Sermon preached at Evensong on Trinity Sunday 2026

The publication this week of Pope Leo’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, subtitled ‘on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence’, has led to a renewed outpouring of public commentary on AI. It is both remarkable and reassuring that Pope Leo’s voice is not only engaging this essential topic of our time, encouraging and contributing to a public conversation about the blessings of technology, the dignity of humanity, and the need to to build a ‘civilisation of love’, but that the Pope’s voice resounds so strongly in a world where religious commentary is often variously received.  Pope Leo has given us a series of focused warnings about what could happen if the unrestrained technologization of the world were to go unchecked, at the expense of humanity. He writes,

‘The Holy Spirit challenges us today regarding our relationship with technology and the ongoing digital revolution. Scientific discoveries are talents entrusted to humanity so that they may bear fruit (cf. Mt 25:14-30). Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice. In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. Therefore, the primary choice is not between a “yes” or “no” to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.’[1]

The whole encyclical repays careful study and reflection, and deserves urgent consideration by politicians, investors, entrepreneurs, and those working on the details of this technology. But why begin here, precisely, at Evensong on Trinity Sunday? Well, much of what Pope Leo has to say about AI is rooted in what the Church teaches about the nature of the human person. And what we have to say about the human person is rooted in what we have to say about the nature of God. Pope Leo continues,

‘The Church’s Social Doctrine brings us to the very heart of our faith: the mystery of the living God, revealed in Jesus Christ, who, as a communion of Persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — is love itself in relationship, expressed in the mutual gift of self and in sharing with the world…. human persons are called to communion with God and “can fully discover their true selves only in sincere self-giving.” Indeed their deepest vocation is to enter into the Trinitarian dynamic of love received and shared.’[2]

It is not unusual – or indeed, inappropriate – at this point for preachers and Christian teachers to fall back on the language of mystery when talking about the Trinity, and in addressing precisely how the Trinitarian dynamic of ‘love received and shared’ engages and shapes human existence. It is absolutely true that the doctrine of God as Trinity is firstly a mystery to be encountered and loved, rather than a project to be explained or understood. But, the Christian doctrine of God – who Christians understand God to be – does not take refuge in the realm of the metaphorical. When we speak of God as Trinity, we do speak of three persons in communion – yes, within the limitations of language and concepts, but language which is ‘privileged’ language, rather than some kind of vague attempt to make the impossible a little more understandable. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not a theory we fall back on when we have reached the limits of what we can say. God as Trinity is where we start from.

In a fascinating article published last week, Avitwal Balwit, from the AI company Anthropic, explored some of the theological questions thrown which emerge amidst the growth of this extraordinary technology,

‘A running joke is that AI researchers are “building God.” This, of course, sounds wildly grandiose. No one I have met means it literally—nobody thinks they are making something supernatural or divine… From outside San Francisco, the joke is sometimes heard as a reflection of spiritual lacking—that the pursuit of AGI (artificial general intelligence) is a stand-in for a God-shaped hole, that clever technologists who reasoned their way out of the old faith are now building an idol to fill the vacancy. I do not think that is quite what is happening. People need meaning, and intense, world-shaping work is one of the oldest ways to find it; that part is not new and often not sinister. What is different here is that this particular work sits so close to the old questions—what are we, where did this come from, what comes after—that you cannot do it long without staring into them. They are not building God because they miss Him. They are building something that has brought them, unexpectedly, to the edge of where He would be.’[3]

This work does sit so close to many of the ‘old’ fundamental questions, including the nature and destiny of the human person. But it is not straightforward to say that the architecture of artificial general intelligence has somehow brought people to the edge of where God is. Such a conception of God as ‘out there’, simply waiting to be apprehended by human achievement or technological insight is not the God we see revealed in Jesus Christ. God is not some kind of ‘super-thing’ we only encounter at the very edge of our knowledge. That is of course not to say that dialogue between technology and theology, particularly in the context of new discoveries of profound richness when exploring the borders of the unknown, cannot be insightful, inspiring, and sources of wonder for Christians. We can always learn more. But the God revealed as Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons and one God, is immanent – that is, present in creation without being part of creation – as well as transcendent, above and beyond it.

Love is the first characteristic of the Triune God; the love between the Father and the Son, in which we share through the gift of the Holy Spirit. As we read in the pages of scripture and see in the life of the Church, God acts, loves, and enters history. God is the perfect reciprocal, and eternally creative, communion of love between the three persons of the Trinity, always reaching out, reconciling, saving, communicating, sanctifying. We know this communion in and through our prayer. And we know something of this communion as we encounter the faces of one another; diverse other humans, equally made in the image and likeness of the Triune God, yet called into reconciled relationship with one another.

In his encyclical, Pope Leo explains what he describes as a choice which humanity now has to make. There are many warning signs of a new Tower of Babel, a project ‘conceived without reference to God’ with ‘a single language, a single technology, a single direction…[with]… uniformity which eliminates diversity and chooses homogeneity over communion.’ This ‘Babel Project’ has an idolatry of profit which sacrifices the weak, a uniformity which neutralizes difference, and the fantasy that this single digital ‘language’ can translate everything, ‘including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.’ To avoid this, as embodied human beings who love, feel joy and pain, grow and mature in relationships, we should move towards building a civilization of love in a digital age, through dialogue, peacebuilding with justice, and acts of solidarity and hope. We should, Pope Leo says, ‘enter the construction sites of history – research laboratories, technology companies, schools, the media, institutions, and local communities – in order to rebuild what has collapsed, and protect what is threatened.’[4]

The vision of the Holy and Undivided Trinity provides limitless inspiration for this work, and offers us God’s own bonds of loving communion as the only trustworthy method and guide to build such a civilisation. This will not be our own construction, in our own strength. Rather, it will be a participation in the life and love of the Triune God, revealed in Christ, and offered to us through the Holy Spirit, for the renewal of all creation.