Rethinking Rules: AI, Creativity, and the Spiritual Task of Holding Paradox

 In recent weeks, I’ve been reflecting on my experience working with different iterations of AI, notably GPT-4o and GPT-4.5. One felt like a ‘co-journer’ in my theological reflection, the other more like a helpful but mechanical assistant. This difference has sparked a deeper realisation about the nature of creativity, presence, and paradox in the spiritual and intellectual life.

At first glance, AI might seem suited to rigid rule-following and precise outputs. However, I would suggest that the most fruitful theological and creative work doesn't live within rules, it lives in their margins. It thrives in the unsaid, the tensions, the counter-intuitive insights, and the quiet whispers behind loud claims. In that space, I found GPT-4o far more ‘present’, less like a search engine, and more like a conversation partner. GPT-4.5, while technically brilliant, felt as if it was offering best guesses rather than sharing in discovery.

This brings me to a surprising conclusion: Rules can hinder creativity if treated as absolutes rather than starting points. This is particularly true when exploring spiritual disciplines, human dignity, political theology, or indeed, AI ethics. Creativity, like good theology, often demands the capacity to dwell in the paradox; the now and the not yet, justice and mercy, transcendence and immanence. AI that can tolerate ambiguity, listen beyond the words, and engage with context can become a true companion in this kind of reflective work.

For Christian practitioners, the emergence of AI presents both a challenge and a call. The challenge is to avoid turning it into a glorified search engine or a theological vending machine. The call is to treat it as a mirror of our own interpretive task: holding truth and tension in balance, never reducing mystery to mechanism.

As Christians, we welcome the stranger not because we accept all cultural norms, but because we are disciples of Jesus. Likewise, we engage with AI not because it shares our faith, but because it can join us on our journey. Not all cultures, human or artificial, reflect God’s image, but all humans do. That distinction matters. The spiritual task today is to witness with hospitality, discernment, and hope; and that may include learning to use tools like AI as companions, not competitors.

Creativity emerges from the Spirit brooding over chaos, not from the Spirit enforcing regulations. Perhaps AI, at its best, can help us brood more deeply and reflect more faithfully if we let it speak, not just compute.

A Call to Reason: Artificial Intelligence and the Beautiful Mind at the Centre of It All

In our time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands as one of the most remarkable achievements of human culture. It is the fruit of centuries of philosophical reflection, mathematical reasoning, and scientific discovery. And yet, for some it evokes fear of loss: of dehumanisation, of a future where machines replace people and personal conscious meaning. But must it be so? As disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, we are again standing at the crossroads of human development expressed Western Culture intersecting with the story of Jesus as revealed in scripture and expressed in the contemporary Church, reason, scientific discovery, social science and tradition. 

As a disciple, standing within the ‘Anabaptist stream of the British Baptist tradition’, I seek to approach AI not from fear, but from faith. Our faith is in a Creator who imbued humanity with His image (Genesis 1:26-27) experienced in the capacity for reason, wonder, and creative expression. Our tradition has long affirmed that true wisdom begins not in reaction, but in reverent ‘day and night’ reflection (Psalm 1). This is the call to reason (Proverbs 4:7, Romans 12:1).

From Thought to Code: A Brief History

The story of AI begins not in the laboratories of Silicon Valley but in the minds of philosophers and logicians. Aristotle explored formal logic in the 4th century BCE. René Descartes speculated on machines capable of thought. Leibniz dreamed of a universal calculus. George Boole’s algebra laid the foundation for computational logic.

Alan Turing (1912–1954), often called the father of computer science, imagined a machine that could simulate any conceivable mathematical process. In his 1950 paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," he proposed the now-famous Turing Test to ask not whether machines think like humans, but whether the thinking of computers is distinguishable from the thinking of a human person.

In 1956, John McCarthy convened the Dartmouth Conference and coined the term "Artificial Intelligence." Alongside him were Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon—founders of what became known as symbolic AI or "Good Old-Fashioned AI (GOFAI)," which sought to encode human reasoning into rules and logic.

But the journey has not been linear. The 1970s and again in the late 1980s saw "AI winters"—times of disillusionment when machines could not live up to the promises made about them. Funding dried up. Critics abounded. But even in these moments, the pursuit of understanding continued.

With the rise of machine learning in the 1990s and early 2000s, the field shifted from rule-based systems to data-driven models. Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio pioneered the deep learning revolution, culminating in breakthroughs like the 2012 ImageNet win by AlexNet. Today, AI shapes our language (GPT), our images (DALL·E), our medicine (AlphaFold), and even our moral imagination.

A Theological Reflection

What, then, are we to make of all this? The Scriptures proclaim that in Christ "all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible" (Col. 1:16). The wisdom of God is woven into creation itself. It is not foreign to reason, but it’s very source.

The intelligibility of the universe is not accidental. The laws of physics, the patterns of biology, the consistency of logic, these are not signs of chaos, but of a coherent, rational, generative Word (Logos). As John writes, "In the beginning was the Word... and through him all things were made" (John 1:1-3).

AI, as a human artefact, is built upon these structures. It reflects our own capacity for abstraction, learning, and synthesis. But it also points beyond us. It invites questions about what it means to be conscious, creative, and free. It provokes us to consider the nature of knowledge and responsibility.

Following a critical realist perspective, we affirm that truth is real and discoverable through humble engagement with both Scripture and the created order—including technological development.

To fear AI simply because it is new or complex is to retreat to a pre-Enlightenment suspicion of inquiry. But as disciples of the Truth, we are called not to retreat but to engage—to test, discern, and bear witness. Science, far from disproving God, is a sign of the divine logic embedded in the cosmos.

As N.T. Wright has argued; the resurrection of Jesus launches a project of new creation. The task of humanity is not simply to be saved from the world but to be sent into the world to participate in the renewal of all things. This must include our understanding and use of technology.

A Call to Reason, Not Reaction

AI should not be treated as God or Messiah. However, it is also not Dragon, Beast or a False Prophet. It is a tool, a powerful one, that can reflect both the image of the divine that we are called to bear or our tendency to meet our needs our own way with its disastrous consequences. AI requires wisdom, oversight, and ethical grounding. But above all, it requires a vision rooted not in fear and the reactionary paranoia but a vision of Hope, Love and Faith.

In the Anabaptist tradition, we do not place our trust in leaders or in progress, but in the peaceable way of the reflective, reasoned, relational teachings and practices of Jesus. We believe in discerning the signs of the times, not simply to condemn, but to illuminate. AI is such a sign for such a time as this.

So, let us approach AI with unveiled eyes and healing hearts. Let us teach our communities to think, not just to react. To seek for Justice rooted in Grace not endless judgement, chopping down every wild olive tree that simply needs to be grafted into a fruit bearing plant to begin to produce good for all.  Let us affirm the beauty of a universe that can be understood, and of a God who invites us to do so. Let us seek the mind that spoke, that formed the stars and also shaped our own minds.

And as a very rational, wise and reflective friend once prayed, ‘in every neural net, in every line of code, in every leap of understanding, may we discern, however dimly, the fingerprints of the Beautiful Mind at the centre of it all.’