Artificial Theological Intelligence: Doctrinal Adequacy, Contextual Disambiguation, and Catholicity

Abstract This essay develops a social‐practical account of Christian doctrine: theology is adequate when, under Scripture's authority and the Spirit's work, ecclesial speech proves semantically and pragmatically fitting, pastorally fruitful, and doctrinally answerable. Contemporary theology needs disciplined disambiguation more than doctrinal differentiation, since shared confessional sentences and infrastructures can be deployed toward divergent, even harmful, ends across racialized and global contexts. Against a Christendom reflex for doctrinal differentiation, the essay proposes artificial theological intelligence, a Spirit‐formed competence for contextual discernment, catholic learning, and answerable judgment. Recent multilingual large language model AI research serves as a heuristic. Two Korean American case studies test the proposal.

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Publication Details

Journal
Modern Theology
Published
2026-03-02
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/moth.70076
Primary Topic
Media, Religion, Digital Communication
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

Artificial Theological Intelligence: Doctrinal Adequacy, Contextual Disambiguation, and Catholicity

David C. Chao
Modern Theology
Media, Religion, Digital Communication
article

Artificial Theological Intelligence: Doctrinal Adequacy, Contextual Disambiguation, and Catholicity

David C. Chao
article en

Abstract

Abstract This essay develops a social‐practical account of Christian doctrine: theology is adequate when, under Scripture's authority and the Spirit's work, ecclesial speech proves semantically and pragmatically fitting, pastorally fruitful, and doctrinally answerable. Contemporary theology needs disciplined disambiguation more than doctrinal differentiation, since shared confessional sentences and infrastructures can be deployed toward divergent, even harmful, ends across racialized and global contexts. Against a Christendom reflex for doctrinal differentiation, the essay proposes artificial theological intelligence, a Spirit‐formed competence for contextual discernment, catholic learning, and answerable judgment. Recent multilingual large language model AI research serves as a heuristic. Two Korean American case studies test the proposal.

Modern Theology
Princeton Theological Seminary (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 28%
Media, Religion, Digital Communication
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