AI Use in Biblical Studies

Authentic biblical teaching requires that the teacher be personally formed by Scripture before transmitting it to others, a principle reinforced by Ambrose, Richard Baxter, and Paul's charges to Timothy — without this personal engagement, both the teacher and the congregation suffer spiritually. Understanding Scripture is not merely an intellectual exercise but a Spirit-dependent encounter, and as Paul argues in First Corinthians chapter two, and as Calvin, Luther, and Basil all affirm, no purely natural or mechanical process can participate in the divine illumination necessary for true comprehension of God's Word. Finally, presenting AI-assembled material as the fruit of one's own study before God represents a serious ethical and spiritual failure in ministry, severing the minister from the accountability, reward, and personal transformation that authentic engagement with Scripture demands — with consequences extending not only to the teacher and congregation, but to the lost who depend on genuine gospel proclamation.

Before we get into today's video, I need to tell you something upfront: this entire video was generated using artificial intelligence. The script you're about to hear was produced with the help of Claude AI, refined with Grammarly, and the theological and biblical content was sourced and organized using the AI features in my Logos Bible Software — which, if you're not familiar, is a powerful digital Bible study and theological library that puts commentaries, church father writings, systematic theologies, and original language tools all in one place. I've linked to all of those tools in the description below if you want to check them out.

Now — and this is the whole point — this is not an endorsement for the open use of generative AI for biblical studies. This is an illustration. An intentional one. Because if I'm going to make a video about the dangers of using AI for biblical studies, what better way to drive the point home than to show you in real time exactly what that looks like?

So let's talk about it. Here are three compelling reasons you should stop using AI for biblical studies — and I say that as someone who just used it to make this video.

Point One: AI-Generated Preaching And Teaching Undermines Both The Teacher And The Congregation

And here's where this video becomes its own best example. What you're watching right now has structure. It has accurate Scripture references. It flows logically, and it covers real theological ground. But what it does not have — what it cannot have — is the personal wrestling with the text that genuine teaching requires. There was no morning spent in prayer over these passages. No moment of conviction where the preacher had to stop and reckon with what God was saying to him before he said it to anyone else. This video has content. It lacks formation.

That distinction matters enormously, and the church has always understood it.

Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan, insisted that those offering counsel must present themselves as, quote, "a pattern in all good works, in teaching, in trueness of character, in seriousness," so that his words would be wholesome, his counsel useful, and his life virtuous. The point is not just that a preacher should know the material. The point is that the preacher must be shaped by it.

Richard Baxter, the great Puritan pastor, pressed this even harder. He insisted that a minister must preach first to himself everything he intends to preach to others, and watch constantly over his own heart. Baxter wrote that "the honor of your Lord and Master, and of His holy truth, doth lie more on you than other men," and that the souls of the hearers and the success of one's ministry depend on this self-examination. That is not a suggestion. That is a pastoral theology grounded in the nature of ministry itself.

The Scriptures are equally direct. In Second Timothy chapter two, Paul urges Timothy to "do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." In First Timothy chapter four, Paul says to "devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching," and then gives this extraordinary charge: "practice these things, immerse yourself in them... persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers." Save yourself. The preacher is not simply a conduit for information. The preacher is himself a disciple under the word.

And the congregation bears the cost when this is neglected. The writer of Hebrews draws a sharp contrast between those who still need milk — the spiritually immature, "unskilled in the word of righteousness" — and those who need solid food, whose "powers of discernment are trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil." That kind of discernment does not come from a congregation fed by AI-generated sermons. It comes from authentic, personally-studied, Spirit-carried teaching. A congregation that is not fed this way becomes weak, loses its ability to discern truth from error, and stagnates in its growth.

Point Two: AI-Generated Content Lacks The Spiritual Depth Essential To Biblical Work

Again, this video is the proof. Everything I've said so far is coherent. It is organized. It is even, I would argue, accurate. But this is not the Spirit opening God's Word in the heart. What you are hearing is information retrieval and linguistic pattern-matching dressed up as theological reflection. Those are not the same thing, and the difference is not minor.

The Scriptures are explicit about this. In First Corinthians chapter two, Paul writes that "the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God," and that "no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." He continues: "We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God." And then comes the critical line: "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned."

An algorithm — no matter how sophisticated, no matter how many theological texts it has been trained on — is not a spiritual person. It cannot be indwelt by the Spirit. It cannot be convicted by a passage. It cannot be broken by a text. It processes tokens. That is all.

