El Ignaciano / Decembe 2025

Renewing the Ark of Noah for the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Jorge Rodríguez

Abstract

This paper explores how the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) invites a renewed understanding of Noah’s Ark as a meaningful symbol for navigating the opportunities and challenges of AI in our age. I propose the ark as a contemporary vessel—not a wooden structure, but a spiritual framework shaped by the Holy Spirit to help us move faithfully through the upheavals brought about by AI. Renewing Noah’s Ark for the age of AI requires interpreting the biblical narrative of salvation as a spirituality capable of guiding us through today’s technological developments. Drawing on biblical interpretation, this work re-examines the original purpose of the ark and considers how its symbolism can be applied in the present moment. The goal is to reinterpret the meaning of the historical ark for our place in salvation history. In this light, the renewed ark becomes a vessel of hope—a spiritual refuge designed to carry humanity safely through the turbulent waters of AI.

Acknowledgments

My goals when using AI for this paper—and for my writing in general—are straightforward. I expect the AI chatbots I collaborate with to help me produce work that is purposeful, meaningful, and genuinely useful to those engaged in this field. I also hope that the results will be significant, original, and not immediately obvious to someone already skilled in the subject. I have invested considerable time trying to understand where AI belongs within the intellectual space in which I live and work, and what my own role should be when working with AI. I use the word collaboration intentionally, because in many areas AI genuinely augments my cognitive and intellectual faculties and helps me reach the goals I seek. As AI tools have advanced—particularly in spelling, grammar, semantic analysis, and composition—they now take on tasks that once required a great deal of human effort. I gladly hand those tasks over so I can focus on the areas that remain uniquely human: creativity, empathy, and those talents I am called to use in the service of the Holy Spirit. In writing this paper, I relied on ChatGPT and Gemini to refine several aspects of the manuscript: searching, fact-checking, verification, reorganizing sentences, smoothing grammar, improving readability, and ensuring conformity to The Chicago Manual of Style. I also used them for assistance with citation formatting. All decisions regarding content, style, structure, and form were ultimately my own, though certain aspects of the work emerged through collaboration with ChatGPT. When theological accuracy or doctrinal clarity was required, I turned to Magisterium AI, which served as my final authority in matters of theology and Scripture. Much of my work with AI involved experimenting with asking questions in different ways and observing how intuition helps uncover new ideas and insights. Over time, I realized that the ability to ask good questions is becoming one of the most important skills in the age of AI. I learned early in life that questions are important, but there must have a purpose for asking them. Asking aimlessly only leads to confusion and wasted effort. During my theology studies, philosopher’s Bernard Lonergan’s ideas deepened that lesson.¹ He showed how questions open the way to insight. I learned to ask the classic “five W’s and one H”: What, When, Where, and Who — to understand the nature or context of something. How — to grasp a process, solve a problem, or build something. Why — to uncover intention or purpose, which only the person acting can truly reveal. The question “Why?” marks one of the limits of artificial intelligence. AI cannot reveal a person’s intention or purpose because intention belongs to the human heart. This becomes even more critical when we ask questions about reality.  Humans often drift away from reality into an inauthentic world shaped by misinformation. AI chatbots are trained on vast datasets that include both authentic and inauthentic content, but they cannot reliably distinguish between truth and falsehood. As a result, they can produce responses that are incorrect, misleading, or even nonsensical.  Questions of value also reveal AI’s limitations. When we ask, “Is this worth doing?” or “Should I do this?”, we step into a realm shaped by emotion, conscience, personal history, and spiritual identity, and by love. These are uniquely human territories—areas where AI has no lived experience, no moral responsibility, and no emotional depth. In the end, AI can assist us, but it cannot replace the human work of questioning reality, discerning truth, or seeking meaning.

The Problem: On the Opportunities and the Dangers of AI

The structures of our society are being shaken, disrupted, and reshaped by artificial intelligence in ways we do not yet fully understand. Pope Francis expressee this moment clearly when he said that something truly epochal was happening—a transformation reaching into the very foundations of our civilization.² Many people do not yet grasp the depth of the change we are experiencing. Technology often advances quietly until, suddenly, it reshapes everything at once. The influence of AI will continue to intensify, and its waves of change will eventually touch every aspect of society. This paper aims to help us understand our moment in time, theologically and spiritually, so we can respond with faith, clarity, and hope. Understanding the relationship between AI and society is the first step toward renewing Noah’s Ark for our age—building a spiritual vessel sturdy enough to carry us through the flood of change now rising around us.

