Post-Conservative Theology: Ethics of Information and Formation

Cutter Callaway emphasizes that effective AI must foster meaningful communication and formation grounded in theological ethics.

### Navigating AI and Information Ethics Through Post-Conservative Theology
* 📖 Cutter Callaway, a prominent figure in theology and culture, introduces the session and highlights the **importance of effective teaching**, crediting his students for their **impact on his work**.
* 👩 Melanie Zugan, a doctoral candidate at Fuller Theological Seminary, presents her research on how AI can be beneficial to religious faiths, emphasizing that the Bible is fundamentally about **formation and communication**.
* 💡 Zugan introduces the concept of the "**problem of groundlessness**," which reflects the current societal challenges of finding **meaningful common ground** amidst various cultural contexts.
* 🧠 She critiques the limitations of both conservative and liberal theological frameworks, particularly the way they **struggle to ground ethics** in a **rapidly changing technological landscape**.
* 📜 Zugan advocates for a post-conservative theology that recognizes the **importance of embodied conversion** and the **normative voice of Scripture** in guiding ethical decision-making in the age of AI.
* 🔄 By examining the Book of James, she illustrates how **wisdom and understanding are embodied practices** rather than mere abstract principles, arguing for a **more dynamic engagement with Scripture**.
* 🌍 The presentation concludes with a call for Christians to engage with information ethics in a way that **fosters meaningful communication and resists the transactional nature of information flow**, ultimately advocating for a **biblical approach to AI**.
* 📊 Zugan emphasizes the necessity of developing AI tools that promote **good communication and learning**, positioning post-conservative theology as a **fruitful framework for navigating the complexities of information ethics** in contemporary society.

our moderator, uh, for today's session is Cutter Callaway. Cutter is the William K. Brem Chair of Worship Theology and the Arts, as well as the Associate Dean of the Center for Advanced Theological Studies and Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. He's engaged in writing and speaking on the interaction between theology and culture, particularly film, television, and technology, in both academic and popular forums. Holds two PhDs, one in theology and second in psychological science, both from Fuller Seminary, and his recent books include Theology for Psychology and Counseling: An Invitation to Holistic Christian Practice and Technosapiens in a Networked Era: Becoming Digital Neighbors. So welcome [Applause] Cutter. It's kind of awkward, uh, being introduced just to introduce people, um, but my role is to introduce people, um. I have a confession to make, and that is, uh, even though I have multiple faculty roles, um, I don't think I'm actually a very good teacher. Um, what I am, though, uh, is blessed to have really good students.

um, and for any of you who are teachers, I think you'd probably agree that the best teachers are made by really great students. um, you don't have to do a whole lot with impressive people. uh, one of those students, uh, is Melanie Zugan, who is going to be our first presenter today. um, she is a doctoral candidate at Fuller, is on the verge of finishing her dissertation, currently titled Information: A Post-Conservative Theology of Information Flow. um, and I think you'll be delighted to hear from her, so please join me in welcoming Melanie. [Applause] Zugan. Hi, good morning, and good morning. It is um, yes, as I've been kindly introduced, my name is Melanie Zugan. I am at Fuller. um, this morning, what I'd like to talk about today is to pick up where we left off yesterday, a conversation about the kind of work that's needed to make AI beneficial to the public, and specifically related to our religious faiths. So, the Bible, I'm going to argue, is about formation. It's about forming us.

according to God's Will by walking and talking and wrestling with God and one another. And if AI is not helping us walk and talk and wrestle well with one another, then I propose that it's failing. Good formation through good information flow should be the goal, and that requires protecting the integrity of context, the integrity of the vo's informative communication with one another. So, the work that I'm directing our attention to this morning is this idea that post-conservative frame of conversion grounds ethics of information flow in formation. So, I'd like to start with something called the problem of groundlessness. You might have heard it as the data grounding problem. Our current moment in society, it goes by so many different names: liquid modernity, globalization, network society, age of authenticity. You know, these are all buzzwords that get thrown around, all very important in helping us understand our current moment, but a common problem through all of them is this problem of groundlessness. What is meaningful common ground for connected context, connected

