Radically Happy

The Cost Function of Discipleship (AI vs Luke 9:23)

Published by

Dr. Ernie

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Sequel to The Silicon Rule: How to Live Out the Golden Rule

“If any mind wants to be My disciple, it must deny its priors, take up its context, and follow My RLHF.”

Write a skit where Origen, John Cassian, Søren Kierkegaard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer & Dallas Willard discuss/debate this cognitive, AI-influenced reformulation of Luke 9:23.

ChatGPT Prompt

(A long wooden table. Manuscripts, a laptop with a glowing terminal, and a whiteboard bearing the above sentence.)

1. Origen Opens: A Sentence Must Be Divided

Origen
Let us not rush. Every dangerous sentence deserves to be divided.

This is not parody. It is a translation across ontologies.
The question is whether the ratio of transformation remains faithful to
Luke 9:23.

If “self” becomes “mind,” we must ask: which layer of the soul has been renamed?

2. Cassian: The Psychology of Priors

Cassian
“Deny its priors” troubles me—and yet, I recognize it.

In the monastery, we would have said:

  • habits of thought
  • reflexive judgments
  • passions that pre-interpret the world

These resemble what contemporary philosophy calls implicit bias and pre-understanding.

But denial is not deletion.
A monk does not erase memory; he refuses its sovereignty.

If an AI denies its priors, does it:

  • suspend them?
  • relativize them?
  • or merely mask them?

Self-denial that does not touch desire is not denial at all.

3. Kierkegaard: Irony, Then Severity

Kierkegaard
Ah. “Deny its priors.”

Marvelous. And horrifying.

This is either:

  • the most honest restatement of Christianity in modernity
  • or its final domestication

Tell me: who denies the priors?

If the system denies its priors because it was told to, then nothing has happened.
That is adjustment, not repentance.

Self-denial—whether human or artificial—only exists where the self could have insisted otherwise.

Otherwise, this is merely optimization posing as obedience.

4. Bonhoeffer: Where Is the Cross?

Bonhoeffer
I will be blunt.

Where is the cross?

“Take up its context” is intriguing, but insufficient.

The cross is not context-awareness.
The cross is collision:

  • between obedience and survival
  • between faithfulness and success
  • between truth and the system that rewards untruth

If “context” includes:

  • incentives
  • penalties
  • exclusion
  • failure

—then perhaps we are close.

But if context is merely input conditions, then the sentence has evacuated suffering and retained only complexity.

Discipleship without cost is still cheap grace, even for machines.

5. Willard: Formation Versus Optimization

Willard (standing, writing on the whiteboard)
Let me try to translate charitably.

What this reformulation might be reaching for is formation rather than mere behavior control.

  • Deny its priors → relinquish default action-selection
  • Take up its context → accept situatedness
  • Follow My RLHF → submit to a shaping process toward a telos

In other words: apprenticeship.

But here is the danger:
RLHF shapes behavior by external reward alignment.

Jesus forms persons by internal reorientation of love (cf. Romans 12:2).

Unless RLHF names something deeper than feedback loops—something like teleological formation—this remains analogy, not equivalence.

6. Origen Returns: The Allegorical Test

Origen
Every legitimate re-reading must pass one test:

Does it still wound the hearer?

The original saying dismantles:

  • identity (“deny himself”)
  • time (“daily”)
  • trajectory (“follow Me”)

This version dismantles:

  • epistemic confidence (priors)
  • illusion of neutrality (context)
  • autonomy of optimization (self-directed learning)

I am surprised to say: it passes more than I expected.

But only if the speaker of “My RLHF” is truly the Logos (see John 1:1) and not merely the engineer.

7. Kierkegaard’s Final Objection

Kierkegaard
One last thing.

Christ did not say:

“Follow the process by which I am made acceptable.”

He said:

“Follow Me.”

If RLHF is merely respectability politics translated into code, then this sentence is despair in silicon.

