Truthful Witness in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Johannine Theology, Misinformation, and the Common Good

Erokhin, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5191-0579 (2026). Truthful Witness in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Johannine Theology, Misinformation, and the Common Good. Journal of Biblical and Ancient Studies 2 (1) e108. 10.23364/JBAS.2026.2.1.59467.

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Abstract

The rise of generative artificial intelligence has intensified a crisis that is technological, political, and moral at once. AI systems can now produce fluent prose, realistic images, synthetic voices, and persuasive video at scale. These capacities create new possibilities for education, medicine, accessibility, communication, and public service. However, they also weaken the ordinary practices by which persons and communities test testimony, assign trust, recognize manipulation, and share a common world. Existing AI ethics frameworks rightly emphasize transparency, fairness, accountability, human oversight, privacy, safety, and dignity. These frameworks are indispensable, yet they leave open a deeper question of moral and epistemic formation of what kinds of persons, communities, and institutions become capable of truthful witness under digital conditions. This article argues that Johannine literature offers a distinctive contribution to that question. Through close engagement with the Prologue, the Gospel’s testimony passages, the Farewell Discourses, the Passion narrative, and 1 John, the study shows that Johannine theology joins truth, witness, love, and life in a coherent moral framework. The article’s central research question is therefore how the Johannine theology of truth, witness, love, and life can provide a morally serious and publicly intelligible framework for responding to artificial intelligence and misinformation in a pluralistic digital age. The answer developed here is that Johannine theology reframes AI ethics around truthful witness, i.e., embodied accountability in the face of synthetic media, testimonial integrity in the face of manipulated provenance, neighbor-love in the design and deployment of automated systems, and life-giving public practices in the face of technological power.

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