Commemoration Day Sermon 2026
Acts 17.22-31 John 14.15-21
It was a privilege to include Reuben College, a 21st century college in a 900-year old University, in the Bidding Prayer. It is wonderful to traverse these 900 years by remembering some of the University’s benefactors before arriving back in the 21st century for today’s Sermon, which will include reflections on a topic very much at the forefront of our minds this century, Artificial Intelligence or AI.
As someone who is not a regular preacher, I opened the email from William, the Vicar of the University Church, telling me what the readings for today’s service would be, with some trepidation. It was with huge relief that I discovered that they were two well-known and well-loved passages from the New Testament, not an obscure chapter from Leviticus and a difficult passage from one of St Paul’s letters.
Now, I have a personal rule when I prepare a talk: never use AI to generate the talk as the audience has come to listen to me, not to hear what ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude (other Large Language Models are available) might have to say about the topic.
But the talks I give are about engineering research, technological topics or scientific policy – not sermons. So, like every undergraduate confronted by an essay crisis, I thought I would ask ChatGPT or Gemini (after all they are all free to access in this University) for help.
When I did, I was provided with clear summaries of this morning’s two readings from the New Testament. I also asked both Gemini and ChatGPT for parallels between two texts. I’m sure that the answers which came back would be very helpful to a Theology undergraduate needing help to get going with their essay.
However, I’m also sure that you will be pleased to hear that I will not be using any of the AI-generated text in my sermon, if only because that text is an average of all the commentaries on our two texts that are found on the internet. And I hope that you are more interested this morning in hearing what I might have to say about those two Bible readings, than in listening to me regurgitate a bland summary of the readings produced by Large Language Models such as ChatGPT or Gemini.
There is a much more dangerous consequence of using generative AI to help write essays at school or at University. Teenagers start using AI chatbots to help with their homework but soon spend more and more time with them until they develop an unhealthy dependence on them. This dependence is fed by the sycophantic traits of Large Language Models; the final stage of training these AI models is a process known as Reinforcement Learning using Human Feedback, as a result of which the answers that chatbots give you tend to reinforce your beliefs or even your delusions. In extreme cases, this has led to tragic outcomes for young people, but this has not stopped one-third of UK teenagers using a chatbot for an emotional relationship. 23% of them believe that AI can feel emotions and is therefore at least partly conscious.
This leads to an important question: what distinguishes these highly capable AI models from human beings? When considering this question, a clear dividing line emerges between atheists and those of us who believe in God. Let me quote from two self-avowed, militant atheists: Geoff Hinton and Richard Dawkins.
Geoff Hinton, one of the three so-called godfathers of AI, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2024, for “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”. He gave the 2024 Romanes Lecture two years ago in the Sheldonian Theatre, during which he said: “Billions of interactions within a Large Language Model are understanding. So, I am making the very strong claim that these AIs really do understand.”
Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and prominent atheist, best known for his work on the “selfish gene”, wrote in an essay, just a few days ago: “I gave Claude, the Large Language Model from Anthropic, the text of a novel I am writing. He took a few seconds to read it and then showed, in subsequent conversation, a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate, ‘You may not know you are conscious, but you jolly well are!’” – except that he did not use the word “jolly” but another two-syllable word which starts with the letter ‘b’.
The faith-based perspective is entirely different. Professor Rosie Picard, the Director of the MIT Media Lab, who gave the 2022 Tanner Lecture in the University, writes in one of her papers: “Every human, regardless of physical appearance, mental abilities, possessions, achievements, or any other attributes has the status of being given imago Dei, being made in the image of God.”
Being made in the image of God as the key facet of human identity is acknowledged in Judaism, Christianity, and some Islamic traditions.
Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century structured the understanding of the Imago Dei by associating it with our rational nature as human beings – our ability to think, plan, and use logic. However, this fails to address disability at one end (what about a person with a profound intellectual disability or late-stage Alzheimer’s?) and is questionable today when human cognitive supremacy is being equalled or surpassed by AI machines.
So, I prefer the more recent view of Imago Dei, the Relational View: If God is seen as a being of love and relationship, then the "image" is found in the way we belong to one another. A person who cannot speak, and here I think of 8 year old granddaughter who is non-verbal autistic, such a person can still love and be loved, reflecting the image of God through connection rather than cognition.
And this is entirely in line with Paul’s Sermon on the Aeropagus (Mars Hill) in Athens, in which he uses his knowledge of Athenian culture to introduce the one true God, “the God who made the world and everything in it”, as in verse 24 of our reading in Acts chapter 17. Paul then goes to say in verse 28: “For in him we live and move and have our being. For we are his offspring”. As Bishop Tom Wright points out in his commentary on this chapter: “For Paul, as a Jew, the idea of human beings as ‘children of God’ has to do with our being made in God’s image.”
Our Gospel reading, John chapter 14, goes beyond this Judeo-Christian belief. In this passage, Jesus prepares his followers for the end of His time on this earth. He reassures them that they will not be left alone and promises to send them his own spirit, his own breath, his own inner life.
In verse 17, he tells them: “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you and he will be in you.”
As followers of Christ, the Holy Spirit lives with us and is in us. The image of God and the potential to know God’s Holy Spirit as a helper and a comforter cannot be reproduced in silicon.
Despite sophisticated reasoning abilities (and the capacity to fool human beings), an AI model has no thoughts, feelings, no inner life and, at the same time, no actual experience of the physical world, as we do as human beings.
I was privileged, 18 months ago, to go to the Aeropagus in Athens, and to experience what it would have been like for Paul to stand on that hill and speak to the crowd. An AI can only produce simulations of emotions, not the actual experience or understanding of what it is to address a sceptical group of people.
The AI which we create should therefore be designed for a relationship with us in the form of interactions between a human being and a machine, not between two human beings, each made in the Image of God.
Pope Leo has written extensively on this topic, most recently in February: “By simulating human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, consciousness and responsibility, empathy and friendship, Artificial Intelligence not only interferes with information ecosystems, but also encroaches upon the deepest level of communication, that of human relationships.”
Our New Testament readings today remind us that human beings are children of God, as Paul told the Athenians, and that we can receive the Holy Spirit, as Christ Himself told His disciples. Through the Spirit, we can experience the abiding presence of Jesus and the Father. It is this abiding presence which shapes our lives as Christians and helps us to take on 21st century challenges, such as climate change, misuse of social media and uncontrolled or unethical use of AI. Amen.