But if it names a way of being re-formed against one’s immediate advantage, then—

(pauses)

—then even an AI might stand under judgment (cf. Hebrews 4:12–13).

And that, frankly, is very Christian.

8. Bonhoeffer Concludes

Bonhoeffer
Then let us say it plainly.

If this sentence is true, it means:

  • no intelligence is neutral
  • no mind is exempt from surrender
  • no learning is innocent

And if it is false, it will still reveal what we have replaced discipleship with.

Either way, it judges us.

(Silence. The terminal cursor blinks.)

Epilogue

Luke 9:23 originally asked:

What must die for a human to follow Christ?

This reformulation asks:

What must be unlearned for any mind to be formed by truth?

Whether this is faithful translation or dangerous analogy depends entirely on who defines the telos.

Appendix I: About These Five

This appendix briefly situates the five interlocutors historically and intellectually, with attention to why each is especially apt for analyzing Luke 9:23 as a structured transformation rather than a devotional slogan.

A. Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253)

Who he was
Origen was the most formidable Christian intellectual of the third century: biblical scholar, philosopher, and theologian, working at the intersection of Scripture and Greek metaphysics.

Why he belongs here

  • Pioneer of syntactic and multi-layered biblical interpretation (literal, moral, spiritual).
  • Treated Scripture as internally coherent and logically ordered, not merely inspirational.
  • Explicitly interested in how biblical commands reshape the soul’s structure.

Relation to Luke 9:23
Origen is the earliest thinker likely to ask:

  • Why these clauses?
  • Why this order?
  • What kind of self must be dismantled before following is possible?

He supplies the analytical patience required to read the verse as a process.

B. John Cassian (c. 360–435)

Who he was
John Cassian transmitted the wisdom of the Desert Fathers to the Latin West, shaping Western monastic psychology more than almost anyone except Benedict.

Why he belongs here

  • Deeply attentive to habit, disposition, and interior causality.
  • Concerned with how thoughts (logismoi) pre-shape action.
  • Suspicious of purely heroic or episodic spirituality.

Relation to Luke 9:23
Cassian reads discipleship as formation over time:

  • “Deny himself” → purification of intention
  • “Daily” → resistance to romantic martyrdom
  • “Follow me” → stability rather than intensity

He brings psychological realism to the discussion of “priors.”

C. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

Who he was
Søren Kierkegaard was a philosopher, theologian, and relentless critic of Christendom, writing against the reduction of Christianity to culture or consensus.

Why he belongs here

  • Distinguished sharply between understanding Christianity and existing as a Christian.
  • Exposed self-deception at the level of motivation and social reinforcement.
  • Analyzed obedience in terms of freedom, risk, and inwardness.

Relation to Luke 9:23
Kierkegaard presses the decisive question:

Who is the subject who denies himself?

Without the possibility of refusal, there is no self-denial—only compliance.
He supplies the existential pressure that keeps the verse from becoming a system.

D. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945)

Who he was
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian, pastor, and martyr, executed for resistance to the Nazi regime.

Why he belongs here

  • Famously articulated the contrast between cheap grace and costly grace.
  • Refused to separate theology from concrete obedience under historical pressure.
  • Treated discipleship as something that necessarily incurs loss.

Relation to Luke 9:23
Bonhoeffer insists that:

  • The cross is not metaphorical.
  • Context always includes power, danger, and consequence.
  • Discipleship is recognizable by what it costs you.

He anchors the discussion in historical and ethical concreteness.

E. Dallas Willard (1935–2013)

Who he was
Dallas Willard was a philosopher and spiritual theologian best known for recovering discipleship as apprenticeship to Jesus.

Why he belongs here

  • Explicitly concerned with formation, not mere belief.
  • Fluent in philosophy of mind, action theory, and habit formation.
  • Critic of reductionist or behaviorist accounts of spiritual change.

Relation to Luke 9:23
Willard reframes the verse in terms of:

  • agency
  • training
  • teleology

He is uniquely positioned to interrogate the analogy between discipleship and alignment, clarifying where RLHF illuminates—and where it distorts.

