Can AI Proclaim Christ?: A Theological Investigation of AI's Performance of Christian Proclamation

Keune's research began with a nagging question: could someone come to a saving faith in Christ based on their interactions with an AI? This simple question led to a thoroughgoing investigation of linguistics and hermeneutics and the criteria that an AI would need to satisfy. The result is a linguistic, hermeneutic, ethical, and sacramental investigation stressing the importance of the story formed community in authenticating performances of Christian faith. This work outlines the case that current AI systems are capable of inferential semantics. As a result, they can produce texts which are perceived as meaningful. Many hermeneutic and linguistic theories therefore are unable to help differentiate an AI from a human generated text, which can lead to problematically unqualified conclusions. The effective qualification of these conclusions can be provided by grounding hermeneutics in the narrative theology of a story formed community.