The church fathers understood this dependence on divine illumination with great clarity. Basil of Caesarea reminded believers that they possess "the all-sufficient counsel and guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead you to what is right." Irenaeus went further, insisting that "God cannot be known without the help of God" and that "man cannot see God on his own." Understanding Scripture is not primarily an intellectual achievement. It is a gift from the God who breathed out that Scripture.

The Reformers stood in full agreement. Luther taught that the written Word of Scripture is always joined with the power of the Holy Spirit. Calvin declared that "Scripture will ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God only when its certainty is founded upon the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit." Warfield summarized this beautifully, explaining that by a conjoint divine action — objective and subjective — a true knowledge of God is communicated to the human soul, where the Spirit's testimony is the subjective preparation of the heart to receive the objective evidence of Scripture in what he called "a sympathetic embrace."

That is what AI cannot do. It cannot prepare a heart. It cannot open eyes. It cannot make a dead text come alive in a student's life. The Spirit's illumination can be expected only where the biblical text is diligently and personally studied — not as a shortcut, but as an encounter. AI-generated content bypasses that encounter entirely. It severs the connection between the student and the transformative work the Spirit accomplishes through direct engagement with God's Word.

Point Three: AI Enables A New Kind Of Ethical And Spiritual Failure In Ministry

AI operates to some degree on the scale of plagiarism, even when it is not technically plagiarism in the legal sense.

Let me be direct about this video one more time, because this point requires it. The ideas in this script were not dreamed up from scratch. The connections to the Scriptures, to the church fathers, to Baxter, Calvin, and Luther — those were generated by an AI's internal language model, drawing on patterns from the texts it was trained on. The Logos Bible Software library provided theological source material that fed into the research process. What you're watching is a video that sounds like the product of deep study. It is not. I didn’t even read the research before I fed it to Claude AI with the prompt to script this video. And that gap — between the appearance of labor and the absence of it — is exactly the problem.

Now, to be clear: using AI as a research tool, or using Logos to find sources, is not inherently wrong. The ethical and spiritual failure occurs when the output is presented as the teacher's own work before God, when the connections, arguments, structure, and even the spiritually sounding conclusions were not forged in personal study, prayer, and encounter with the text, but were assembled by a machine.

The Scriptures do not let us escape this accountability. In Romans chapter fourteen, Paul writes plainly that "each… will give an account of himself to God." In First Corinthians chapter three, he describes the Day when "each one's work will become manifest... tested by fire," and warns that if the work is burned up, the minister "suffers loss, though he himself will be saved." In Galatians chapter six, he urges each believer to "test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor." The minister's reward is tied to the minister's actual labor. You cannot outsource that labor and still receive the reward.

And the ethical cost runs downstream. Without genuine, in-depth teaching, the congregation becomes spiritually malnourished — weak, unable to discern truth from error, failing to fulfill its calling, unable to truly worship. You need only read the letters to the seven churches in Revelation chapters two and three to see what happens to a people when Christ and His Word are no longer genuinely central to their life together. The signs are not subtle. The departure from vitality, from love, from faithfulness — it does not announce itself all at once. It happens slowly, under the cover of activity that looks like ministry but has been hollowed out from within.

And the stakes extend beyond the congregation. Paul asks in Romans chapter ten: "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?" The lost are depending on authentic proclamation. AI-generated messages are no substitute for the real thing. The gospel requires a herald, not a generator.

The fundamental problem is this: preaching activity without personal, vocational, Spirit-led rooting is hollow — regardless of a teacher's gifts, knowledge, or oratorical ability. AI-generated content represents the ultimate hollowing of ministry. It is content without character. Words without wrestling. Proclamation without personal transformation.

CONCLUSION

So let me land this where it needs to land.

AI is a tool. Logos is a tool. Grammarly is a tool. This video used all of them, and I want you to know that — because tools have their place. Tools can help you organize research, improve clarity, or surface sources you might not have found on your own. But tools cannot do what only the Spirit of God can do. They cannot replace the discipline of personal study. They cannot substitute for the kind of formation that happens when a preacher sits with a text until it has done something to him before he opens his mouth. And they cannot bear the weight of the eternal accountability that comes with handling God's Word.

So use your tools. But do your work. Study to show yourself approved. Immerse yourself in the Scriptures. Let the Word dwell in you richly. And when you stand to teach — stand as someone who has been there, in the text, on your knees, before God.

Remember, Christ is King, and that changes everything.