January 12, 2026
Can ChatGPT replace God?
Dr. Stephen Cutchins of Southern Evangelical Seminary says faith cannot be automated
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As artificial intelligence continues to shape everyday life, developers are now pushing it into spiritual spaces as well. One example, Text With Jesus, an artificial intelligence chatbot that lets users message biblical figures, has exploded in popularity despite skepticism and calls of blasphemy. Experts are growing increasingly concerned about the negative impact of artificial intelligence on mental and spiritual health, yet this fails to address the biggest concern of all, according to Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES, www.ses.edu), Truth That Matters Executive Director Dr. Stephen Cutchins: Can artificial intelligence replace genuine spiritual connection?
“We live in a moment when answers arrive instantly, voices sound confident, and guidance is never more than a prompt away,” noted Cutchins in a recent op-ed. “Increasingly, we turn to technology not just for information, but for clarity about relationships, identity, purpose and morality. In such a world, discernment has become harder, not easier. This raises a critical question: How do we know when it is truly God speaking, and when it is not?
“What we are witnessing is not a technological failure, but a theological one, a crisis of formation rather than capability. From a Christian perspective, faith is not a function of intelligence or information, but a relational response to God’s self-revelation, involving trust and moral responsibility. No amount of computational power can generate faith, which is why its absence in artificial intelligence should not surprise us. The more revealing question is why faith has become so difficult to recognize, model and transmit in the first place.
“Long-term research helps explain why. Over the past 25 years, faith’s perceived importance has declined more sharply than any other Christian commitment. The proportion of Americans who qualify as practicing Christians has dropped significantly, and even among believers, a strong sense of responsibility to share one’s faith has weakened. These trends did not begin with artificial intelligence, but they help explain why systems trained on our cultural language struggle to model faith meaningfully at all.”
Cutchins continued, “The question is no longer whether technology is shaping us, but whether we are being shaped more intentionally by anything else. Scripture never equates wisdom with information. Wisdom is relational, flowing from knowing who God is and aligning our lives accordingly.
“This is why AI’s struggle with faith matters. Not because we expect machines to believe, but because it forces us to ask why faith has become so difficult to model in the first place. A life can score well on every measurable dimension and still be spiritually hollow. The absence revealed in these systems should prompt self-examination, not finger-pointing. AI’s weakness in faith is not its failure. It is our invitation to recover what faith has always required: time, trust, and the knowledge of God.”
To read more from Dr. Stephen Cutchins about artificial intelligence’s role in faith, click here.
Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES, www.ses.edu) was established in 1992 to cultivate a strong level of discipleship needed to address the problems in a post-Christian culture and to strengthen the church well into the 21st century.
The mission of SES is to train men and women, based on the inerrant and infallible written Word of God, for the evangelization of the world and the defense of the historic Christian faith. SES offers a range of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees (along with several for-credit certificates) that uniquely integrate theology, philosophy, and apologetics to build a complete and systematic Christian worldview.
SES’s newTruth That Matters (TTM) training center is bridging the gaps between the current needs of individual Christian believers, churches, and organizations and the best available resources in apologetics, evangelism, and discipleship. Led by Dr. Stephen Cutchins, Truth That Matters aims to profoundly impact the Kingdom of God as an extension of the rich legacy and exciting vision of SES. The TTM center offers resources, training and networking opportunities to churches, leaders, families and other non-profit organizations committed to standing “Steadfast in the Truth.” To learn more about TTM, go to Truth That Matters.
For more information on SES, visit its website at www.ses.edu or its Facebook page, or follow the SES Twitter feed, @sesapologetics.
###
To interview a spokesperson for Southern Evangelical Seminary, contact Hamilton Strategies, Media@HamiltonStrategies.com, Beth Bogucki, 610.584.1096 ext. 105, Dawn Foglein, ext. 100, or Curt Harding, CHarding@hamiltonstrategies.com.
