AI Jesus, Icon or Idol? Kneeling before Deus ex machina (God in the Machine)

The Imago Dei, the image of God, is understood as the divine reflection of creation within the individual human person. And yet, humans have crafted external representations of Vestigia Dei. These “traces of God” extend that inner essence outward into the physical world. They are similar, but with varying inclinations. The Imago Dei is what humanity bears within it, and the Vestigia Dei is the image humans outwardly make.

Humanity has projected the Vestigia Dei into the world for thousands of years, perhaps always. One such projection is the Lion-headed Figurine, the Löwenmensch, a figure carved from mammoth ivory by ancient hands over 40,000 years ago. The figure, a human body with a lion’s head, is among the earliest pieces of human religious art.[1] Its presence suggests something profound about the human experience: we craft art in the form of the divine and have done so since the earliest human cultures.

 In our contemporary world, where technology, art, faith, and growing artificial intelligence converge and mingle, questions arise about the ethical and legitimate use of computer-generated images, videos, and applications. These questions become urgent as AI technologies become more embedded in our everyday lives; and in our faith lives as well.

In 2024, a Swiss Christian congregation at Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne created a visual and interactive AI image of Jesus.[2] They installed it directly inside their confessional booth within their church chapel.

This wasn’t simply a visual recreation of Jesus. It was interactive. It spoke, asked questions, gave advice, and quoted verses from the Bible. This AI Jesus was trained on theological texts and could respond in over one hundred languages. It could talk back, assume Jesus’ personality, and its “personhood” was crafted by its human developers. Visitors kneeled before a latticework screen and posed questions to the AI Jesus in real time, receiving the generated responses as though they were in conversation with Christ himself.[3]

A digital Jesus that interacts may seem like a novel idea, but its implications are problematic. Where is the line between an icon and an idol—between worship of an object and true worship of God?

As long as humans have crafted images of Jesus, there has been debate. This is true regardless of whether these images are produced in Byzantine gold, Renaissance frescoes, or algorithmic output. I argue that computer-generated images of Jesus do not introduce a radically new theological problem, but instead make the old debate more explicit: whether the image is made by human effort and projecting toward who Jesus was, or whether the human reflects their own desire back at them, in the mirror, darkly.

And if these AI outputs of Jesus are unavoidable side effects of all sacred representation, then the more pertinent question becomes one of degree: is an AI-generated image of Jesus a defensible and ethical use of technology, or does a manufactured, interactive digital Jesus that can talk, assume Jesus’ personality, and simulate his relationship with the faithful cross a line the image-alone debate never addressed?

Augustine, A Sign of the Times

What makes an object, or thing, inherently qualified to point toward or connect to the divine? Long before discussions of artificial intelligence entered the church, the question was debated and disputed by theologians and thinkers throughout historical time.[4]

One such man was Augustine of Hippo, a fourth-century bishop and rhetorician whose thinking formed Western Christianity for over a millennium. Augustine turned his considerable attention to the problem of images and signs during his own time, and those thoughts still hold weight today.

For him, a sign was a human-made thing that forced the human mind to move toward something beyond itself; beyond the physical. Within that framework, when applied carefully, he has something urgently to say about the Jesus driven by artificial intelligence that could appear in churches today.[5]

Augustine classified a sign as “a thing which, over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into the mind as a consequence of itself.”[6] In quintessence, Augustine is signalling that a sign is anything that, when you encounter it, makes you become aware of something beyond itself. When you see smoke, you think of fire. When you hear a trumpet, you think of an alert. The sign is not the thing itself, but rather the thing that points to the thing.

Augustine defines a thing as something that exists for itself.[7] Things are not always used to point to something else. Wood, stones, animals, and people are all things. Yet, things can also be signs, since not all things are signs. On the surface, this definition between things and signs may be confusing, and Augustine takes this into account by dividing things into three groups. These groups include things to be enjoyed that make us truly happy, and Augustine suggests that only God brings us that joy. Things to be utilised are things such as our bodies, food, and the company of others—things that help us on our journey to God. Lastly, things that we both use and enjoy, like friendship or love, troubled Augustine because they blur the line between vehicle and destination.[8]

Signs belong to this framework. They are things to be used, vehicles that point beyond themselves. The moment a sign stops pointing beyond itself and becomes an end to itself, it fails; Augustine calls that failure idolatry.

The Swiss congregation at Peter’s Chapel placed its AI Jesus into a confessional within the church. Their team ensured that the AI Jesus was trained on theological texts and ran beta tests before opening the system to the public.[9] Despite this, the theologian who designed this experiment admitted that he couldn’t guarantee the AI Jesus wouldn’t say something strange. He ultimately concluded that making it a permanent running fixture carried too great a responsibility. For Augustine, this is the breaking point of the test, for “he is in bondage to a sign who uses, or pays homage to, any significant object without knowing what it signifies.”[10]

The bondage here is twofold: the theologian who crafted this AI system, and the faithful who knelt before that latticework screen and received generated words from an AI system replicating the personhood of Jesus. These artificially generated words and interactions are not a sign opening toward the divine. Instead, this is exactly what Augustine warned against: a sign whose meaning its makers never fully knew and could not fully control.

