Would love to see this available in Relight, preferably in a nice iPad app 
(yes I read the FAQ)
Would drop Logos like a hat
I would pay money to be able to change font sizes, hide certain things etc.
And of course I’d pay good money for the RSB resource itself
I’ve only been using Relight for about 15 minutes but I’m already really excited about it. And I’ve tried almost every Bible app on the iOS App Store I think.
Welcome @tenn0tenn0!
I don’t use Logos nearly as much as I used to. I’m happy that you’ve found Relight and hope you’ll continue to enjoy it!
Thank you! I use Relight almost every night! I already stopped using Logos haha.
Now I just use a couple eBook Bibles (RSB ESV and MacArthur’s ESV for now), Relight (mostly Matthew Henry’s commentary for now as I learn), and sometimes even Google’s Bard, lol.
Looking forward to Relight’s future.
What do you use Google Bard to do?
If I can’t find a commentary that my main commentaries cover I seem to always find it in Matthew Henry’s commentary on Relight but sometimes I’ll just ask Bard “What does verse such and such mean?” and between the 3 drafts it provides, it usually helps me figure out what it probably means. It’s definitely not always accurate or very thorough, but it seems to be pretty good about 80% of the time.
Or maybe a verse references something from ancient times and I just want to know what it is - I’ll just ask and it seems to always know how to explain it simply. No ads to wade through on the internet, just quick answers. It remains to be seen how long before these AI chat bots are completely corrupted, heh! In some areas, they can make stuff up entirely. Like one time I asked it to tell me something obscure about an obscure Christian band, and I verified with some super fans that the info and quote it gave me was incorrect, even though it sounded true.
I think there should definitely one day be a Reformed AI chat bot that can answer people’s Bible questions from a purely Reformed view. Surprisingly, Bard is currently pretty Reformed in some areas! I mean, it knows what it is and how to explain many of the doctrines. It presents the other side too sometimes, but obviously those sides don’t make a lot of sense, and it seems maybe that AI bots may not know how to not make sense? I don’t think I’ll ever see it do the mental gymnastics of Leighton Flowers, for example.
I just asked Bard “If God is sovereign over all, does that mean he’s sovereign over man’s heart as well? Or is that the one area that is outside of God’s sovereignty?” This is not a good example of it being Reformed in some areas, but I can’t remember what I asked when it has surprised me. Anyway - to this, it answered:
"This is a difficult question to answer, as it involves the mystery of God’s sovereignty and human free will. The Bible teaches that God is sovereign over all things, including human hearts. However, it also teaches that humans have free will and are responsible for their own choices.
How can these two truths be reconciled? Some theologians believe that God’s sovereignty does not mean that he controls every detail of our lives. Instead, they believe that he works within the limits of our free will to bring about his purposes. Others believe that God does have complete control over our hearts, but that he chooses to respect our free will.
Ultimately, we cannot fully understand how God’s sovereignty and human free will work together. However, we can trust that God is good and that he has our best interests at heart. We can also trust that he will not force us to love him, but will instead respect our free will.
Here are some Bible verses that speak to this question:
- Proverbs 16:9 - The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.
- Jeremiah 10:23 - I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, nor is it in man who walks to direct his steps.
- Romans 9:16 - So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
- Ephesians 2:8-9 - For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
These verses teach us that God is sovereign over all things, but that he also respects our free will. We can trust that God will work in our lives for his good purposes, even when we don’t understand how he is doing it."
Hmm
There’s a lot going on in this thread!
First, thanks for your request for the Reformation Study Bible. We’d really like to be able to add that! Unfortunately, copyrighted resources like this require permission from the publishers. We’ve actually worked with the people behind the RSB to get R.C. Sproul’s book on the Lord’s Prayer on Relight, but they haven’t been interested in licensing the RSB to us as yet.
Secondly, in terms of a reformed AI chatbot. This could be really cool! One thing I’ve found is that if you tell ChatGPT to act like a confessionally reformed Christian before you ask it a question, it will be more likely to give you an answer from that perspective. I can also say I’ve been watching the large-language-model stuff (the tech that powers things like Bard and ChatGPT) with great interest. Once it becomes affordable, it will almost certainly power features on Relight. The issue right now is that a server that can run stuff like this is often something like $1,000 a month. That’s more than 10x what we’re current spending to host Relight, so we’d either need a lot more users willing to support the project, or the price will need to come down (or some combination of those factors).
Thanks again for your input! Please feel free to give us any other thoughts as you have them.
I love this, though whatever AI is implemented, I am curious how to keep the Relight principle of putting the work in to understand a topic. There is a way to implement AI where it gives an easy answer and a way to implement where it is a study help (I imagine).
Yeah, the primary principle for developing tools like this is for Relight that it wouldn’t really answer your questions directly. Instead, it would be a tool to help you find the resources that can help you answer the question. This keeps hallucination to a minimum, and also means people still have to actually learn in order to learn.
It’s possible a feature like this could also be rigged to point you to answers outside of Relight’s resources, and also to provide links to resources within Relight when they are available. So Relight could maybe one day be a sort of all-in-one research assistant.
Very special! The concept of research assistant is a neat way to think about AI