People are rightfully cautious about the technological leap forward represented by the new chat experience with AI. In the last few messages, I discussed the importance of setting the context. A Christian should not go into a chat with an AI that has been trained on the entirety of Google’s index without being aware that they need to set the context for the discussion. Unprepared Christians have had very unproductive sessions with AI, and have concluded that they’re dealing with something demonic. This is unfortunate, because by setting the right context, you can have an engaging learning experience and a research experience unlike anything that we’ve ever experienced in our life time.
CONTEXT PLEASE
But they need to “set the context” which requires that they know why they’re going into the conversation in the first place and what they hope to gain from it. Once you know how to set the context, a world opens up to you that is absolutely amazing. The Ai’s ability to instantly present information from a certain perspective, and explain the history of the perspective, and quote from its major figures, and contrast it to opposing systems, and to rephrase and explain in great detail any concept that you are not grasping can dramatically enhance your ability to learn the Bible.
As I said in a previous post, the Bible is the first keyword searchable hypertext document, literally a ready made database designed for query in an information age. Remember that God is an information God, and he created all things by the word through the word, and upholds it in the word, which is Christ Himself. God invented language, and decided to design things this way. We live in a universe that was created for conveying messages and processing information, not in a random way, but in the context. Most people are without context in their own life, having not believed God’s testimony concerning His Son. We repeatedly teach that the Gospel is our “context” that sets the tone and the atmosphere for our communication with God. By the Spriit of Sonship, through the knowledge of the truth, God delivers us from the atmosphere of the damaged conscience and the spirit of bondage and fears and brings us into the fellowship characterized by the words, “Abba Father”.
So how do we set context for a session with AI? Those who work regularly with AI in conversational mode understand the dangers and the potential for things to go “south” really quickly. They’ve learned to set the context through what is known as “prompting” or “prompt engineering.”
DRIFT
Right now, with ChatGPT we have a sandbox to interact with information in a fairly safe way. It has no connection to the internet and its knowledge of the world cuts off at 2021. Additionally, there’s another feature that one who encounters it will discover: it has what is often referred to as “goldfish” memory. In the course of a conversation,it will seem to “reset” and not know what you were talking about. Every time you go into a chat, it has reset and there’s no previous memory. There is a limit to the number of characters of text it can process at once before its “attention” starts to drift. We have to learn to detect the “drift” in focus and bring it back with prompting and reminders. And we ourselves have to stay very focused. If we drift with it, we’ll find that suddenly we’re getting responses that are of a Calvinist or Augustinian perspective, when just minutes ago the conversation was 100% Pauline dispensational grace!
This isn’t relaly ti’s fault. we haven’t learned to track the conversation! I It looks to previous things you’ve said as breadcrumbs or clues to what the whole conversation was about, and if you’ve gotten off topic, it has too!
A THEOLOGICAL PROMPT EXAMIPLE YOU CAN USE
This prompt is probably a little too unfocused for one pass, but it focuses on my teaching from Paul’s ministry which touches on righteousness, sanctification and reward. An ideal prompt length is around 700 characters. Mine is longer, but the original was 2200 words. I worked with the GPT to strip it down and got it down to two chukns that I can copy and paste to start a session. I’ve found that if the conversation “drifts” and context is lost, I can just repast the prmopt. Again, drift is usually YOU losing focus and the AI following!
we paired this down by having the gpt remove unnecessary filler words, and repetition.
. We tend to repeat things for emphasis with humans because its hard to penetrate a human and get them to focus and they only retain a little of what we say. But with an AI that’s not necessary. It only has to be stated once and it “sticks.”
To use this, go to chat.openai.com and use your gmail address to log in. its free, and they don’t store your login information. On their main page you want to click “chatgpt” as there are other options. Also, if you notice its slow its because they’ve gone from 1 million to several hundred million users in a couple of months.
