ChatGPT as a modern tool for Bible teaching in confessional religious education: a German view

Biblical didactics is an important element of confessional religious education. In traditional settings, it is primarily associated with working with the text, alone or in groups, in plenary discussion or pantomime. Nowadays, however, young people are increasingly acquiring their knowledge—including about the Bible—on the Internet, using new technologies such as conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI), of which ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformers) is perhaps the best-known example. In this context, the following article seeks to answer the question of whether, and if so to what extent, ChatGPT can be a helpful tool for teaching the Bible in the classroom. To answer this question, the authors present a theoretical framework that encompasses both foundational insights into conversational AI and ChatGPT, as well as their implications for religious education and biblical teaching in Germany. In the next step, based on J. Theis’ five-step model of Bible didactics [(1) initial perception; (2) analysis of the text; (3) in-depth reflection; (4) critical interpretation; (5) creative assimilation], ways of using ChatGPT in biblical teaching in the classroom are presented and their potential limitations are discussed. The article concludes with six final theses that summarise the investigation findings and offer some suggestions for the future.