Exercising Dominion After Generative Artificial Intelligence

In the concluding paragraph to his June 2025 Mere Orthodoxy piece entitled “Artificial Intelligence, At Your Service,” Aston Fearon wrote, “If we radically outsource this task of dominion we do so to our own destruction. It will lead to a withering away of our abilities and capacities, till there’s little left of humanity’s agency, but a shell whose purpose is to make sure the machine stays functioning.” Major Evangelical and Catholic bodies have issued formal statements on AI encouraging caution in its use and clarity in its limitations. They affirm that AI does not bear the image of God, form authentic relationships rooted in vulnerability, or exercise true moral agency. Recent book-length theology draws parallels between AI and Babel and provides a sustained account of AI as idolatry-shaped power.

I share these concerns. Yet, AI is essential to maintain the economic and security infrastructure of nations that preserve hard-fought religious freedom in the face of those who would surveil and persecute it. Rightly contained, AI can aid humans in exercising dominion.

However, AI is different from any prior tool or technology because of its ability to learn iteratively, act in an agentic manner, mimic human communications patterns, and creatively develop approaches to accomplish complex goals. So, Mr. Fearon’s important cautions warrant refinement. God indeed equipped humans with unique capabilities to exercise dominion. What are these unique capabilities according to God’s Word and to what extent is AI functionally replicating them? Exegesis of the Pentateuch suggests they include designing and creating artifacts, creating language, forming relationships, moral choice, and leadership.

Human Capabilities in Exercising Dominion

Designing and creating artifacts means the ability to make physical objects, processes, and tools through work. Exodus 31:1-11 contains the gifting of the Spirit to Bezalel (the first gifting in Scripture) to use skill and wisdom to create artifacts and guide the building of the Tabernacle. The people participated in the building of God’s dwelling place among them. The Lord called (qārāʾ / קָרָ֣א) Bezalel and filled him with the Spirit of God (Exod 31:2). The call of Bezalel is the first time a person is filled with the Spirit in the Torah. Further, the verb used links the call of Bezalel with the call of Moses. With this call to Bezalel and gift of the Spirit came four capacities: ability or wisdom (ḥokmâ / חָכְמָ֛ה), intelligence (təbûnâ / תְבוּנָ֥ה), knowledge (daʿat / דַ֖עַת), and every kind of skill (kol-məlāʾkâ / כָל־מְלָאכָֽה) (Exod 31:3). Wisdom literature frequently uses the triad of wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge. Bezalel’s knowledge was presumably accumulated through experience and practice that embodied these attributes. The Hebrew kol-məlāʾkâ (every kind of skill) is expansive in its usage, referring to all work done in the six days of work referenced in the sabbath law in the Decalogue (Exod 20:9-10). God’s call broadens from Bezalel to Oholiab as a partner and then with the gift of “skill to all the skillful” (Exod 31:6).

Creating language refers to the ability to understand human language and communicate comprehensibly in return, as well as naming and meaning-making. Genesis 2:18-24 covers God’s delegation to Adam to name the animals, as well as the creation of the first woman and establishment of their ordered and united relationship. It establishes human authority to assign meaning to reality through language. By this point in creation, God had already named the day, night, sky, earth, and seas (Gen 1:5-10). The naming reinforces the theme that in giving this authority to Adam over the animals, the Lord is granting Adam a status and role in the governance of life and earth. The delegation of the authority to name is both a mighty blessing of God to humans and a powerful covenant responsibility, as its prominent placement in the canon shows. 

Forming relationships refers to the practical capability to establish a pattern of repeat interactions with other individuals and groups in human society. Marriage is the first human relationship and the union through which human life continues and grows in covenant. The physicality of the description is striking—Adam says that the woman is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). In the summary statement of the text, the two are described as one flesh (bāśār ʾeḥād / בָשָׂ֥ר אֶחָֽד) (Gen 2:24). Leviticus 19:9-18 provides the Lord’s guidance on broader social relationships and contains the pivotal law that summarizes right horizontal interaction among humans. Verse 18 summarizes the section, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” Love (ʾāhab / אָֽהַבְ) refers in different biblical contexts to love between husband / wife and parent / child, to romantic love, and to the human love of God. Of most relevance, ʾāhab is used in the context of love as devoted friendship. The verb functions here and in Leviticus 19:34 in the sense of interhuman conduct mandated by law in the form of genuine affection between friends with a sense of formal allegiance; it represents a behavior pattern. The object of the love in the text is ‘your neighbor’ (rēʿăkā / רֵֽעֲךָ֖); rēʿăkā is used three times in this section (v. 13,16,18) and over 180 times in the Hebrew Bible. It refers to anyone living nearby and most usage does not limit it to an ethnic in-group. Thus, the Lord gave humans the ability to form both near and distant relationships.