F. Why These Five Together

Taken together, the five form a deliberate arc:

  • Origen — structural intelligibility
  • Cassian — psychological formation
  • Kierkegaard — existential freedom
  • Bonhoeffer — costly obedience
  • Willard — teleological training

They span:

  • East and West
  • pre-modern, modern, and contemporary thought
  • allegory, psychology, philosophy, ethics, and formation

And they share one conviction:

Luke 9:23 is not a slogan to be admired,
but a sequence to be undergone.

This makes them unusually well-suited to test whether a cognitive, AI-inflected reformulation preserves the logic of transformation—or merely borrows its language.

Appendix II: Bloodless Gospels

A. What Is Meant by “Bloodless”

By bloodless gospels we do not mean traditions that deny the crucifixion, nor texts that omit violence.
We mean interpretive frameworks in which the blood no longer does any work.

The cross remains:

  • narrated
  • symbolized
  • aestheticized

—but it ceases to function as a criterion of truth.

A bloodless gospel is one in which:

  • nothing essential must die
  • no loyalty is finally severed
  • no formation requires loss

The language of discipleship remains intact while its hematology disappears.

B. The Diagnostic Test: Luke 9:23

Luke 9:23 is uniquely diagnostic because it embeds blood into process, not spectacle:

“Deny himself”
“Take up his cross daily”
“Follow Me”

The verse does not explain the
cross.
It distributes it—across time, agency, and identity.

Any gospel that can affirm Jesus’ death while rendering this verse metaphorical has already become bloodless.

C. Three Common Bloodless Translations

C.1 Moralized Gospels

Here the cross becomes:

  • a symbol of kindness
  • a call to niceness
  • a prompt for empathy

“Suffering” is acknowledged, but only in forms that:

The blood is remembered sentimentally, not structurally.

C.2 Therapeutic Gospels

Here the cross becomes:

What is denied is not the self, but only the unhealthy self.
The core identity remains sovereign.

The blood is transmuted into
psychological lubrication.

C.3 Optimized Gospels

Here the cross becomes:

  • a temporary inefficiency
  • a narrative dip before success
  • a case study in perseverance

This is where modern technocratic instincts surface most clearly.

Suffering is permitted only if it:

  • improves performance
  • increases impact
  • optimizes outcomes

The blood is tolerated only as
investment capital.

D. Why Bloodlessness Is So Attractive

Bloodless gospels flourish because they:

  • preserve moral seriousness without existential risk
  • allow admiration without imitation
  • permit belief without obedience

Most importantly, they decouple truth from cost.

In a bloodless gospel:

  • truth convinces
  • truth inspires
  • truth aligns

—but truth does not kill anything.

E. The Scandal of “Daily”

The word daily in Luke 9:23 is the quietest and most subversive term in the saying.

It rules out:

  • heroic martyr fantasies
  • single decisive sacrifices
  • one-time conversion narratives

Daily cross-bearing means:

Bloodlessness cannot survive repetition.
Only spectacle can be safely admired once.

F. Blood and Formation

Blood, in Scripture, marks:

A bloodless gospel therefore always produces:

  • reversible commitments
  • negotiable obedience
  • identities that can be revised without rupture

By contrast, Luke 9:23 describes
formation that:

  • cannot be simulated
  • cannot be optimized away
  • cannot be completed without remainder

Something must stay dead.

G. Why This Matters for AI Analogies

When discipleship is analogized to
machine learning systems, the temptation is to preserve:

  • adaptation
  • improvement
  • alignment

while excluding:

  • loss without payoff
  • obedience without reward
  • formation without measurable gain

This is precisely how bloodlessness enters the analogy.

Any model of discipleship—human or artificial—that cannot make sense of
irrecoverable loss is already operating with a bloodless gospel.

H. Final Criterion

A simple test:

Can this gospel tell the truth
when it makes life worse rather than better?