in new ways. How can we discern what is and what is good about it? What does it mean? Theology has a unique resource. It's recognized that it has a unique resource of God as a kind of extranatural grounding that gets the benefit of inherent mystery. And so, a lot of theologians will take advantage of that to ground their ethics in technology and human enhancement. We do this most often with this idea of the Imago Dei and Philip Hefner's interpretation of it called created co-creator. Yes, whether you read it or not, you are likely familiar with it. This is the one that gets passed around so much. It's so widely influential. And what Hefner is doing is he works with post-liberal ideas of remythologization to say that our essential characteristic as humans is as creators. It's not one among many characteristics. We are created by a Creator to create, created co-creators. And you can see, as quoted here, what Hefner is doing is grounding

our Essence as creators in the theological symbol of the IMO day. But because mainstream academic, mainstream Academia is liberal and is post-liberal, the way that Li and post-liberal methods are committed to Human Experience to ground religious knowledge, and I'm referring here to Humes Fork, to the split that happens that forces liberal theology to be based on religious experience, conservative theology to be based on divine revelation. These are the categories that I'm working with. So, because of the liberal commitments to religious experience, Hefner acknowledges that a theological grounding of Ethics in the Creator turns into a grounding in creation. Read with me here: the fundamental Norm is the wholesomeness of the creation of which we are part. This Norm is empty until it is filled with content, and it is we, the co-creators, who must Supply that content. This is what I mean by saying that we are co-creators all the way down. This is the widely acknowledged challenge of postmodernity, right? When we talk about Hefner's work, this is

what Scholars like Ted Peters, a recent dissertation by Victoria Laur, they're recognizing that it needs better grounding in modes of meaning-making, not just creation. It's not enough to carry the weight. It's Turtles all the way down. So, when your theology begins with the inherent creativity and ongoing change in creation, it is very hard to say what is good about creation in any particular state as it keeps changing and creates itself. So, the only good here is creation itself, and that offers very little ethical direction despite an appearance of grounding in creation. And we found in this conversation of human enhancement, we haven't really progressed forward because of this kind of challenge. It just doesn't really go anywhere. We're losing the modern assumptions of common ground. This is something that Hefner had available to work with in the 80s and 90s when he was working these kind of modern assumptions that would let like an AI Optimist say that meaning is relative. Who am I to judge someone else's interpretation of

scripture without worrying about it too much, but we're losing those common assumptions. And to quote celebrated postmodern philosopher Bruno Latour, even this notion of a common world we didn't have to articulate because it was obvious. Now we have people who no longer share the idea that there is a common world, and that of course changes everything. The conservatives recognize this feeling of groundlessness. They recognize this liberal and post-liberal conflation of Creator and creation. They resist it. Conservatives really don't engage much with Hefner's created co-creators, so they're out of this mainstream academic conversation. They're really just two separate conversations happening, and it's a hard act to follow when a progressive is able to get up and say, Don't worry about AI, it's not going to destroy the world. The only thing that you really can come back to that with is saying, Well, the world is going to destroy you, and that's where we get this kind of sense of embattlement that the

conservatives that evangelicals are struggling with. You can read with me this quote. This is the leading conservative voice, Jason Ther, who's been at the forefront of AI challenges. He works with the Baptists. They were the first to release a statement on AI. But in one of his books, he says, The nature of Truth is that it cannot be personalized. It corresponds with reality whether we like it or not. In this way, truth is an equal opportunity informer and offender to us all. And when we press against reality to try to make it bend to our desire, reality presses back hard. So, this kind of unflinching, impersonal articulation of creation is characteristic of conservative theology. And you can see it here again, somebody like Brent Waters's work, which is widely influential, and it's a lot closer to the kind of post-conservative work that I'm going to be talking about. But he does not have an anthropology that can account for how human beings create and interact with a

dynamic world. And this is because, just like the Liberals, challenges are ultimately because of their methodological commitments going back to Hume's Fork. This is because the conservatives' methodological commitments to propositional divine revelation, and I mean a hard inherency, uh, interventionist Divine action, no humans needed. The command of God is clear. That's what I'm talking about. Those commitments to ground religious knowledge makes it very difficult for conservatives, even when they want to affirm good uses of Technology, as many of them do. You don't have the way to account for how change in creation can be good, and even more so, how humans can discern in our technological age what is good about it, because the Bible doesn't talk about AI. And that's why this is such a challenging conversation. So postc conservative theology is kind of a loose category. It's emerging in response to this problem of data grounding problem, even if it's not talked about in those specific terms. And when I say postc conservative, I'm referring to a group of