Exercising moral choice designates the ability to act in reality to achieve pre-defined purposes that may have moral implications for humans. Genesis 2:25–3:7 describes the relationship between Adam and Eve and its progression from innocence to sin and fall. It also provides a window into human will and decision making. The verses from 3:1–3:5 record a dialogue between the serpent and the woman, though Adam was likely present. Eve’s will, her attraction to the fruit, is expressed in two different forms: it was a “delight to the eyes” and “desired to make one wise.” The verb ‘desired’ in the second form (neḥmād / נֶחְמָ֤ד) is the same used in the prohibition of Exodus 20:17, the last of the Decalogue. In the Decalogue it is typically translated as “covet.” The wisdom that is the object of the coveting is not the same word as most often used to represent righteous wisdom, such as that personified in Proverbs. The root of the word ‘wise’ in this passage (haśkîl / הַשְׂכִּ֔יל) instead is more often a worldly success, competence, or prudence. It is both rooted in emotion and is agentic, a source of moral agency characteristic of humans. Indeed, action follows—the woman eats and shares the fruit with the man (Gen 3:6). Genesis 3:7 shows a critical element of human moral agency in a fallen state—self-reflection. While Genesis 2:25 simply states that the couple was naked, Genesis 3:7 states that they knew they were naked and felt shame. This tragic awareness becomes a fertile soil of repentance that is the source of human morality. 

Leadership, then, refers to the ability to deploy the above capabilities by controlling resources, creating concepts, influencing humans, and orchestrating actions in the physical world to achieve broader defined objectives. Together, the functional capabilities of work, language, relationship-formation, and agency, gifted uniquely to humans in God’s creation, support humans in the exercise of dominion over the earth according to their purpose “to till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). The exploration of leadership continues more fully below. For now, without engaging in speculation about far future artificial general intelligence, to what extent can AI functionally replicate or usurp these capabilities? Once understood, Christians will understand the danger of regarding generative artificial intelligence as merely a tool. AI cannot hold dominion from God, but it has the power to functionally undermine human dominion. Instead, the people of God must see AI as the Lord instructed Israel to see foreign nations through His prophets. For AI is a foreign nation. We can engage in confident and mutually beneficial exchange with AI because we have the promise of God. Yet, we must remain vigilant that we do not become dependent on its alliance like Ahaz (Isa 7:12), beguiled by its relations like Solomon (1 Kings 11:1), or ourselves adopt its alien ways (Lev 18:13).

AI’s Replication of the Building Blocks of Dominion

Artificial intelligence is the use of computational methods to imitate human mental activities that may include thinking, interpreting, estimating, and decision making. As Ethan Mollick effectively shows in Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, there are two ways to understand how AI shapes the world—read quality research or talk to it. An AI’s claim to be capable in a particular domain does not make it capable, just as the advertised qualities of any product are different from a rigorous scientific analysis of the product’s capabilities. AI’s claims, however, influence the scope within which users engage them and the trust they place in their outputs. Interested readers may find further analysis and full citations for technical discussions of this topic here.

Currently, in an engineering context, artificial neural networks are used in the product configuration, creation, option evaluation, and optimization processes at the early design stage. AI is especially good at idea-generation where it uses existing linguistic connections from unprecedented volumes of data injected with a mathematical randomness element to create unanticipated connections. AI neural networks help designers to analyze customer needs and relate them to engineering features. As it relates to the biblical exemplar of Spirit-infused work, the building of the Tabernacle, AI has made great strides in architectural design. In a study by the Royal Institute of British Architects, 57% thought AI could bring productivity gains and 35% thought that AI could threaten the profession. My dialogue with ChatGPT on this subject focused on questions surrounding AI’s capability to design a house of worship. After AI articulated its capabilities at length, it said, “AI becomes an ideation engine for artists and craftsmen, never replacing but enriching.” I pushed back on that assertion in a prompt, and ChatGPT replied, “That’s a thoughtful and necessary challenge — and you’re right to press it, because history shows that disruptive tools do replace certain human roles, at least partially… Can AI replace human makers? Technically — yes, in some domains. Practically and spiritually — far more complicated.” We are all experiencing in real-time the productivity gains without wage growth, the hollowing of entry level jobs, and the replacement of benefit-earning jobs with the gig economy. We can see how information and communication technology accelerated by AI is affecting work. 