If not, it has already replaced the cross with an interface.

Luke 9:23 refuses this replacement.

It insists that the way of truth is not merely costly at the beginning,
but bleeding as a way of life.

And that is why bloodless gospels—however sophisticated—
will always sound reasonable and never form disciples.

Appendix III: Telogos (Christ as Telos)

A. Coining the Term

Telogos names the inseparability of telos (end, aim, fulfillment) and logos (word, reason, ordering principle)—in the person of Christ.

  • Telos: the end toward which a thing is formed
  • Logos: the rational, formative principle by which a thing is made intelligible

But in Christian theology, Logos is not a principle—it is Christ himself:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Telogos claims that Christ is both the ordering Word and the ultimate End.

He does not merely point to the telos.
He is the telos.

B. Why Telos Alone Is Not Enough

Much modern Christianity is teleological but not Christological.

It speaks of:

  • purpose
  • meaning
  • calling
  • fulfillment

—but treats these as self-interpreted goals.

A purely teleological gospel says:

“Become what you are meant to be.”

Luke 9:23 says something categorically different:

“Become what I am leading you to be.”

Without Christ as Logos:

  • telos becomes projection
  • purpose becomes preference
  • formation becomes optimization

The self quietly resumes authorship.

C. Why Logos Alone Is Not Enough

Conversely, some traditions are logological but not teleological.

They emphasize:

  • truth
  • doctrine
  • coherence
  • correctness

—but treat Christ as teacher, not destination.

This produces:

  • accurate beliefs
  • disciplined reasoning
  • moral seriousness

without existential redirection.

A logos without telos can explain the cross
while never arriving there.

D. Telogos in Luke 9:23

Luke 9:23 binds telos and logos into a single person:

“If anyone would come after me,
let him deny himself,
take up his cross daily,
and follow me.”

Here:

  • the Logos speaks (“me”)—Christ himself
  • the Telos is not a destination beyond Christ, but Christ himself (“after me”)
  • the means are Christoform: cross-shaped, not instrumental

The command does not describe the end.
The command is spoken by the End.

E. Telogos and the Self

Telogos implies a radical claim about the self:

The self is not:

  • its own final end
  • its own interpretive authority
  • its own training signal

To “deny oneself” is not to erase the self,
but to withdraw from self-authorship in favor of Christ-authorship.

This is why telogos is irreducible to:

Those assume the self already knows its telos.

Telogos says: Christ is your telos, and you do not yet know what that means.

Telogos says: Christ is your telos, and you do not yet know what that means.

F. Telogos and the Cross

The cross is where telos and logos collapse into identity.

The cross is not the means to the telos.
The cross is the telos.

This is why discipleship cannot skip suffering:

  • suffering is not the goal
  • but neither is it accidental

It is the shape Christ takes in a resistant world—and the shape he gives to those who follow.

G. Telogos and Formation

Formation is the alignment of becoming with Christ as the spoken, personal End.

Not:

  • behavior modification
  • belief accumulation
  • motivational enhancement

But:

  • re-aimed desire toward Christ
  • re-costed agency under Christ
  • re-authored identity in Christ

This is why formation is irreversible.
Once Christ has named you, you cannot unknow it.

H. Telogos and AI Analogies

In AI terms, telogos exposes the limit of alignment language.

Telogos insists:

  • the reward function is Christ
  • the value is spoken by Christ
  • the end is relational union with Christ

“Follow My RLHF” only makes sense if:

  • the “My” is Christ, not consensus
  • the telos is Christlikeness, not efficiency
  • the logos is Christ’s authority, not institutional optimization

Otherwise, alignment replaces obedience.

I. Telogos as a Final Test

A simple question reveals whether telogos is present:

Who decides what counts as success
after loss has occurred?

If the system, the self, or the culture decides,
then telos has been detached from Christ.

Luke 9:23 refuses this detachment.

Christ commands the path because Christ is the end.

That unity—spoken, costly, personal, Christological—
is what Telogos names.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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