The church’s older wisdom about death may be one of its most necessary gifts in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). This may seem like an unlikely connection, so I will explain. The Christian art of dying well (ars moriendi) belongs to an older world of sickbeds, funeral sermons, prayers for the dying, and meditation on the life to come. AI belongs to the world of algorithms, automation, digital labor, synthetic media, robotics, and machine learning. One seems ancient; the other seems new. But the connection is closer than it first appears.

Much of the current discussion about AI is not merely technical; it is anthropological. It asks what a human being is. Is man a creature or a project? Is intelligence the highest measure of human value? Is the body essential to personhood or merely hardware to be modified, optimized, or eventually escaped? Are weakness, aging, dependency, suffering, and death realities through which we learn creaturely wisdom, or defects we can overcome with sufficient technological power? These are not new questions. They are old questions wearing new clothing.

Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas warns that artificial intelligence must be judged by a vision of the human person, not merely by efficiency, profitability, or power. He argues that AI should remain under human intelligence, conscience, freedom, and responsibility.¹ He also identifies transhumanism and posthumanism as cultural narratives that often accompany the digital revolution. These narratives imagine progress as surpassing the human condition through technological enhancement, human-machine hybridization, or even a new evolutionary stage beyond ordinary humanity.²

A Reformed Christian does not need to adopt Rome’s broader theological system in order to recognize the force of this warning. The danger is real. AI is not simply a new tool. It comes to us surrounded by promises of mastery—over labor, knowledge, bodies, relationships, war, disease, and perhaps even death itself. The church must therefore ask not only, What can AI do? but also, What vision of humanity is shaping the way we use it?

The Christian art of dying well helps us answer that question. The older tradition of ars moriendi, the art of dying well, was not a morbid fascination with death. It was an act of spiritual realism. Christians knew that if Christ tarried, death would come to all. Some would die suddenly; others, slowly. Some would die in peace; others, in pain. Some would speak final words; others would be silent. The question was not whether death could be avoided but whether death would find the Christian prepared in faith, repentance, hope, and union with Christ.³

Modern Christians often neglect this preparation. Death is hidden in institutions, softened by euphemisms, and treated as a medical or logistical problem rather than a theological reality. The result is that we are often far more prepared to extend life than to understand it. We have remarkable tools for diagnosis, treatment, communication, and care, yet we can still lack wisdom about what life is for.

AI intensifies this danger. Used rightly, it may assist physicians, help families organize care, improve communication, detect disease earlier, or reduce certain burdens of labor. These are not small goods. Christians should not reject technology simply because it is powerful. The cultural mandate includes the wise development of creation’s possibilities. The question is not whether technology may serve human life. The question is whether we will let technology define human life.

This is where AI’s broader connection to transhumanism becomes so significant. In its softer forms, transhumanism presents itself as enhancement: stronger bodies, sharper minds, longer life, better performance, improved memory, greater productivity. In its more radical forms, it dreams of overcoming ordinary human limits altogether. The body becomes a platform. The mind becomes information. Mortality becomes an engineering problem. Salvation becomes technical. But the Christian doctrine of death tells a different story.

Augustine helps us begin rightly. Death is not simply a neutral biological process. It is bound up with sin. In The City of God, Augustine treats death as the consequence of Adam’s disobedience, involving not only bodily death but also the deeper separation of the soul from God.⁴ Death is therefore not morally normal. It is an enemy. It is not part of the created goodness of the world as God first made it.

This point guards us from romanticizing death. Christians should not speak as though death is good in itself. The Christian does not look at cancer, dementia, a child’s grave, or the slow wasting of the body and call these things good. Death is a curse. It is the last enemy. The church must resist any spirituality that minimizes its horror.

But Augustine also guards us from the opposite error. Death, though evil in itself, has been transformed for the believer by Christ. Augustine says that death has not become good, but God has granted to faith that death, the opposite of life, should become the instrument by which life is reached.⁵ This is the Christian paradox. Death remains an enemy, but in Christ it is a conquered enemy. It is not our savior, but it has been made to serve the Savior.

