The lead scientist who creates David, the robotic boy in Artificial Intelligence, closes the first scene in the film by asking if God did not create man, just as the scientist plans to create David, because God needed man to love him. The question reveals this scientist's fundamental misunderstanding of creation, and it leads to disaster. Three themes in Artificial Intelligence are of particular interest: (1) creation; (2) love; and (3) children.

Creation

First creation. God, who is infinitely blessed in himself, created man for man's own benefit. He--one should almost say they, for God is triune--created man to share his own blessed communion of persons. God revealed himself to man--specifically, to the Jews; "salvation is from the Jews," Jesus said. He gave man laws that, if followed, lead to human flourishing. He gave man prophets, and, indeed, in these last times, he gave man a Savior, one like us in all things but sin. In the words of Richard John Neuhaus, since God became man, God has become inextricably bound up in "the human project," and because of this it cannot fail. God's plan of salvation was known from all eternity. In a way, the redemption is part of the creation.

How different God's way of creating from man's. God creates for the benefit of those created. Man often creates for the benefit of himself. God gives man the freedom not to return God's love. In Artificial Intelligence, David is programmed to love his adopted parents and cannot do otherwise. When there was a problem--man abusing his freedom--in real life God himself became a man and allowed himself to be murdered by men in order to save men from their own pride. In Artificial Intelligence, when there is a problem, David's adopted father wants David to be taken back to the lab for destruction, while his adopted mother leaves him in the woods to fend for himself.

Love

These relections lead us to consider the meaning of love, and how hard it is for man in his selfishness to love. Love is an act of the will, pursuant to which we desire the good of another. Thus the classic scholastic definition. Love is self giving, as JPII would put it; whose opposite is not hate, but "using." God's creation and redemption of man show us the meaning of love put into action. Love is patient and kind. The lover seeks not his own good but the good of the beloved. The lover does not ask "What's in it for me?" The moment that it is forced on the beloved, love ceases to be love. Love does not control the beloved. The act of loving does cause joy in the lover--because we were created to love, and there is always joy when we do what we ought to do and what is our deepest longing to do--but more often than not the act of loving is accompanied by suffering. This suffering, in turn, is a call to love more deeply, more purely, more as God loves.