Imago Dei in the age of algorithms: A theologically grounded critique of artificial intelligence in Christian education

Abstract

The embedding of artificial intelligence (AI) in education confronted Christian institutions with a challenge technical adjustment could not resolve, and existing theological responses had not mobilised the imago Dei as a systematic criterion for evaluating the anthropology AI presupposes. Christian schools, colleges and seminaries adopting adaptive learning platforms, automated assessment engines and language model tutors formed the setting, addressed within the reformed-ecumenical tradition. A qualitative, systematic-theological method combined critical-hermeneutical analysis of primary sources with normative argumentation. The argument was framed as normative rather than empirical. The study established a three-layered account of the imago Dei (vocational, relational and eschatological) and a two-axis typology distinguishing assistive from substitutive deployment and instrumental from formative domains. Theological objection attached specifically to substitutive-formative deployment, while assistive-instrumental deployment proved permissible. A theologia crucis and pneumatological pedagogy yielded a procurement protocol, protected practices and curricular proposals. Christian education requires an ontological criterion, not merely an ethical checklist, to discern which AI deployments serve and which corrode the formation of persons.
Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article brings systematic theology and theological anthropology into critical dialogue with AI ethics, philosophy of technology and Christian religious education, arguing that adequate responses to AI in education require theological depth joined to empirically grounded social critique.