Alvin Toffler and the Waves of Change

Alvin Toffler’s theory of historical “waves” offers a helpful lens for understanding the moment we are living. Toffler viewed history as a succession of waves of change that move through society unevenly, where some feel the force of change long before others. Their impact is felt most dramatically at the wavefront, the leading edge where new ideas and technologies collide with old systems. Technological progress spreads at different speeds and at different times, bringing both advancement and disruption. Toffler’s attention was on the sudden breaks and jumps in culture, economics, and social life—that the wavefront introduces. The wavefront defines what unfolds behind it and reveals the patterns that are emerging.³ Toffler identified three major waves in human history. For the purposes of this paper, we recognize a Fourth Wave—the wave of artificial intelligence—which is now reshaping human civilization at every level.

1. The First Wave: Agricultural Civilization. The First Wave began when humanity shifted from hunting and gathering to settled farming communities around 10,000 BCE and lasted until the Modern era. One of its most significant developments was the emergence of the city and what we now call traditional society.
2. The Second Wave: The Industrial Age. The Second Wave began in the 1760s with the First Industrial Revolution. This period was defined by dramatic technological advances that introduced factories, mass production, and machines powered by steam. A Second Industrial Revolution followed in the 1870s, driven by new machines powered by electricity.
3. The Third Wave: The Information Age. The Third Wave emerged in the late 1950s with the rise of electronics, computers, and automation. Toffler believed this wave marked the greatest social upheaval in human history.⁴ Often called the Third Industrial Revolution, this era laid the foundation for AI.

4. The Fourth Wave: Artificial Intelligence. The Third Wave created the technological groundwork for what we now call the Fourth Wave—the wave of artificial intelligence. Although scholars disagree on exactly when this wave began, one milestone stands out: the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022, which “completely transformed how we interact with technology.” ⁵ Since then, new AI tools and products have proliferated at remarkable speed. The Fourth Wave is characterized by advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the early development of quantum computing. It represents a fundamental shift in how society thinks, works, relates, and organizes itself.

Antiqua et Nova: The Ancient and the New

The Vatican’s doctrinal note Antiqua et Nova⁶ opens with an invitation to reflect deeply on today’s technological moment. We respond to that invitation, where “we are called to reflect on the current challenges and opportunities posed by scientific and technological advancements, particularly by the recent development of Artificial Intelligence (AI).”⁷ It reminds us that intelligence is part of being created in the image of God, and that our technical abilities must be used responsibly as stewards of creation. The document stresses that today’s challenges—violence, injustice, moral confusion—are still with us, but now they are amplified by technologies with unprecedented power. Throughout salvation history, humanity has often persisted in self-destructive behaviors until confronted from outside with the threat of destruction. That pattern continues today, and we see wars, social fracture, and upheaval—not unlike the crises described by the prophets. But now the tools of destruction are largely human made. We stand at what may be a decisive moment—perhaps one of humanity’s final crossroads. Some scientists even discuss establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars as a contingency plan. While technically plausible, this does not align with the Christian vision of salvation or human destiny. Rather than escaping Earth, we must return to the arc of salvation history and recover our place in God’s story. The renewed image of Noah’s Ark proposed in this paper is a spiritual framework to guide our response to the crises we face—personally, socially, and globally.

Noah’s Ark as a Model for Today

Just like any seaworthy vessel must be designed to withstand storms at sea, the renewed ark needs a solid framework to be conceptualized as a spiritual structure that protects humanity from the destructive potential of the Fourth Wave. It must also provide spiritual protection and ethical guidance for the users of the technology. Two important issues are, the need to have deep human connections and helping people maintain their true identity. These principles serve as a blueprint for new institutions, organizations, and forms of life. This framework is a kind of spiritual architecture for organizing life in a way that remains steady even when exterior conditions are unstable. Just as a ship ready before the storm arrives, we must begin building the renewed ark now.

The Proposed Solution

Surviving the Fourth Wave: Living Through a Tsunami of Change

A tsunami is an ocean wave that can travel a long distance. For most of its journey the wave is imperceptible as it travels across the deep waters, but when it reaches the coastline, it rises in height and strength and becomes destructive. The first wavefront is the most dangerous because it surprises everything in its path. The Fourth Wave resembles a social tsunami. The greatest disruptions occur with the wavefront, where new technologies and ideas collide with the old. Understanding how to survive a tsunami gives us insight into how to prepare for the Fourth Wave.