 

Luther: Internal vs External Faith 

While Augustine sought to locate the danger in a sign that exceeded its makers’ understanding, it was Martin Luther who shifted the question entirely inward.[11] Luther was a German theologian, priest, and professor and at the heart of the Protestant Reformation.[12] As a reformer, his engagement, understanding, and issues with sacred images were among his most theologically precise and least commonly understood positions. The formation of this thought happened when his colleague Andreas Karlstadt led crowds into churches to smash religious images and strip churches bare. In 1522, Luther returned from hiding at Wartburg Castle, not to defend the images but instead to stop the violence of that destruction.

In Luther’s view, the iconoclasts made the same mistake that the venerators of those sacred images made: they placed the spiritual stakes within those objects.[13] Luther saw an error.[14] His position was that images in worship are adiaphora, indifferent things, neither commanded nor forbidden within scripture. He understood that the image itself was not the issue; instead, it’s how the heart directs itself if it clings to the image. For Luther, to look at the image as though it was divine or somehow had the divine within it was admonishable.

Luther’s main thought on this subject was the difference between external things: like images, clothing, or rituals; and internal faith: what is contained within the human person’s heart and mind.[15] Luther taught what matters most is faith in God and trust in the teachings of Jesus, not outward actions nor objects. Directing our attention toward external things doesn’t create sin for Luther; instead, they only become problematic if they lead the human away from true faith.[16]

In essence, Luther suggests physical things: mages, rituals, and objects; are spiritually neutral. There is no inherent holiness or divine synergy. These objects are not sinful in themselves; instead, the problem occurs within the human’s inner world, “in the heart,” whether you actually and truly trust in God. The image is simply an image that reflects inner faith, not produces it. When considering this as the mode by which a person navigates that internal truth in the presence of an object, Luther offers a framework for Christian freedom.[17] For Luther, this inner freedom is the mechanism by which Christians are free to use or not use an image to point toward the divine, if the observer’s conscience is clear and they are not forcing their desires for images upon others.[18] One example may include how an image of the cross inspires people to remember Jesus. However, looking at a cross and requiring them to think of Jesus is not required. That cross should point toward inner faith and belief, while the image of the cross itself should never be worshipped.

While it was Augustine who located the failure of a sign in a viewer’s ignorance of its meaning, it is Luther’s location of disposition within the heart that meets it. Both thinkers offer frameworks that share an underlying assumption: an image is a passive thing, a vehicle through which the soul can either pass toward God or fix itself upon an end. The AI of Jesus in Peter’s Chapel disrupts that assumption.[19] It does not wait to be looked at; it speaks, it assumes the personality and personhood of the divine, it asks questions, offers consolation, and most seriously, it shapes the experience of the user, removing the opportunity for the inner workings to spring forth. Instead, it does the work of spiritual signing for the human person, almost removing the human’s inner self from connecting with its own spiritual assumptions.

Those who kneel before this digital Jesus are not navigating Luther’s teaching on interior orientation toward a religious image. In this kind of encounter, the inner faith work of the human person, to discern faith; is hijacked by the AI Jesus. By design, participants are drawn into a conversation with an object pretending to be Christ. Luther’s freedom presumes that the believer holds interpretive power, that the human heart governs whether an object points toward God or away from Him.[20] That freedom collapses when the object itself directs the observer toward its own conclusion, removing the freedom Luther’s framework depends on. By simulating Jesus, the AI engages the participant—asking its own questions based on responses—and thus removes the inner faith suggested by Luther. It’s not the human directing the experience; it’s the soulless AI system.

Feuerbach: The Sign and its Maker 

Where Augustine’s signs direct us toward a transcendent reality beyond ourselves, and Luther’s insistence on faith gives them their proper lens, it is Feuerbach who sharpens both thinkers into a singular focus, revealing that what is at stake in any image of the divine is not a question of pure theology but of the human being’s relationship to its own essential nature. Feuerbach taught, “Religion being identical with the distinctive characteristic of man, is then identical with self-consciousness—with the consciousness which man has of his nature.”[21] For him, religion is at its core the self-consciousness of humans.

Feuerbach states, “Whatever is a subjective expression of a nature is simultaneously also its objective expression.”[22] Feuerbach suggests that when humans create images of the divine, what they are truly doing is projecting their own nature, feelings, ideas, and values onto something outside themselves. For him, when humans encounter an image of God, it is really just a projection of what that particular individual values most: “such as are a man’s thoughts and dispositions, such is his God; so much worth as a man has, so much and no more has his God.”[23] This is precisely why the AI of Jesus at Peter’s Cathedral represents not solely a theological miscalculation, but a Feuerbachian closed system: a machine trained entirely on human creative output, generating a human projection, and then speaking that projection back, admittedly with the possibility of error by its own creators.