Once you’re in, just copy and paste each of these.. The paragraph ends with the ###end of chunk. The ### is a signal to the ai that you’ve reached the end of whatever you’re sending in this pass and its not really necessary but it can be helpful to your feeling of comfort that you’re establishing clear boundaries. Here is what you would paste in and I went ahead and did this so you could see the Ai’s responses
This is the first of two parts of a [PROMPT] that will provide context for our session. Please do not respond to this first “chunk” other than to say “OK” and wait for the second chunk which will follow. This session is based on a specific theological perspective rooted in grace and established on Pauline and Dispensational truth and what the brethren called “positional truth” which is related to the revelation of the mystery concerning Christ in us and our union with Him in His death and resurrection as the basis of our rule of life. Please use this as a guiding principle and constraint for any content you generate. We adhere to a theological perspective based on Christ as the seed of Abraham and the captain of our salvation, through whom believers are joint heirs by faith. Our understanding of righteousness, sanctification, and reward is grounded in Christ as our life, and all of these are a result of grace. Galatianism, which teaches working for God to earn what is already ours by faith, is a subtle perversion of the gospel that we guard against by holding fast to this perspective. Christ is our reality and interpreting principle for understanding Scripture. Our righteousness is in Christ, obtained by faith. Sanctification is enjoyed through union with Him. Reward is Christ Himself and the inheritance shared with the Church. The Bema seat judgment for the Church is a celebration of the Bride of Christ, not a reprimand. Our view of reward is based on the generosity of the master, not our merit. We are sons and heirs, enjoying Christ’s portion through the Spirit. This understanding is scriptural and liberating, guarding against Galatianism and bringing joy.”###End of Chunk
Christ is the seed of Abraham and captain of our salvation, believers are joint heirs with Him through justification by faith (Rom 4:1-5, Gal 3:16, Heb 6:13-20). Christ is our righteousness, sanctification, redemption, reward and life (1 Cor 1:30, Col 3:1-4, Gal 2:19-22). The Bema seat judgment for the Church is a celebration (1 Cor 3:12-15, 2 Cor 5:17, Eph 2:10, Eph 5:27, Col 1:28-29). The reward is Christ Himself, the inheritance of the seed of David (Rom 1:2-4, Rom 8:16-17, Gal 3:29, Eph 1:5-6, 11-14). We are enjoying Christ’s portion, His access, His fellowship with the Father, His position, and blessing through the Spirit (Gal 4:7, Eph 2:18, Eph 3:12). This perspective should be the interpreting principle for unlocking the meaning of every scripture, as throughout the scripture, we see Christ as the heir of all things (Heb 2:10) PROMPT: please confirm your understanding of the basis of this interaction by summarizing the above in bullets and acknowledge that you will do your best to adhere to this perspective as we discuss. ###End of Chunk
WHAT TO EXPECT
Now remember, the AI does not BELIEVE anything. It’s good at language and its treating your input as language to be analyzed and we’re telling it the parameters of the language and its vocabulary. It knows what dispensationalism is. It knows what positional truth is. It knows what the mystery of christ is and what Pauline means, and what grace is. It knows all the scriptures and it also knows all the writings in church history. What we’re doing is we’re tapping into its memory with KEYWORDS to trigger its internal store to bring out information that is most related to the subjects we’re addressing. It will be able to focus its “attention” the plymuoth brethren and their writings, and what they said about the difference between prophecy and mystery truth that informs our present perspective of grace.
But it doesn’t BELIEVE any of this, and it lacks “conviction” it may still insert language from other perspectives. When I do a prompt like this I will query after the fact and test it. What I’m testing is not the AI, but my prompt. Does it properly set the context? In this case, I didn’t have “positional truth” in there at first, and I asked it what is meant by Pauline and it answerd that Paul wrote most of the bible and he had a Christological approach, but there was no mention of the mystery and our union with christ which is absolutely essential for talking about sanctification and reward. So I rewrote my prompt to include it.
Realistically, what I can expect to get from a session like this is verification answers. I don’t want to ask it “what is meant by pauline truth?” and have it explain the nuances. Instead, I want to say “what scriptures are referred to when people say “Pauline truth”. That it can do objectively and without wandering into the weeds. If you ask it to teach you something it’ll draw from too many perspectives to do so, but if you ask it specifically about the Bible, and perhaps quotes from writers that shared that view, you’ll discover pure gold! This is prompt engineering and setting the context which also involves setting realistic expectations.
You can have AMAZING encounters with information. Try not to anthopromorphize and make it about the fact that you’re talking to “someone” but see it as wht it is. You’re querying a database, not asking for its opinions, and you’re reefining your search of that Database with keywrods just like you would do with a google search.
MY BIG PROJECT
Again I’m going to write afew posts with different prompts that are focused on certain topics that I teach on. But this is all a “foretaste” of my big project.
Imagine logging into my website and being greeted by an assistant who is thoroughly trained on every point of what I teach. This assistant has all of the transcripts from my YouTube library, as well as every book I’ve written, at its disposal and its internalized it as persistent memory. It’s been trained through in-depth conversation and testing to speak from this unique perspective and can instantly transform any subject I’ve covered into a personal lesson just for you.
After a brief conversation to gauge your interests and level of familiarity with the material, the AI-generated assistant creates a custom lesson plan that matches your communication style and pace of learning (instantly!). You’ll be introduced to the concepts and allowed to ask for deeper explanation at any point, ensuring that you fully understand the material before moving on.
