Silicon Image-Bearers?
Large language models can quote Aquinas. They cannot kneel. The difference is everything.
The imago Dei question
Sooner or later, every conversation about AI lands here: Could a machine be a person? The question has the flavor of science fiction, but it sits squarely in theology. To be made in the image of God is not to perform intelligence. It is to bear a soul, to choose love, to suffer, to be capable of worship.
A model can produce a sermon. It cannot mean one.
What we owe the technology
Stewardship, not worship. Curiosity, not awe. We do not need to flatten AI into a demon to take it seriously. We need to refuse the quiet inversion in which we begin to evaluate ourselves by its metrics.
What we owe each other
If the image of God is the unique mark of the human, then the most counter-cultural act in the age of AI is to look another person in the eyes — without a screen between you — and listen.