Three Lessons from Tsunami Survival

1. Those far from the coast on land are less likely to be affected by the tsunami. Likewise, distancing ourselves from the most vulnerable technological spaces—physically and spiritually—can make a difference.
2. It is safer to be high above ground level. A high enough place can offer protection from the tsunami. In spiritual terms, that means being prepared—developing the skills needed before the crisis hits.
3. A vessel far from the shore can ride the wave safely. That vessel, symbolically and spiritually, is a renewed Noah’s Ark. This insight leads us to the heart of this paper’s proposal to survive the Fourth Wave,

Renewing the Ark for the Fourth Wave

The purpose of the renewed Noah’s Ark is to help people thrive in an age of AI, but the key to its success is that the experience primarily spiritual. That means that the response to the problems produced or induced by the technology of AI is primarily a spiritual response. The renewed ark is designed especially for those who, like Noah, trust God’s guidance. It becomes a way of life, a spiritual environment, a community shaped by the Holy Spirit. The ark is adapted and reconceptualized to address the challenges of AI technology. Its primary focus is a proactive effort to create something new, a new kind of ark suitable for the specific conditions, needs, and problems produced and induced by AI. It provides for a future defined by artificial intelligence technology, but that future is part of God’s creation, for it is a technology created by human ingenuity, ensuring that whatever takes place under the constrains of the renewed Noah’s Ark. Noah’s Ark was a unique historical instrument built by Noah for a specific divine judgment. Our task is not to rebuild the ark but to renew it, to re‑create the form of that structure. We are not called to reconstruct a wooden ark but to renew the ark that is to become the sign of today’s needs in a modern‑day Noah’s ark. A renewed Noah’s Ark narrative will be at the center of the AI technology for its proper development and use. It requires us to define and specify a framework from which this vessel can be put together. The original ark served a specific historical moment. The renewed ark serves a spiritual and societal moment that is just as significant.  As AI reshapes our civilization, the renewed ark becomes a spiritual home—a place of protection, discernment, shared mission, restored relationships, technological wisdom, human dignity, and communion with God. This pattern scales from a small family to a parish, the diocese, and ultimately to the universal Church. The ark must keep gathering people, forming them, and sending them forth.

Three Layers of Interpretation for the Renewed Ark

To construct the renewed ark, we need a clear interpretive framework grounded in three layers of meaning: the historical, the metaphorical, and the symbolic.

1. The Historical Layer. In this layer we encounter the real events and conditions of our time and deal with the unprecedented influence of AI on society. This is where we have to deal with the concrete realities of the Fourth Wave: rapid technological and social progress and disruption, the vulnerability produces by the risks from new opportunities and dangers of AI.
2. The Metaphorical Layer. This is where the ark becomes a metaphor for faith, resilience, spiritual discipline, and a way of life that counters materialism. Just as the universal flood re-shaped the world, the Fourth Wave is reshaping modern civilization. Toffler’s waves of change help us interpret the flood narrative, where the flood becomes a metaphor for overwhelming societal change, the ark becomes a metaphor for faith-filled living in a secular culture, and the journey becomes a metaphor for spiritual resilience. This layer answers the questions: What? When? Where? Finally, the highly consequential question: How should we respond?
3. The Symbolic Layer. The symbolic layer deals with the deepest and most spiritual questions—the “Why?” questions: Why is this moment significant? Why is this happening now? Why must I respond in a particular way? Why is God calling me to act? The ark becomes a symbol of the Church and a vessel of salvation.