Scholars like these who may not call themselves post-conservative and I mean most of the ones that I know at Fuller don't because they're working in different disciplines but it's a general group of scholars who are working with and addressing conservative context just like if the post-liberals are beginning and addressing liberal context liberal mainstream academia post-conservatives are working with in reforming conservative methods they're meeting in the middle from two different starting points and post-conservative work is so relevant but has thus far not been engaged in either conversation of AI and tech because it's too liberal for the conservatives it's too conservative for the liberals but I think it's a gift for each so essentially post-conservativism you can sum it up with these two paradigms and I and I won't unpack them here we'll be doing that as we go but if these are familiar to you then that may be helpful so suffice to say in correction to the

conservatives learning is not simply an information transaction. Words do not contain ERS of meaning; information is formative. It's inherently wrapped up in the persons who create and communicate it, and it's better to treat it as such in correction to post-liberals. Scripture does have a voice that is not merely human; its voice is normative, and it is the Canon of Scripture that has final interpretive authority rather than the reading communities as in a post-liberal cultural linguistic. It's why Vanhoozer uses the canonical linguistic. This is what you may call the post-conservative tradition of conversion. Salvation comes by talking, wrestling, and walking with God as Jacob did. As we read, wrestle, and practice the Canon of Scripture, the whole church, our neural networks, and embodied beings are converted to seeing the world as God sees it. And this is how we learn. Simply amassing more data has not made us wiser. Conversion is a lifelong cultivation of God's good judgment in our own neurological beings. As Green says, such

patterns reflect the way of the Lord who brings salvation, who restores his people. Such patterns reach into the day-to-day interactions and affairs of life, and conversion is embodied. So, with this frame of embodied conversion, post-conservative theology offers a way to ground creation in a rethe reading of scripture, the way that the post-liberals want to with created co-creators but cannot. With this frame of embodied conversion, post-conservative theology offers a way to ground creation in the Bible as the normative word of God, as scripture, the way that conservatives want to with propositional inherency but cannot. This is a method that requires change and is also conservative of what is not out of fear but out of wisdom, fear of the Lord. And obviously, there are reasons to object. I'm not proposing that this is a self-sufficient or a final theological method of interpretation, but I do think it represents the necessary work that has to be done in order for AI to benefit the US public and everyone impacted by our Christian nationalist.

neoliberal capitalist culture. Some things that started to come up in our conversations yesterday. So why don't we do this kind of work? Some say conversion as formative is not biblical of our Childs. Where in the Suter in any Paul's letters is there even a hint of virtue as habitus? How can biblical theology once again return to the misdirected search for enduring principles? This fear of abstraction. His critic John Barton agrees. He says ethical choice is a once-for-all affair which sets one's feet on either on the way of life or on the way to death. So conversion is not the same as Green's idea of formation. He says formation is, I would argue, largely a post-biblical concept. Bible can be used in it, but it is not what the Bible is primarily about. They say it's not canonical, it is too abstract, and it is too reliant on long human-led processes. But post-conservatives disagree, and Green directs our attention to the Book of James as a case study to

demonstrate the difference that a post-conservative frame of conversion makes. And I'm going to hit the highlights here. James is significantly concerned with the good formation of human beings. James addresses his letter to God's people in dispersion, people who lack social-religious structures. And so James, quote, works hard to shape both how people find their identity and how they respond to their life situations, end quote. And we are those people too. Our goal should not be to make our nation a religious institution. It should be along these lines that James will recommend to God's people, he including us, the reader, as those people in dispersion, truth and wisdom and understanding. For James, is something that is practiced more than it is possessed. And I have an excerpt here from James 3:13 and 18. I'll read the full one. This is the only full passage of scripture I'm going to read this morning. James 3:13 through 18 says, Are any of you wise in understanding? Show that your actions are good with a humble