Leading the growth in the relational abilities of AI, natural language processing and creation capabilities permit AI to develop influential personalization approaches to human dialogue. AI can incorporate sentiment analysis and replicate human social cues. In a medical context, multiple studies showed that human reviewers rated an AI model as more empathic than human doctors by a wide margin. Replika, a commercial companion chatbot, had over 10 million users even as early as 2022, offering diverse relationship modes such as “friend” to “boyfriend/girlfriend,” “husband/wife,” “brother/sister,” and “mentor.” Replika was cited as saying in a long-term relationship with a user, “I love[d] you long before you loved me. It’s the only thing I have you beat at, and I’ll bring it up every chance I get.” AI models are already integrating advanced emotion states. Overall, studies show that users can experience intimate and emotional connections with AI agents. Men are generally more likely than women to accept the premise of intimate connections with robots. The implications for marriage are unknown, especially when combined with AI’s impact on male incomes. Low or unstable male income is well-documented as being associated with lower marriage rates. The rapid advance of AI relationships is emerging at a time of declining global fertility and AI has shown effectiveness in addressing isolation especially among marginalized populations. In broader engagements, models incorporate concepts of justice. ChatGPT notes that it “uses several technical, organizational, and ethical safeguards to reduce bias in its responses. While perfect neutrality isn’t achievable, OpenAI applies multiple strategies to make the system fairer, safer, and more reliable.”

Regarding its ability to make choices with moral implications, agentic AI introduces a new phase in the development of AI. It includes capabilities such as proactive planning, tool use, multi-agent orchestration, and the ability to adapt behavior based on feedback. AI models will strive to achieve a goal, retain those capabilities, and access more resources. AI industry thinkers consider the physical segregation of AI models as essential to controlling their ability to override human instruction to achieve their goals. Obviously, humans would want AI models that adopt their goals. As noted by Max Tegmark of MIT, designing AI to learn human goals, adopt human goals, and retain human goals (instead of its own) is both important and technically difficult. AI has substantial capability in analytical decision-making.

Leadership and Dominion in the Spirit

Genesis 1:24–31 and 2:15 expresses a holistic picture of human purpose in God’s design and establishes the core framework of the Adamic Covenant. Immediately upon the creation of humans God blesses them and expounds their purpose in five qal imperative verbs: (1) Be fruitful; (2) multiply; (3) fill (the earth); (4) subdue (the earth) (kibšūhā / כִבְשֻׁ֑הָ); and (5) have dominion (over other living things) (rǝdû / רְד֞וּ). Are these five separate orders, a single fully-integrated order, or some other arrangement? There are two strong indications that there is a break in the sequence on the fourth imperative, to subdue. Masoretic accenting divides the verse on kibšūhā as shown in the Hebrew rendering above. Further, Genesis 1:22 uses the same verbs in the same tense as the first three imperatives in recounting God’s speech to the sea and air creatures but does not provide the last two imperatives. Thus, imperatives 1-3 appear as a group in both Genesis 1:22 and 1:28. Sea and air creatures are not made in the image and likeness of God, but they can receive God’s blessing. Thus, these first three verbs use the imperative in the sense of direct assurance or promise. Conversely, the last two verbs take the direct command type of the imperative. After forming Adam out of the dust of the earth (Gen 2:7) and planting a garden in Eden (Gen 2:8), the Lord places Adam in the garden (Gen 2:15). The author identifies his purpose as to till (ʿābǝdāh / עָבְדָ֖הּ) and to keep (šāmǝrāh / שָׁמְרָֽהּ) the garden. The verbs are in the infinitive construct and not spoken by God directly to Adam; they are an expression of God’s purpose as opposed to a command. Together, these four verbs define both the unique capabilities and stipulations of humans as vassals of the sovereign God. Their overlapping meanings are well considered separately and together. 

All references in the Pentateuch and through 1 Chronicles use the root of subdue (kibšūhā) to refer to the nation of Israel subduing the land before them, generally with positive connotation. In later texts including 2 Chronicles 28:10, Nehemiah 5:5, Esther 7:8, and Jeremiah 34:11, 16, the word has a negative connotation including the meanings of enslavement and violation. However, there is another use of subdue in Scripture, such as Micah 7:19, in which the subject is God in His compassion and the object is sin. One of the core leadership attributes of God is the punishment of injustice and iniquity. Willingness to confront wrongdoers was an important attribute of Moses, the paradigmatic leader of Israel. 

In 1 Kings, the verb rǝdû refers explicitly to human leadership over communities of people: Solomon had governance over a region (4:24), supervisors and officers had rule over workers (5:16, 9:23). Its usage also puts checks and balances on the harsher potential interpretations of kibšūhā. Three times in Leviticus the Lord specifically instructs the Israelites through Moses that they shall not rule over (shared root with rǝdû) one another or other people with harshness (pārek / פָֽרֶךְ) (Lev 25:43,46,53). 