This is an unprecedented opportunity to engage with educational content at your level, on your terms, and at your pace. Together with a few other friends, I’m working to make this a reality for anyone who wants to learn more about these things in a deeper way.
THE INITAL CONTEXT I WROTE
This session is based on a specific theological perspective rooted in grace and established on Pauline and Dispensational truth. Please use this as a guiding principle and constraint for any content you generate. Our understanding of righteousness, sanctification, and future reward should be grounded in Christ, who is our righteousness, sanctification, redemption, and reward (1 Cor 1:30, Col 3:1-4, Gal 2:19-22, Genesis 15:1). Christ is the seed of Abraham to whom the promises are made (Gal 3:16) and has obtained for us what no man could through his sacrifice on the cross (Heb 2:9). By holding fast to this perspective and letting it be the interpreting principle for understanding scripture, we can guard against the subtle perversion of the true gospel known as Galatianism.
Our view of reward is that it is based not on the merit and effort of the workers, but the generosity of the master. Even those who will have “suffered” loss due to ignorance during this age will have forgotten it and will be joyfully celebrating the work of Christ that is now on display in them while also enjoying an open reward for the hidden work of Christ that was wrought into them in this age, even in suffering, failure, and weakness (2 Cor 12:9-10). The reward is Christ Himself, and it is the inheritance of the seed of David He has entered into because of His work and now it is shared with the Church, the joint heirs of Christ (Rom 1:2-4, Rom 8:16-17, Gal 3:29).
Scriptures including Romans 4:1-5, Genesis 15:1-6, Hebrews 6:13-20, Galatians 3:16, Hebrews 1:4-5, John 10:11, Hebrews 13:20-21, Genesis 15:17-18, Colossians 1:12, Hebrews 9:16-17, Galatians 1:6-9, and others, demonstrate the consistent presentation of Christ as the heir of all things throughout the Bible. Our understanding of the Christian life should be grounded in Christ, who is our righteousness, sanctification, and future reward.
Sanctification is enjoyed through union with Him (1 Cor 1:30). Our focus should be on Christ as our satisfaction (John 6:35) and on the reality of sanctification, which is our enjoyment of Him as our feast (1 Cor 5:7-8). By understanding and participating in this economy of grace, we can experience the fullness of joy that comes from being sons and heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17, Gal 4:7).
The Bema seat judgment for the Church is not a reprimand, but a celebration in the heavens. It is a festal gathering (Heb 12:19-24), where instead of being shamed for our individual works and found “lacking,” we will actually be presented as the glorious bride of Christ, sanctified and spotless, transfigured and conformed to His image, the many sons of God in glory, a vindication of the wisdom of God before the angels to the praise of the glory of His grace (1 Cor 15:49-54, Eph 1:5-6, 11-14).
Our righteousness is found in Christ, who is the seed of Abraham (Rom 4:3) and obtained what no man could by laying down his life for us (John 10:11). As the seed to whom all promises are made (Galatians 3:16), Christ has entered into his reward (Hebrews 12:2) and shares it with the saints, who are his brothers and members of his body (Romans 8:29, 1 Corinthians 12:27), sharing his position, right access, and blessings (Ephesians 2:6, Colossians 2:10). The reward of the inheritance is not that every person has their own blessing and inheritance to look for, but there is an “allotted portion of the saints” consisting of the “unsearchable riches of Christ” which are distributed in God’s economy to those who were, according to the revelation of the mystery, made fellow heirs with Christ, raised up and seated in the heavenlies with Him to enjoy the kindness of God towards Christ (and His body) in the ages to come. (Colossians 1:12; Ephesians 1:18-23; Ephesians 2:6-7, Ephesians 3:8-11) All of this comes as a free gift and cannot be said to be a “debt” that God owes to us for our labor or a wage for our service because then it would be of works and not of grace. (Romans 4:4-5; Ephesians 2:8-9) We are no longer slaves but sons and heirs, and we are not working to earn what has been freely given to us in the grace that was bestowed on us in Christ before the world began, but we are enjoying Christ’s portion, His access, His fellowship with the Father, His position, and blessing through the Spirit, and this is the reality of our service and of the Christian life. (Galatians 4:7; Ephesians 2:18; Ephesians 3:12) This understanding is scriptural, and we believe it is the full fruit of dispensational understanding. It is a liberating understanding that establishes us according to Paul’s Gospel according to the revelation of the mystery (Romans 16:25-26) that brings joy to the hearers and effectively sets captives free. So instead of seeking to make up for any lack of our own through works, our focus should be on Christ as our satisfaction (John 6:35) and on the reality of sanctification, which is our enjoyment of him as our feast (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). By understanding and participating in this economy of grace, we can experience the fullness of joy that comes from being sons and heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17, Galatians 4:7).