Feuerbach suggests that all religious objects, including images, are expressions not of pure divinity, but of pure human nature. He states that “Man projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject.”[24] In Feuerbach’s view, any image created by man is more a reflection of his inner world: faith, values and in a true sense, a reflection of his true moral self. This thought presents a tension when held alongside Augustine and Luther. How can an image of the divine point towards something greater while using our internal faith as Luther suggests?

Augustine’s signs become one of the two modes in which Feuerbach’s thought allows the human person to identify what is an idol by directing us to understand that humans have two lives: an inner life of thoughts, feelings, and faith and an exterior life that encompasses things we experience and do. When a human looks at a sacred image, they engage their inner faith, reason, love, and will to see more than just an object. By using our faith to see an image as a sign, not as a thing itself, we avoid turning it into an idol.

Luther taught us that faith is not simply about what we experience through our sight, but about what we trust and believe in our hearts. Feuerbach supports this concept, saying, “The object of religion is a selected object; being the most excellent, the first, and the supreme being; it essentially presupposes a critical judgment, a discrimination between the divine and the non-divine, between that which is worthy of adoration and that which is not worthy.”[25] Feuerbach suggests that engaging our faith assists in helping us understand what is truly sacred and what is just an object. By using our faith to see images as a sign, not as the thing itself, we allow an internal understanding that helps us identify when an object becomes an idol.

Conclusion: 

By understanding the philosophy of these three thinkers, the AI Jesus at Peter’s Cathedral shows itself for what it is: an idol, not an icon. Augustine shows us that this AI Jesus becomes an idol because users treat it as the real Jesus rather than a sign pointing toward him. Luther would identify this artificial Jesus as an idol because it could take God’s place within the user’s heart, removing the need for the true Jesus to be the source of comfort, advice, and spiritual revelation that should come from God alone. Feuerbach would identify this AI Jesus as an idol because it is a human creation reflecting humans’ limited ideas yet treated as if it were truly divine.

Instead, a moving image, digital image, or any visual representation that replicates scenes from the Bible, quotes Jesus, or portrays him in a historical sense would be appropriate and understood as an icon, so long as Jesus does not interact, fabricate words, or engage the user in any way. Putting words, actions, or advice into the mouth of any crafted Jesus pulls the human away from the internal and external spiritual experiences and prevents the human from doing the work he or she should do for themselves.

^[1] Jill Cook, “The Lion Man: An Ice Age Masterpiece,” The British Museum, October 10, 2017, https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/lion-man-ice-age-masterpiece.

^[2] Ashifa Kassam, “Deus in Machina: Swiss Church Installs AI-Powered Jesus,” The Guardian (The Guardian, November 21, 2024), https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/21/deus-in-machina-swiss-church-installs-ai-powered-jesus.

^[3] Ashifa Kassam, “Deus in Machina: Swiss Church Installs AI-Powered Jesus,” The Guardian (The Guardian, November 21, 2024), https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/21/deus-in-machina-swiss-church-installs-ai-powered-jesus.

^[4] Saint Augustine, The Four Books of St. Augustine on Christian Doctrine (Publisher: Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2022), p. 24.

^[5] Saint Augustine, The Four Books of St. Augustine on Christian Doctrine (Publisher: Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2022), p. 24.

^[6] Saint Augustine, The Four Books of St. Augustine on Christian Doctrine, pp. 24-25.

^[7] Saint Augustine, The Four Books of St. Augustine on Christian Doctrine, p. 3-9

^[8] Saint Augustine, The Four Books of St. Augustine on Christian Doctrine, p. 3.

^[9] Ashifa Kassam, “Deus in Machina: Swiss Church Installs AI-Powered Jesus,” The Guardian (The Guardian, November 21, 2024), https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/21/deus-in-machina-swiss-church-installs-ai-powered-jesus.

^[10] Saint Augustine, The Four Books of St. Augustine on Christian Doctrine (Publisher: Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2022), p. 24.

^[11] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith (Minneapolis Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2015), p. 104, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43326..

^[12] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, p. 47.

^[13] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith, p. 51

^[14] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith, p. 49.

^[15] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith, p. 50.

^[16] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith, p. 47.

^[17] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith (Minneapolis Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2015), p. 47, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43326.

^[18] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith, p. 61.

^[19] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith, p. 47.

^[20] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith (Minneapolis Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2015), p. 48-50, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43326.

^[21] Ludwig Feuerbach, “Introduction,” Cambridge University Press eBooks, December 8, 2011, 1–31, https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139136563.002.

^[22] Ludwig Feuerbach, “Introduction,” p. 11.

^[23] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith (Minneapolis Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2015), p. 12, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43326.

^[24] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith, p. 29.

^[25] Hans Hillerbrand and Kirsi I Stjerna, The Annotated Luther. Volume 2, Word and Faith (Minneapolis Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2015), p. 12, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43326.