The Perils and Promise of AI
2084 and the AI Revolution: How Artificial Intelligence Informs Our Future, John C. Lennox. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Reflective, 2025. Softcover, 359 pages.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a big part of our lives, whether we realize it or not. I was teaching recently at the Reformed Churches Bible College in Papua New Guinea and even students there were learning to harness its power for better and for worse. I now use AI every day, many times just as a glorified search engine. I’ll also often use it to improve my writing and sermons (not to generate content, but to improve content). Or if I have an idea for a picture to go along with a blog post, I’ll ask an AI to create the picture. This technology is rapidly developing and I’m afraid our ethical reflection on it isn’t keeping up. This new edition of a 2020 book represents a valuable effort.
The author is a retired Oxford professor and author of numerous books, many on the intersection of Christian faith and science. Theologically, Lennox isn’t Reformed. In this book that comes out in a couple of brief instances with regard to his doctrine of the future things. He is also a sort of theistic evolutionist. He believes that animals may have evolved over millions of years, but human beings were a special creation of God. This view also pops up a couple of times in 2084, but isn’t central to the book’s purpose. Those are just a couple of things to look out for when reading this otherwise good book or reading other Lennox books.
Lennox describes what’s happening right now with AI and what’s on the horizon. Some of it is really fascinating and holds great potential to serve human flourishing. But there are also serious concerns that AI is being harnessed for surveillance capitalism and communism and that this trend is on the upswing. There are concerns about AI making many human jobs redundant. AI pornography is another serious danger hardly being discussed. Deepfakes and AI-generated propaganda or misinformation are well-known threats to the well-being of society. Finally, there’s also the concern that AI technology will continue to evolve to the point where a super-human intelligence will turn on human beings.
2084 provides a thoughtful Christian analysis of all these aspects of AI tech. Lennox isn’t a Luddite – in fact, some parts of the book he generated with AI just to prove certain points. He recognizes the value in AI, but he’s also even-handed in identifying the dangers. It’s not a light read, but when he uses technical jargon, he usually defines it for the reader.
As I was reading it, I explored more of the capabilities of AI in conjunction with what I was reading. It is remarkable. Yes, we all know stories of AI getting things wrong (when used as a search engine). But the technology has developed so fast in the last 3 years that it’s now amazing how AI gets so many things right. It’s only going to accelerate. Especially Christian leaders need to get on top of this and this book will help.
As an example of an area that we need to watch is the connection of AI to religion. Lennox quotes Neil McArthur, “In the next few years, or perhaps even months, we will see the emergence of sects devoted to the worship of artificial intelligence” (p.287). This is already happening. On the next page, he quotes from Yuval Noah Harari on what he calls Data Religion: “Data Religion believes that the entire universe is a flow of data, that organisms are algorithms, and that humanity’s cosmic vocation is to create an all-encompassing data-processing system – and then merge into it.” This is also known as transhumanism.
I want to leave off with a complaint. It’s not the author’s fault, nor the publisher’s. It’s just that between the time the book was written and the time it got into my hands, so many things have already changed in this field. For example, GPT-5 was released with great hype in August 2025 (last month as I’m writing this). Sam Altman touts it as being a quantum leap forward – whether it is or not is being debated. My point is that, because of their production time, books are going to have limited ability to keep up with developments in AI. Therefore, readers who want to stay informed should make use of blogs and other more timely resources.