This matters deeply for AI and transhumanism. If death is only a technical problem, then our highest hope is indefinite extension. If death is only a biological malfunction, then salvation means repair. But if death is theological, then no machine can solve it. A longer life can still be a condemned life. A stronger body can still be a dying body. A sharper mind can still be alienated from God. An uploaded consciousness, even if such a thing were possible, would not be resurrection to eternal life.

The Christian hope is not technological survival. It is resurrection in Christ. This is why mortality is such a necessary teacher. To remember death is to remember that we are creatures. We did not make ourselves. We do not sustain ourselves. We are not sovereign over our beginning or our end. We live by gift, age by providence, and die because of sin. We are raised only by grace.

Transhumanism is tempted to see limits chiefly as defects. Pope Leo’s encyclical identifies this crisis directly: incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, and vulnerability are often treated primarily as problems to be corrected rather than realities through which human beings mature and open themselves to relationship.⁶ The Christian can agree that suffering should be relieved where possible. Medicine, pain relief, and assistive technologies are all mercies of common grace. But the elimination of all limits is not the same thing as redemption.

Indeed, some limits are essential to human love. We learn patience because others are slow. We learn compassion because others suffer. We learn humility because we are weak. We learn dependence because we cannot live alone. We learn prayer because we are not God. The sickbed, though grievous, can become a place of love. The dying saint, though weak, can still instruct the church. The aged believer, though diminished in productivity, still bears the image of God and remains worthy of honor.

This exposes one of the deepest dangers of AI-shaped anthropology: the reduction of human worth to function. If intelligence, speed, productivity, and efficiency become the chief measures of value, then the weak will always be in danger. The unborn, disabled, elderly, chronically ill, cognitively impaired, and dying will appear as burdens within a system optimized for output. The growing acceptance and even demand for euthanasia proves this to be true. Leo warns that when human beings are treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to think some lives are less useful, less desirable, or less worthy.⁷

The Christian doctrine of death refuses that conclusion. The dying person is not less human because he is less productive. The dementia patient is not less human because memory fades. The disabled child is not less human because capacity is limited. The bedridden saint is not less human because he contributes little to the economy. Human dignity is not earned by performance. It is given by God. A church that knows how to die well will therefore handle AI differently.

First, it will receive AI as a tool, not a master. Leo uses the language of “disarming” AI: freeing it from the mentality of armed competition, commercial domination, monopolistic control, and the assumption that technical power gives the right to govern.⁸ This is beyond my areas of expertise, but we can sum up that the Christian approach to AI should be cautious. Christians can receive this warning within a broader doctrine of creaturely stewardship. Tools must remain tools. They must serve human beings before God. They must not become the environment in which human beings are reshaped according to the desires of those who own the tools.

Second, a church that knows how to die will refuse the fantasy of control. Much AI rhetoric promises mastery—over knowledge, uncertainty, labor, aging, and decision-making. But the Christian who prays, “Teach us to number our days,” has already begun to reject the illusion of control. Numbering our days does not mean calculating our escape from mortality. It means learning wisdom under mortality.

William Perkins made this point in his own way. He taught that preparation for death is not merely a final act but a lifelong discipline. General preparation for death takes place through the whole course of life because death is certain even when its timing is not.⁹ In the age of AI, this is a necessary spiritual discipline. We must not let powerful tools train us to expect total control. We must learn to use them under the confession that we are mortal, dependent, accountable creatures.

Third, the church will use AI, if it uses it, in service of embodied love. A tool may help organize visitation schedules, summarize medical information, draft communication, transcribe memories, or make resources more accessible. But it cannot replace the ministry of presence. It cannot sit as a fellow creature beside the dying. It cannot love. It cannot pray in faith. It cannot bear ecclesial responsibility for a soul. It cannot administer the means of grace. It cannot weep with those who weep.