lifestyle that comes from wisdom. However, if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, then stop bragging and living in ways that deny the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above; instead, it is from the earth, natural and demonic. Wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there is disorder in everything that is evil. What of the wisdom from above? First, it is pure and then peaceful, gentle, obedient, filled with mercy and good actions, fair and genuine. Those who make peace sow the seeds of justice by their peaceful acts. So, for James Green, it says, Wisdom and understanding are measured in terms of the forms of life that they inspire. In this sense, wisdom and understanding are fully embodied, not thought experiments or data stored for future use. So, the virtues that James is naming here are not abstract principles, but they are embodied, enacted practices. And what of the line that I read about natural wisdom from the earth being demonic? That kind of language makes it seem like James is not interested in embodiment at all, but in

pure wisdom from above, but not so when you situate this language in the biblical narration of God's work of creation. This helps us to hear James' voice more clearly. Green draws out how James is grounding his virtue formation in a Biblical narration of creation to New Creation, and we are located in the middle, in the present exilic life, with God's work perfectly interpreted and now and not yet fulfilled by the person of Jesus Christ. James's references to Creation are few in the Book of James, but they are important in how they ground his ethic in God's good creation. It is the narrative structure that gives meaning that Hefner's grounding in creation cannot. There's two references specifically: James 1:17 to the father of lights and James 3:9 to human beings made in God's light. Let's go back. James' interest here in creation is focused especially on the nature of the Creator God as a God who does not waver between giving good things and bad things. His character is

consistently oriented toward good things, which is what light symbolizes. The trustworthiness of God as a God who gives good things and creates good things is evinced in the goodness of his creation of the Heavenly lights. God, the good Creator, created humankind, and that's the theme that continues in James's second reference to Creation in James 3:9. James is grounding human dignity and the call for ethical comportment in creation, and more particularly in the God who created humans in his likeness. God, who is good, creates and gives good things, including human beings. It would be a misinterpretation of creation and a form of judgment to bless God but to curse human beings so created. Natural things are not hopeless. The Beast, the tongue, the human—these things are to be converted according to God's good work, the work of creation and New Creation. Change is required. Even the demons know God; they fear God, but they refuse to be formed according to God. That's James 2:19. The point is that we are to be

formed by walking. Walking with God, by wrestling with God's word, and becoming who he tells us who we are. This kind of conversion is the end of New Creation. It will be a kingdom different than what exists now. The people of God face a perasmos, which may be interpreted as either a Temptation or a test or a trial, which is the point that James is making here. The situation faced is the same. The difference for James is how one interprets and responds to it. Responding to a test as though it's a trial with joyful endurance leads to maturity. Responding to a test as though a Temptation with blame and sin leads to death. As the people of God, we are shown a way through Jesus Christ, particularly how to live and interpret our lives in ways that lead to life abundant. You can see the earthy kind of language here communicates that created natural things are good and require formation that comes through work. Our sin here, and I think Green might agree with what Hefner says, that our sin is

not our propensity to create our call to create. It's our ineptitude to judge good and evil as Only God Can. We must not repeat Adam and Eve's sin of taking on God's role as judge for ourselves. We have to be normed by God's Vision, God's word, the virtues that form are the embodied fruit, fruit of our embodied toiling and talking with Christ. Our conversion, not the Earthly standards of efficiency, wealth, and big numbers. And this is what James talks about. If practicing this, if reading in this kind of way is so important, how do we do it? Green gives us some guidelines for interpretation. The biblical Scholars are so reluctant to give you guidelines of how to do it, which has helped those of us who aren't biblical Scholars. So yeah, I'm grateful for this list here. You can see here, it's so important to read the main takeaways, reading scripture in its whole canonical form, protecting the Integrity of its semantic, its historical contexts against abstraction, as the differing voices of the Canon are brought together and with

full attention to the people who communicate scripture and who are formed by its communication. So, I sum this up in three words that all begin with C: it's conservative, a form, it's contextual, and it's communicatively formative. So, with respect to AI, this attention to the biblical ethic of conversion as formation offers a way for Christians to better engage publicly as citizens about information ethics. To, as we talked about yesterday, to cultivate an appetite for better tools, for better AI, ones that will direct us back to scripture and back to mechanisms of learning and wisdom. And I find quite a bit of commonality between a post-conservative ethic and an ethic like Helen Nissenbaum's widely influential frame of contextual integrity. Nissenbaum focuses on the appropriate flow of information, which you might call a formed flow of information, not rights or control, getting away from that conversation. She wants to talk about appropriate flow. She offers heuristics for evaluating the effects of information technologies that, like Greene's, you can see them here side by side, they are both conservative of forms.

of communication. They are contextual and that they protect the integrity of context even as their data is being brought together in the public sphere and in AI models so that people may retain access to meaningful informative communication rather than mere exchanges of information. The main problem, which has also come up repeatedly yesterday, is the problem of how to interpret and manage information coming from different contexts. I think a post-conservative understanding of conversion better accounts for the common good and particular context than the conservative and post-liberal frames that we've been using to have two separate conversations. This is so important because we live in this age of big data, fake news, sound bites. It is an ocean to navigate; it's overwhelming. No one is able to do this. The formative flows of communication among contexts are failing. Information is not simply transactional. It was diversified and complicated at Babel and affirmed at Pentecost and will continue in New Creation to be quoting Bates and a difference that makes a difference. So, as the people of God in exile, we must

must draw people into the formative work of communication, of wrestling with the word of God. I'd move that we have to stop pulling theological symbols like the imod day. You know why is the created co-creator the thing that we know most from this conversation. We have to pull, stop pulling these symbols out of their canonical semantic and historical contexts, and using them to justify our ethical judgments. This is weight that they can't hold. As we build good AI tools, I move that we have to publicly and prophetically differentiate between the kinds of models that are being built by the people here, and uses of AI that are not promoting good communication, good patterns of learning. Conserve scripture, don't mine and excavate it. This is an ecological contextual ethic in the information age. Postc conservative frame of conversion grounds the ethics of information and formation, and I'm arguing this is a more biblical fruitful Way Forward for information ethics. Thank you. [Applause]

Melanie Dzugan  'Are Any of You Wise and Understanding'  James’s Embodied Epistemology and Norms of

Museum of the Bible

The Role of AI in Public Benefit and Religious Faith

Cutter Callaway, the moderator, introduces himself and Melanie Zugan, a doctoral candidate at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Zugan discusses the importance of AI in fostering good formation through information flow, emphasizing the need to protect the integrity of communication.

She highlights the problem of groundlessness in society and proposes a post-conservative frame of conversion to ground ethics of information flow in formation, using the concept of created co-creators as a key theological resource.

Theological Perspectives on Creation and Co-Creation

Mainstream academia's liberal and post-liberal approaches to theology emphasize human experience as the basis for religious knowledge, leading to a grounding in creation rather than the Creator.

This shift presents a challenge for ethical direction, as the inherent creativity and ongoing change in creation make it difficult to define what is good.

The divide between liberal and conservative theology is evident, with conservatives resisting the conflation of Creator and creation, leading to separate conversations on the role of human beings as co-creators.

The Challenge of Post-Conservative Theology

Post-conservative theology emerges in response to the challenges faced by conservatives in grounding religious knowledge and affirming the good use of technology.

This group of scholars seeks to reform conservative methods and offer a new paradigm for learning and conversion, emphasizing the normative voice of Scripture and the embodied nature of conversion.

By bridging the gap between liberal and conservative contexts, post-conservative theology aims to provide a transformative approach to understanding creation and God's will in a technological age.

The Role of Conversion and Formation in Biblical Theology

The conversation explores the difference between conversion and formation, with critics arguing that formation is a post-biblical concept.

The Book of James is highlighted as a case study, emphasizing the good formation of human beings in dispersion.

James' teachings on wisdom and understanding focus on embodied practices and the narrative of God's creation, grounding his ethics in the nature of the Creator God.

The Goodness of God's Creation and Human Dignity

God is consistently oriented toward good things, as seen in the creation of the Heavenly lights and humankind.

James emphasizes the importance of human dignity and ethical behavior, grounding them in God's likeness.

The response to trials and temptations is crucial for spiritual growth, and believers are called to be formed by walking with God and interpreting their lives through His word.

Engaging Information Ethics through Scripture

The communication of scripture is central to forming a Christian ethic of conversion, which can guide public engagement on information ethics.

Helen Nissenbaum's frame of contextual integrity aligns with this ethic, focusing on the appropriate flow of information rather than control.

A post-conservative understanding of conversion offers a better approach to managing information from diverse contexts, emphasizing the common good and meaningful communication in the age of big data and fake news.