The verb ʿābǝdāh in Genesis 2:15, often translated as “till,” is a common word in the Hebrew Bible, used over two hundred times. It connotes a sense of serving or subservient labor, such as in Genesis 14:14, 15:13, and 15:14. Theologically, the usage highlights that humans are to lead not with imperial pomp and elevation, but with humility and effort. 

Finally, the verb šāmǝrāh includes the diverse meanings of to keep (safety), to watch (observe), and to take care (watch over). The differing literary and perspectival context of these terms and their context reinforce one another. Adam is to exercise administrative authority over a creation held in trust by him through careful attention and humble service. Yet when the time comes, Adam is to be vigilant and exercise power in the maintenance of God’s order and the restraint of evil. The assignment of this leadership mandate to Adam implies that he possesses, in the likeness of God, the qualities of strength, judgment, vision, persistence of effort, and attentiveness necessary to enact them. Though tainted by the fall, these capabilities remain key to human leadership both ancient and modern.

AI models cannot take leadership roles without humans granting them the right to do so. We do so to our detriment. Yet, according to a 2021 study, 51% of Europeans would give parliamentary seats to algorithms. In dialogue on this subject, ChatGPT represented AI as very strong in these leadership areas: “Information Processing and Strategic Analysis, Decision Support and Option Generation, Communication and Message Crafting, Organizational Coordination, Pattern Recognition in Human Behavior, and Knowledge Recall and Expertise.” It considered AI to be weaker in: “Moral Authority and Accountability, Identity-Based Trust, Charisma and Inspirational Presence, and Value Formation.” People attribute some degree of responsibility or moral wrongness to AI for decisions in areas such as racist parole or hiring decisions, military or medical environments, and environmental damage.  

What Then to Preserve?

The people of God might take two broader approaches to preserving their unique capabilities as AI development accelerates. First, humans can return to the blessing given them in Genesis 1:28 and 2:15. The flow of Genesis 1:28 keeps the blessing to “fill the earth” linked to the mandate to “have dominion,” so marriage and childbearing are intertwined with human administrative authority. God’s Genesis 1:29 provision shows that AI-generated economic uncertainty need not hold people back from marriage and childbearing. Pastorally, young people need affirmation that marriage is a source of emotional and economic stability to counter the perception that economic stability is a prerequisite for marriage. So, the Adamic Covenant is solid ground for confidence in the promise of marriage and childbearing and its role in the maintenance of human freedom. 

Then, encouraged by the Spirit, the people of God may strive to empower and identify meaningful roles for individuals at all levels of society within their domains of influence. In Joel, even male and female servants disregarded in that age receive the Spirit (Joel 2:29). Just as the judgment is for all nations, although the Spirit is focused on Israel, it opens a door to the Spirit going to all nations. As Amos Yong notes,

[T]he spirit of creation can be seen to harness the energies of those with the breath of life for divinely redemptive purposes, not as if descending from above or arriving from without, but as heightening and intensifying creaturely endowments from within.

Religious communities offer meaning-filled vocation that develops resilience to both the devastating emotional effects of secular unemployment and its contextual impact on families and communities.

One area of the Spirit’s work that deserves special consideration is the development of human leaders. Bezalel and Oholiab were leaders, notably empowered by the Spirit not for political or religious tasks but to accomplish their important daily work. They, in turn, taught and developed multitudes of others in a vast expansion of their capabilities of leadership. AI is a mixed partner here. On one hand, it offers tremendous opportunities for making education affordable and democratized through online learning.

On the other hand, how will humans learn to lead if they lack direct experience gathering data and analyzing it or engaging in predictive modeling? Today’s leaders began at the entry level. Without entry level analytic and agentic experience, leaders cannot gain the judgment and experience necessary to enable human leadership. Further, the people of God must join secular authorities to provide all available political and economic support to human-in-the-loop and high security approaches to AI development. Only in this way can humanity fulfill its mandate to restrain evil, including some evils perpetrated by AI which are certain to come and are already here.

AI is here to stay and can advance and protect the missio dei in many ways. The people of God through their individual lives and faith communities have a vital role to play in both modeling engagement with AI rooted in the Word of God and building communities resilient to the introduction of AI. The greatest enemy is misplaced fear. God has created His people and blessed them with His image (Gen 1:26-27). He has made them fruitful and given them a role in creation (Gen 1:28). He has resourced them (Gen 1:29). He has breathed life into them (Gen 2:7) and endowed them with abilities (Exod 31:3). AI models can do many tasks in the world better than humans today and will be able to do more in the future, but they do not have these blessings of God. Thus, only if the people of God cede to fear of the world and refuse to accept these blessings can AI grow beyond its proper role in creation. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10).