Grace Liberated: A Chatbot-Informed Theology of Devotion

In this essay, I presuppose that the created-creator relationship between AI-based knowledge tools (such as Open AI’s ChatGPT) and humanity is analogous to the human-divine devotional relationship – perhaps this AI-human materiality can helpfully nuance theological discourse around devotion and grace. Being so, I explore how materiality concepts (latency/excess as per Bill Brown, distributed personhood as per Alfred Gell, and [im]materiality as per Daniel Miller) could ease grace-full tensions within the devotional relationship: its accountable love (using Roberto S. Goizueta), incremental yet unjust cost (using Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eldin Villafañe), and para-normative mediation (using Simone Weil and Vincent Lloyd). Putting together materiality and grace-full tensions, I suggest a materially ‘liberated grace’ catalyzed by Latine and devotional concepts of traditioning (from Orlando Espín), de-gendering (from Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada), and affective bonding (from Daisy Vargas). I start and end with ChatGPT inductively as ‘experimental interlocutor’ – source and conversation partner.