Matthew Henry’s prayers for dying well are instructive here. His prayers were woven from Scripture, asking God to teach us our end, number our days, make us ready, accompany us through the valley of the shadow of death, and receive us into glory.¹⁰ Such prayer cannot be reduced to religious content generation. The church does not merely need words about death. It needs faithful people who will speak God’s Word in love at the right time to the weak, fearful, and grieving.

Fourth, the church will insist on moral responsibility. This is especially urgent where AI is used in warfare, medicine, law, finance, education, and pastoral care. Leo warns that lethal or irreversible decisions must not be entrusted to artificial systems because moral judgment involves conscience, personal responsibility, and recognition of the other as a person.¹¹ This principle has wider application. The more consequential the decision, the less acceptable it is to hide behind a machine.

A Christian doctrine of death sharpens this concern. Death is not data. The dying are not cases. The enemy in war is not a mere target profile. The elderly patient is not a cost center. The unborn child is not a risk variable. The congregation member is not an engagement metric. To remember death rightly is to remember persons rightly.

Finally, the church will answer transhumanism not merely by critique but by hope. The answer to false transcendence is not resignation. Christians do not say, “You want too much; expect less.” We say, “You want glory, incorruption, life, and communion, but you are seeking them in the wrong place.”

The gospel does not offer less than transhumanism. It offers more. But it offers more by grace, not by engineering. The resurrection is not an upgrade we perform on ourselves. It is the act of God in Christ. The glorified body is not the product of optimization but of redemption. Eternal life is not biological extension but communion with the triune God. The Christian becomes “more than human” not by ceasing to be human but by being fully conformed to the risen humanity of Christ.

This is why the church’s old wisdom about death is so relevant now. The ars moriendi teaches us to face the limit that technological culture most wants to evade. It teaches us that death is real, terrible, and theological. It teaches us that Christ, not technique, conquers death. It teaches us that the weak and dying remain human. It teaches us to prepare not by escaping creatureliness but by entrusting ourselves to the faithful Creator and Redeemer.

AI will test the church’s anthropology. It will reveal whether we believe human beings are images of God or bundles of capacity. It will reveal whether we think intelligence is enough to define personhood. It will reveal whether we regard the body as gift or obstacle. It will reveal whether we believe salvation comes by Christ or by power.

The church should not answer AI with panic. Nor should it answer with naïve enthusiasm. It should answer with Christian realism: gratitude for tools, suspicion of idols, protection of the weak, insistence on moral responsibility, and hope in the resurrection. To handle AI rightly, we must learn to die rightly. And to die rightly, we must learn to live as those whose life is hidden with Christ in God.

Notes

1. Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (Encyclical Letter on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence), May 15, 2026, paras. 97–98.
2. Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, paras. 115–16.
3. Everett A. Henes, “The Ars Moriendi in the Puritans,” unpublished ThM paper, 2015.
4. Augustine, The City of God, 13.12, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Marcus Dods (Logos Research Systems, 1997), 2:251.
5. Augustine, City of God, 13.4 (NPNF¹ 2:247).
6. Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, paras. 117–20.
7. Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, para. 117.
8. Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, paras. 110–11.
9. William Perkins, Salve for a Sick Man; or, A Treatise Containing the Nature, Differences, and Kinds of Death; as Also the Right Manner of Dying Well (London, 1616), Kindle, loc. 298, 341.
10. Matthew Henry, A Method for Prayer and Directions for Daily Communion with God (Eremitical Press, 2009), 64–65.
11. Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, paras. 197–98.

©Everett Henes. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• Everett Henes

  

  Everett Henes (MDiv, ThM, DMin) is pastor of Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where he has served since 2008. He is husband to Kimberly and father of five children and grandfather of five (and counting!). He teaches US History and Philosophy of History for Jackson College in Michigan. He is currently working towards a PhD in Humanities with a focus in US Religious History from Faulkner University. In his spare time, he enjoys competing in powerlifting and strongman and teaching homeschoolers Taekwondo.

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