Zeitgeist: A Spirited Exchange about Mysticism and AI-Generated Images (and more) with ChatGPT

Abstract

This essay explores the intersection of medieval Christian mysticism and AI-generated imagery, reflecting on a six-week online course taught in summer 2024 at Drew University. A student’s experiments with AI-generated images of texts by Pseudo-Dionysius, Bernard of Clairvaux, Jan Ruusbroec, and Catherine of Genoa prompted reflection on pedagogy, ethics, and the representation of spiritual experience. Engaging ChatGPT as a dialogic partner, the author interrogates the capacities and limitations of AI to render mystical texts, considering issues of bias, historical context, creativity, and energy consumption. Using frameworks of purgation, illumination, and union, the essay examines how AI images mirror social and algorithmic constraints while offering opportunities for wonder, ethical reflection, and transformative learning. The discussion foregrounds questions of student-teacher dynamics, the construction of esprit de corps in online classrooms, and the role of generative AI in visualizing the ineffable. Readers are invited to participate in this exploratory, practice-oriented engagement with spirit.