Egalitarian Human Futures in the Wake of AI, Part II

In this article, I’m going to use the idea of image-bearing and social synecdoche to help us discuss the relationship between AI, theology and egalitarian governance. The first article here provides background for this discussion.

Image-bearing, priesthood, and social synecdoche

In the Ancient Near East, to say that someone was the image of a god was to say that they had a governance function, as priest or king. At the core of the priestly function is mediation between divine and human realms, as a part who represents the whole group. The priest manifests social synecdoche before the divine. In a Christian context, we also understand a priest as a mediator between the group and the divine Word or Logos, the ordering principle that brings rational coherence to Creation.

In this network of ideas, we can hold together the experiences of scientific learning and true communication, along with the experience of human agency in governance. After all, scientists stand-in for all of us as mediators of the Word spoken in Creation, within their area of specialization. They bring back to the group what they have been shown: realities that they don’t invent, but which their reconciling work helps us all access. Similarly, political representatives stand-in for the group as their representative agent, embodying its decision-making capacity. Both scientific and governing roles properly involve experiences of meditation through social synecdoche. Both roles involve a priestly element.

Now let’s focus our attention on the experience of mediation. What does it feel like when you represent a group, bridging the gap between us and a powerful reality beyond us? Along with inevitable frustrations, we might also experience the joy of discovery, the delight of shared understanding, and the satisfaction of reaching an agreement that is good for us all. The instrumental goods that come from this kind of mediation are substantial. But beyond this, the shared experience itself is of profound value. Priestly image-bearing isn’t just about what is achieved externally through representative mediation. It necessarily involves the human experience of that process.

Expanding human priesthood

To say that humans bear the image of God is to say that we all have a special vocation to foster experiences of mediation, within various domains at various scales. If humans really are image-bears of God, that means the experience of bringing a greater wholeness into being is an irreducible aspect of what we are for. Whether it is in our garden, our home, our workplace, or in some larger domain of responsibility, this is the miracle that we all are.

Imagine science or politics proceeding without authentic experiences of mediation. Maybe we can build a zombie world where research and agreement seem to be happening, but where the AI agents conducting this work have no experience, and so no appreciation of the syntheses achieved. Or we might have an authoritarian politics in which people are threatened (or blindly herded by algorithms) into group conformity, but they are out of conformity with any kind of larger reality. Both scenarios, I hope, sound profoundly and transparently dystopian. Against these possibilities, I would encourage us to envision a society (even an AI-human society) that focuses on fostering the universal priestly function of humanity. It would be a spiritually egalitarian and deeply discursive society.

Franciscan spirituality and egalitarianism

In appealing to spiritual egalitarianism, we can advocate for the kind of elevating egalitarianism I have described above. However, egalitarianism can easily collapse into a universal denigration, rather than elevation, of image-bearers. Although laudably egalitarian, this other approach can reproduce patterns of domination and abuse, when a liberatory elevation is more important than ever. At the core of this issue are different ways of appropriating Franciscan spirituality.

Consider: Pope Francis styled himself after Brother Francis of Assisi. Far more than a whim, this is a powerful and enduring signal of his egalitarian vision for the church. But there is a radical tension here. The Pope has long been styled as the Pontifex Maximus, an office inherited from Roman high priests and then Emperor-priests. During the life of Jesus, this office was held by Emperor Tiberius. A common meaning associated with “pontifex” (both then and now) is “bridge builder.” The term reflects the mediating role of the priest.

The irony of a Pope taking the name Francis is extremely sharp: Saint Francis of Assisi rather pointedly never became an official priest. He remained Brother Francis, never Father Francis. What does it really mean for the Pontifex Maximus, the Father of Fathers and the Head of the College of Cardinals, to style himself after Brother Francis? It might be a gesture toward general elevation. But it also might indicate a denigrating abdication of responsibility. What, exactly, is happening in this moment of clerical anti-clericalism?

Anti-Clericalism and Lay Authoritarianism

Pope Francis genuinely reflects a Franciscan vocation in many ways. For example, he has recently made some important post-clerical accommodations in the church, allowing non-priests to lead Catholic orders. Fittingly, Franciscans like Daniel Horan, OFM, have celebrated this decision as an anti-clerical victory.

However, this particular form of egalitarianism can easily foster unaccountability and authoritarian populism. Consider: the primary opponent of Pope Francis for the hearts and minds of Catholics in the US today is the EWTN media network. Slate’s history of the network describes the development of this lay-led media empire as it has become the Catholic Fox News.

The Pope does not approve of EWTN. He has even referred to it as “the work of the devil,” as Slate documents. But can he exorcise EWTN? No. The network, founded by a Franciscan nun, is led by the laity. That makes it relatively unaccountable to anyone but its funders. Institutionally, the Catholic Church doesn’t have a comparable media network, so it can’t interact discursively at relevant social scale. The Pope is left to inveigh ineffectively against its aggressive authoritarian populism, because it mediates the Pope to US Catholics.

So lay leadership is already being tried. EWTN’s broadcasters are the lay media priests that Pope Francis is not. It hasn’t yielded the discursively democratic fruit we might hope it would.

We can easily imagine AI leadership that simply amplifies these problems. What if EWTN next pursues the attention-harvesting of the Youtube algorithm, but on steroids? It could govern us by creating even more intense propaganda rabbit holes. Humans would be even further divorced from their shared vocation as true mediators, because of the absence of truth criteria that connect the project to a broader Creational and social whole. Instead, they would become objects in an increasingly sophisticated epistemic capture system.

Universal image-bearing as a powerful alternative vision

What can we do? To start, we should clarify what is of first importance in this brave new world. A primary goal of society at all scales must be to honor the universal priestly vocation of humans, as image-bearers. We need to embrace our callings to represent bodies at different times and in different contexts. That includes our own physical bodies, as well as layered networks of group agents at all social scales. Representation matters. This is true in media, but it pertains even more to the many groups we belong to.

The egalitarianism of Pope Francis is to be commended, but it is flawed. We don’t need to remove priests from governance. Instead, we need to help all people discern and accountably live out their priestly roles, as mediators and representatives. It isn’t that we should let brothers govern Fathers, but that we must see all the ways that we already govern each other as sibling priests, as experiencing mediators.

Fortunately, we have a precedent for this in Christian tradition. Catholic and otherwise, we all view Jesus as our high priest. But even He didn’t call Himself Father. Rather, he fulfills his priestly function as our equal, as our sibling, and as the Son. Matthew 23:9 specifically articulates this egalitarian vision of priesthood when Jesus warns, in an especially dire passage of Scripture:

“And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven.”

Here at the dawn of AI governance, we urgently need to hear and heed our brother and high priest.

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