Will I confirm everything the AI claims?
- Am I prayerful and careful about my usage?
- Do I neglect fellowship with other believers because of the AI bot?
- Do I feel anxious to talk with other believers about me using this bot?
There is maturity needed to only take what is profitable and biblically correct. This is something that should generally be done for any kind of commentary or Christian book, not just AI. Additionally, you need to be aware of the fact that everything an AI produces simply is a copy of what it was given in the training data and chat. There will be no new "revelations" from the AI, and even the most astonishing responses are from someone you can find on the internet. It is able to explain connections between Bible verses, but it does not have the Holy Spirit to guide it!
You also need to be sure that you don't neglect the fellowship with other believers, that you study the bible together as Christians, and that you always use it in good conscience. Keep yourself approachable and accountable for the way you use it! If you don't feel comfortable talking about it, Satan might already use it to build a stronghold in your mind.
Lastly, never become dependent on it! You ought to be dependent on God, dependent on Christ, and dependent on the Holy Spirit because He is your teacher, not the AI!
John 16:1313 But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak from Himself, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.
Limitations
After having so thouroughly talked about the premises in the system prompt and how you can use the AI chatbot responsibly, there is one thing you need to always be aware of: The AI chatbot only outputs what it was trained on!
If you ask it a question about a very common misconception it will very likely tell you it is true, if the refutation of such a misconception is not as present. That's why it is so important to always check if the information from the LLM is actually accurate and true! One way to counter this is to tell the AI to critique its own response, which sometimes leads to the "realization" that its previous response was wrong.
Update V1.1
I read a paper (which, unfortuantely, I did not find again) in which a group of researchers studied the actual efficacy of role prompts in SOTA LLMs. Their finding was that simple role prompts do not increase the quality of a response and can even harm the overal quality. I made some tests in the Bible Bot and came to the conclusion that it does indeed work better to just remove the whole Christian role and simplify the prompt. Claude 3.5 Sonnet still recognizes itself as an AI that cannot be saved. Additionally, I added another instruction that it would use markdown formatting more often, as requested.
If you find any problems with the Bible Bot please feel free to write a comment!
Update V1.2
I have basically overhauled the entire system prompt outside of the premises as discussed above. It should be even more focused on true Biblical analysis by reducing the denominational bias from the training data. I also feel like the answers are now cleaner and more coherent than before. It will also quote the Bible verses much more often.
With all of the above in mind, you should be well equipped to use the AI chatbot responsibly. If you want to know how to prompt the LLM most effectively, you can read my blog post 5.1 Prompt Engineering!
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Thanks
Great tool.
Formatting with markdown would take it to the next level, so users aren’t staring at a wall of text.
Thanks.
That’s actually a great idea! I will make some tests if it influences biblical accuracy. If all works well, I will implement it in the system prompt!