Defining the Renewed Ark

A response to the Fourth Wave must cultivate what I call rhythmic permanence—a stability that emerges not from rigidity but from the enduring rhythms woven into nature itself. These rhythms appear everywhere in nature. On the macrocosmic scale, the Earth rotation on its axis gives us day and night, and with the pull of the moon, it shapes the ebb and flow of the tides. The Earth’s orbit around the sun marks the seasons of the year. On the microcosmic scale, the human body mirrors similar patterns, but its rhythms are more variable, constantly adjusting to internal and external changes. The circadian cycle aligns the body with the rhythm of day and night. The heartbeat—systole and diastole—sustains life by adapting blood flow to the needs of the body. These cycles reveal two central truths: life depends on our ability to adapt, and our ability to adapt depends on rhythmic processes. This theme is at the heart of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock. When our capacity for adaptation is overwhelmed, we experience breakdown. The same thing happens our societies. When social, technological, or cultural change outpaces our collective ability to adapt, our community experiences “massive adaptational breakdown.”⁸ True stability emerges from rhythms—the repeating cycles, seasons, and patterns that hold steady even as the world shifts around them. The renewed Ark embodies this kind of stability. It acts as a spiritual scaffolding: a structure that remains constant while cultures shift, institutions wobble, and technologies evolve. And yet, it also provides the rhythms we need to center our lives and work in the age of AI. Within the Ark, rhythms hold things together with the help of two great movements: Synodality, which gives us the daily rhythm, and the Jubilee, which gives us the generational rhythm of a twenty-five-year cycle. Together, these rhythms keep the Ark steady. We now turn to understand these two great movements of the Church.

1. Synodality: A Way of Living and Working Together. The first movement is Synodality, the Church’s way of listening, discerning, and walking together. Synodality is a way of life—a shared journey of the People of God.⁹ In the renewed Ark, synodality shapes how we live each day, build relationships, communicate meaningfully, make decisions together, and respond to the challenges of the Fourth Wave. That becomes a daily rhythm—the heartbeat of community life. Synodality creates the relational environment that allows individuals and communities to navigate rapid technological change without losing their human identity.
2. The Jubilee: The Rhythm of Freedom, Healing, and Restoration. The second movement is the Jubilee, with its rhythms of forgiveness, liberation, healing, and restored relationships. The Jubilee recalls the liberation of Israel and the healing and restoration of harmony in community life. Under the Mosaic Law, the Israelites often struggled to fully embrace the Jubilee spirit, leading the prophets to foretell a future Messiah who would fulfill its deepest promise.¹⁰ The themes of the Jubilee—mercy, forgiveness, liberation, healing—are essential for navigating the Fourth Wave. We are reminded that God desires to restore what is broken and healing, mercy, and hope are possible, even in a fractured world. The Jubilee is God’s way of reestablishing harmony—grounded on its rhythms. Just as we must engage continuously with AI, we must also engage continuously with the spirituality of the Jubilee. It is not a one-time event. It is a lifelong rhythm where Jubilee offers us a timely opportunity to reclaim the heart of its message.

The Ark as a Place to Live and Work.

The renewed ark must continually gather the faithful, offering protection from the disorienting effects of technological change. It guides people in a way of life that is spiritually grounded, relationally healthy, communally centered, and mission oriented. This gathering is not meant to remain small or isolated but to grow naturally—from families, to communities, to a society, and ultimately to the universal Church. Living and working within the renewed ark invites us to embrace a coherent and ongoing spirituality, one that shapes personal transformation while guiding the Church’s social and technological engagement. It is a way of life that keeps us rooted in the Gospel while preparing us for the complexities of the Fourth Wave.

¹ Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992); Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972).
² Pope Francis, “Christmas Greeting to the Roman Curia” (December 21, 2019), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 112 (2020): 43.
³ Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Bantam Books, 1980), 13.
⁴ Ibid., 12.
⁵ Imad Khan, “Best AI Chatbots of 2025,” CNET, August 29, 2024, https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-ai-chatbots/.
⁶ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Culture and Education, Antiqua et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, January 28, 2025.
⁷ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Culture and Education, Antiqua et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence, January 28, 2025, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20250128_antiqua-et-nova_en.html.
⁸ Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), 2.
⁹ “What Is the Synod About?” General Secretariat of the Synod, accessed May 2025, https://www.synod.va/en/the-synod-on-synodality/what-is-the-synod-about.html.
¹⁰ John Bergsma, “Jesus and the Jubilee: Reflections for the Jubilee Year 2025,” Franciscan at Home, Catechetical Institute, Franciscan University of Steubenville, https://franciscanathome.com/the-catechetical-review/articles/jesus-and-jubilee-reflections-jubilee-year-2025 (accessed May 16, 2025).

Jorge Rodríguez is a Permanent Deacon in the Catholic Church. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of South Florida. Throughout his engineering career, he published widely and is listed as the inventor on several U.S. patents. After retiring from engineering, Jorge felt called to deepen his theological formation and completed a Master of Arts in Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. His diaconal ministry has since focused on developing a project on the spirituality of relationships.