John Paul Arceno (Th.M., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY) is currently a PhD in Systematic Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, TX. He is from the Philippines but has resided in New Jersey since 2021. JP's research interest is in the intersection of theology proper and Digital Theology. His recent digital theology publications and presentations are: "Is Virtual Baptism a Real Baptism?" (2020), "Theology of Virtual Realism" (2022), "Utopian VR in Ready Player One" (2022), "Doing Theological Anthropology in the Digital World" (2023), and "Filipino Digital Contextual Theology" (2024). He is the Synergist for Tech/VR of the World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission and part of Indigitous Philippines. JP is the Lead Pastor of Union Community Bible Church in New Jersey, USA.

Each generation and culture must engage in the doctrine of Christ. In today’s digital age, how does digital technology affect our Christological creative portraits in a world where artificial intelligence permeates cultural reality? Recently, Virtual-Jesus.com has offered a personalized conversation with ‘Jesus’ through AI technology. