Open AI Will Steer Your Sermon Research Ideologically
And Not Let The Facts Get In The Way Of Good “Theology”
Den Of Thieves—is that about people robbing others of money?
Who is robbing what?
Are the money changers exploiting people? That’s what a popular preacher told me on instagram.
“Religion is oppressive—it keeps people out.”
“Women were excluded.”
“Gentiles were excluded.”
“Jesus brings Women and Gentiles back into God’s House—and removes exploitative practices that the Law creates.”
Antinomianism (anti = against, nomos = law) takes several forms, one of which is a theological perspective wherein the Old Testament is always the Bad Cop. And you really don’t want to do that because even Progressives have their favorite Old Testament prophetic quotes, a la Micah, “I want justice—rivers of it.” Lol.
You can’t undermine the Old Testament as Exploitative while propping it up authoritatively on Justice. I mean, you can, but a thinking person will record the inconsistency. Thankfully, the types of people that employ these kind of hermeneutics have an emotive audience, not a contemplative one.
And this is precisely the issue I will have with the Grievance Temple Cleansing sermons that will be preached this Sunday across the West: you will make YHWH out to be the bad guy—and He’s not.
He makes a place for women and Gentiles in His house, but you’ll have missed that by reading the way you do. There was an Ethiopian eunuch who wasn’t even allowed in the Temple, but that didn’t stop him from seeking God. Perhaps he understood the cosmic lesson that I touched on yesterday: we are all separated by sin from God, even the priests serving in the Holy Place.
Anyways, I’m gonna show you my conversation with Chat and how it responded to me when I pressed it.
I had asked Chat, “Why did Jesus cleanse the temple?” And the first response was, “Financial Exploitation.”
What I demanded from Chat, then, was first century documentation. Not second century, not third. First century. Give me historical evidence that this was happening. And if you can’t, it’s a guesstimate. And that’s not good enough.
Here’s another issue with theological guesswork: they are ubiquitous in scholarship. I really mean it.
One example is the assumptions on hell and the term Gehenna; theologians confidently talk about Gehenna like it’s a historical fact that it had certain First Century meaning. But when you actually demand evidence, there is none. I’ll demonstrate below the paywall an interaction I had with Grok this morning on Gehenna, where I called Grok out for lying to me, and it agreed that it had fibbed.
Another caution: many of you think that reconstructing the cultural background or setting in life of the text will elucidate the text, revealing what it really means. This is what the German Higher Critics were really all about. And the problem is that this is almost always ideologically motivated.
What you rather ought to do is be confident that all you need is the text. Now I know, I’m sounding like a Reformer here—and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I tend to be—but I do believe that the text is primary and is enough to understand the meaning.
Fine, there is nuance; yes, we need to learn languages; of course we have to read canonically: I’m not saying meaning is for any immediate reader. What I’m saying is that I don’t need an historical reconstruction to understand what is happening in Luke 19.
It’s all there—Jesus quotes Isaiah while He’s cleansing the temple. Luke is showing us that He’s on mission. Understanding YHWH’s good heart for women and gentiles, and understanding that the outer court is where they’re supposed to be doing church, and that you’ve got a veritable petting zoo with loud animals creating the kind of chaos that would send an autistic kid into mania, yeah—I can understand what is happening. Jesus is gonna be pissed. Not because the sellers are robbing people financially, but because they are robbing people spiritually. And the Priests are allowing this chaos—who knows why? We don’t actually know because we don’t have the historical receipts.
But we do have Jesus quoting Isaiah and Luke’s narrative. And that’s all we need.
So here’s a couple things to keep in mind when somebody is saying, “Well this is what happened back in the First Century”:
Ask if they have first century documentation. If they don’t, they are guesstimating. This is why the story of Jesus Christ is so freaking powerful: the entire New Testament is first century documentation—it’s happening in the same period that Christ is operating in. Additionally, these are eye-witness accounts.
Josephus, for example, is invaluable as a source into the first century. But you can’t infer. You have to be honest about what he is saying, and about what he is not saying.
If someone says, “Well in Ephesus, things were this way—and that’s why Paul writes to Timothy so strictly about women in leadership or women in the home,” the first question is, “Show me the first century documents.” The second question is, “Is Paul quoting Genesis when he’s laying out his doctrine to Timothy, the pastor in Ephesus? Because if he is, that is a universal doctrine for every church now—regardless of the cultural context.” The Bible is the Bible for everyone for all of time, and their cultural background or setting in life is completely irrelevant.
Background reconstruction is helpful when a) It’s actually legit sources b) It helps explain the meaning of the text. Some of you TheosSeminary students have had to read Goodacre and Martin go back and forth on the meaning of peribolaion in Greek literature. It’s a golden example of the value of cultural reconstruction when having to parse difficult passages like 1 Cor 11, and how to do it well.
Alright, here’s some hilarious interactions I’ve had with AI below, and how to push back:
So below are the interactions I had with Grok this morning:
