---------------------
**Update**
The venerable Babylon Bee helps us out with their worship song generator.
----------------
The author never really gets to the basis of worship and what it means. He stands on one side only, the side of the receiver. The producer side is not important to him.
Worship is προσκυνέω (proskuneó), I go down on my knees to, do obeisance to, worship. Worship is not words. Worship is not things properly articulated. Worship is not correct theology.
Truth is not simply the right words with the right meaning. Truth is Jesus, the Word. Truth is expressed according to the Holy Spirit. It is revelatory of God's character and glory. Paul characterizes it this way. 1Co. 2:13:
We would suggest that intent, both on the part of the songwriter as well as the singer, is a crucial component of worship. Both the songwriter and the singer set out purposefully to express the glories of God. AI cannot express intent.
Further, there are thousands of songwriters writing tens of thousands of worship songs, many of them excellent, and some of them are even profound. Plus we have hundreds of years of wonderful hymns in our repertoires. Why do we even need to consider a soulless AI writing worship songs?
------------------
Yesterday, Tim Challies linked to an article titled ‘Worship AI – What an artificial intelligence lyric generator teaches us about image bearing’. You can read the article here. In his summary comments, Tim posed an interesting question:
Truth remains true wherever it comes from
At heart, I would land hard on this point: truth remains true wherever it comes from. When Balaam prophesied against Balak despite being paid by the man to pronounce curses on Israel, there wasn’t much heart behind what he was doing. But what he said nonetheless remained true. (Balaam was an OT prophet directly communicating the very words of God. He was not simply spouting random words that sounded spiritual to the hearer.)
Worship is προσκυνέω (proskuneó), I go down on my knees to, do obeisance to, worship. Worship is not words. Worship is not things properly articulated. Worship is not correct theology.
Truth is not simply the right words with the right meaning. Truth is Jesus, the Word. Truth is expressed according to the Holy Spirit. It is revelatory of God's character and glory. Paul characterizes it this way. 1Co. 2:13:
This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.The source of truth is not random word generation, no matter if the random words make sense to us. AI cannot be informed by the Spirit, and we worship in Spirit and in truth.
We would suggest that intent, both on the part of the songwriter as well as the singer, is a crucial component of worship. Both the songwriter and the singer set out purposefully to express the glories of God. AI cannot express intent.
Further, there are thousands of songwriters writing tens of thousands of worship songs, many of them excellent, and some of them are even profound. Plus we have hundreds of years of wonderful hymns in our repertoires. Why do we even need to consider a soulless AI writing worship songs?
------------------
Yesterday, Tim Challies linked to an article titled ‘Worship AI – What an artificial intelligence lyric generator teaches us about image bearing’. You can read the article here. In his summary comments, Tim posed an interesting question:
While the technology is still a long way off, it seems to me we could see a day when AI created a good song and we’d have to decide whether or not to sing it. Would you want to sing a song that had no brain and no heart behind it?I found that a fascinating question and thought I’d have a stab at an answer. So, here are four reasons why I probably would sing a good song that had been churned out by AI.
Truth remains true wherever it comes from
At heart, I would land hard on this point: truth remains true wherever it comes from. When Balaam prophesied against Balak despite being paid by the man to pronounce curses on Israel, there wasn’t much heart behind what he was doing. But what he said nonetheless remained true. (Balaam was an OT prophet directly communicating the very words of God. He was not simply spouting random words that sounded spiritual to the hearer.)
When people tell Paul that there are others preaching Christ out of rivalry and selfish ambition, there doesn’t seem to be much godly motivation going on there. But Paul rejoices because Christ is being proclaimed. No doubt you can think of other Biblical examples. (Indeed we can. Ac. 16:17:
In Matthew chapter 4, the devil tempted Jesus and appealed to Scripture. Did Jesus accept this, even though it was truth? Nope. Intent corrupted the truth. Therefore, intent is crucial.)
But the point here is a simple one. The lack of true worship and the potentially ungodly nature of the one speaking doesn’t stop the sentiment being true. (The author substitutes the godless person for AI. We do not accept this substitution. And as we mentioned, truth is not the only standard for worship.)
If the words being stated are true, if they speak to the reality of who God is, what Christ has done and those truths work for the upbuilding of his people, it seems to me entirely legitimate to sing them.
We already sing words from questionable sources
There are churches who sing songs from people who belong to errant traditions and by those who believe what is manifestly untrue. (Again the author substitutes humans for AI.)
In some cases, they may not have been believers at all. Whether it is the traditional church happily singing hymns by John Henry Newman and Frederick Faber or the more modern church continuing to sing songs by Vicky Beeching, it is not unheard of for us to sing songs from questionable sources. Even reformed folks have no problem belting out Charles Wesley hymns despite their being full of Arminian and Weslyan holiness theology with its shades of sinless perfectionism. These things strike me as more problematic in that what they actually say and in what the writers certainly meant. But it barely raises a whisper for most evangelicals. Most default back to the previous point. If what was written is true and is capable of building up the body, then it is good for singing.
This is not so much an argument in favour of singing such things. It is more an argument for consistency. If we are OK singing songs by Anglo-Catholics who deny the gospel as we understand it, it is hard for us to be credibly upset at the words produced by an algorithm that means nothing by those words at all. (No, it is not hard. People with faulty doctrine can still express worship to god, even if they don't get everything right. It is intent we refer to. AI cannot intend.)
Words capable of meaning what we mean
We might well insist that authorial intent matters. Despite the standard argument against problematic Weslyan hymns being ‘oh, but that’s not what I mean by that’, we can’t deny that what Wesley meant when he wrote the hymn was something altogether different and used words that do convey his intended meaning. Can we realistically sing ‘changed from glory into glory til in Heaven we take our place’ knowing – according to his theology – our glorified state (as those words fairly clearly say) occurs before we actually get to glory! Simply asserting, ‘oh, that’s not what I mean when I sing it’ doesn’t really help because Wesley stated that he would spread his theology through his hymnody, which is precisely what he did. (This is a different subject. Wesley had intent.)
Authorial intent changes what words are capable of meaning – they mean, at least to some degree, what the author intended them to mean. Unless they are Humpty-Dumpty, using words that don’t actually convey their meaning, we can’t do the same in reverse and simply impose our own meaning on words that clearly say something else altogether.
But words written by an inanimate computer seems to me a different matter. (Yes, of course. Which is why we wonder why he brought up Wesley at all.)
This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.”Paul didn't embrace her message, even though it was true.
In Matthew chapter 4, the devil tempted Jesus and appealed to Scripture. Did Jesus accept this, even though it was truth? Nope. Intent corrupted the truth. Therefore, intent is crucial.)
But the point here is a simple one. The lack of true worship and the potentially ungodly nature of the one speaking doesn’t stop the sentiment being true. (The author substitutes the godless person for AI. We do not accept this substitution. And as we mentioned, truth is not the only standard for worship.)
If the words being stated are true, if they speak to the reality of who God is, what Christ has done and those truths work for the upbuilding of his people, it seems to me entirely legitimate to sing them.
We already sing words from questionable sources
There are churches who sing songs from people who belong to errant traditions and by those who believe what is manifestly untrue. (Again the author substitutes humans for AI.)
In some cases, they may not have been believers at all. Whether it is the traditional church happily singing hymns by John Henry Newman and Frederick Faber or the more modern church continuing to sing songs by Vicky Beeching, it is not unheard of for us to sing songs from questionable sources. Even reformed folks have no problem belting out Charles Wesley hymns despite their being full of Arminian and Weslyan holiness theology with its shades of sinless perfectionism. These things strike me as more problematic in that what they actually say and in what the writers certainly meant. But it barely raises a whisper for most evangelicals. Most default back to the previous point. If what was written is true and is capable of building up the body, then it is good for singing.
This is not so much an argument in favour of singing such things. It is more an argument for consistency. If we are OK singing songs by Anglo-Catholics who deny the gospel as we understand it, it is hard for us to be credibly upset at the words produced by an algorithm that means nothing by those words at all. (No, it is not hard. People with faulty doctrine can still express worship to god, even if they don't get everything right. It is intent we refer to. AI cannot intend.)
Words capable of meaning what we mean
We might well insist that authorial intent matters. Despite the standard argument against problematic Weslyan hymns being ‘oh, but that’s not what I mean by that’, we can’t deny that what Wesley meant when he wrote the hymn was something altogether different and used words that do convey his intended meaning. Can we realistically sing ‘changed from glory into glory til in Heaven we take our place’ knowing – according to his theology – our glorified state (as those words fairly clearly say) occurs before we actually get to glory! Simply asserting, ‘oh, that’s not what I mean when I sing it’ doesn’t really help because Wesley stated that he would spread his theology through his hymnody, which is precisely what he did. (This is a different subject. Wesley had intent.)
Authorial intent changes what words are capable of meaning – they mean, at least to some degree, what the author intended them to mean. Unless they are Humpty-Dumpty, using words that don’t actually convey their meaning, we can’t do the same in reverse and simply impose our own meaning on words that clearly say something else altogether.
But words written by an inanimate computer seems to me a different matter. (Yes, of course. Which is why we wonder why he brought up Wesley at all.)
We can’t read too much into authorial intent because there is no intent. (This is the crucial point. There must be an intent to worship.)
Maybe, should we be inclined, we could argue that the intent of the person who created the algorithm may be the issue at stake. Were they a believer or not and were they intended to generate worship songs or not? But, personally, I think that too far removed. Instead, I would take the non-existent sentient intent to mean that there is no malevolent intent. (Would the author be agreeable to meditation techniques which require us to empty our minds and receive whatever comes? If the AI has no malevolent intent, that does not mean there is nothing there.)
We can, therefore, simply take the words for what they are. Are they capable of meaning, credibly, what we want them to mean in the form they are presented to us? (This is how cults have started. They take the words of Scripture and make them mean what they want in order to support their errant doctrines.)
If they can be, then I think we are at liberty to use them. For the reasons I gave in the first point and the one that follows.
Maybe, should we be inclined, we could argue that the intent of the person who created the algorithm may be the issue at stake. Were they a believer or not and were they intended to generate worship songs or not? But, personally, I think that too far removed. Instead, I would take the non-existent sentient intent to mean that there is no malevolent intent. (Would the author be agreeable to meditation techniques which require us to empty our minds and receive whatever comes? If the AI has no malevolent intent, that does not mean there is nothing there.)
We can, therefore, simply take the words for what they are. Are they capable of meaning, credibly, what we want them to mean in the form they are presented to us? (This is how cults have started. They take the words of Scripture and make them mean what they want in order to support their errant doctrines.)
If they can be, then I think we are at liberty to use them. For the reasons I gave in the first point and the one that follows.
Worship that can be redeemed
There is a case to be made for taking words written in a vacuum and redeeming them. (This is certainly a possibility. But we suspect the author would object to a worship band playing a U2 song, claiming they are redeeming it.)
As the previous point, I would have my concerns with singing songs written by people who actively meant something very different to what I would want those words to mean. (That is, words can be subjective. The hearer interprets words according to his world view, experiences, biases, and education.
But there's more to words besides how they are received. Words have meaning beyond the letters and spaces. Words carry the heart and intent of the speaker/writer. If there is no heart, if they are expressed without context, experience, and faith, they are dead words. We do not get the privilege of breathing life into dead words.
However, I think we are in a different situation when it is words written in a vacuum. As above, I think the form of words we are presented with can be taken for what they are. They either state truth or they do not. (Truth is not the only measure. There must be life as well.)
They are capable of being understood in a godly way or they aren’t. They can be assessed on their content value alone.
However, one might pushback that such song writing is an act of worship. An algorithm is not worshipping God in producing these sorts of songs. Do we really want to be singing what isn’t produced for the glory of God?
A few things bear saying. First, again, I would point back to my argument from consistency. If we are happy to sing songs from those who have since shown themselves to be unbelievers, (Are we really happy to do this? And, can we rightly say that these songs were written by unbelievers?
Further, there is a large difference between expressing the heart of God and the random generation of words. An "unbeliever" can swerve into the truth and express the truths of God by the Spirit. That is not the same thing as computer-generated words.)
and claim to have redeemed them, we have no real ground not to sing those produced by an algorithm if we are being consistent.
(...)
There is a case to be made for taking words written in a vacuum and redeeming them. (This is certainly a possibility. But we suspect the author would object to a worship band playing a U2 song, claiming they are redeeming it.)
As the previous point, I would have my concerns with singing songs written by people who actively meant something very different to what I would want those words to mean. (That is, words can be subjective. The hearer interprets words according to his world view, experiences, biases, and education.
But there's more to words besides how they are received. Words have meaning beyond the letters and spaces. Words carry the heart and intent of the speaker/writer. If there is no heart, if they are expressed without context, experience, and faith, they are dead words. We do not get the privilege of breathing life into dead words.
Jn. 6:63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life.)I struggle with Lead Kindly Light because no matter how much I tell myself that I am singing about Christ, I know full well that Newman was writing about the Catholic Church. I don’t think we can completely invert authorial intent.
However, I think we are in a different situation when it is words written in a vacuum. As above, I think the form of words we are presented with can be taken for what they are. They either state truth or they do not. (Truth is not the only measure. There must be life as well.)
They are capable of being understood in a godly way or they aren’t. They can be assessed on their content value alone.
However, one might pushback that such song writing is an act of worship. An algorithm is not worshipping God in producing these sorts of songs. Do we really want to be singing what isn’t produced for the glory of God?
A few things bear saying. First, again, I would point back to my argument from consistency. If we are happy to sing songs from those who have since shown themselves to be unbelievers, (Are we really happy to do this? And, can we rightly say that these songs were written by unbelievers?
Further, there is a large difference between expressing the heart of God and the random generation of words. An "unbeliever" can swerve into the truth and express the truths of God by the Spirit. That is not the same thing as computer-generated words.)
and claim to have redeemed them, we have no real ground not to sing those produced by an algorithm if we are being consistent.
(...)
No comments:
Post a Comment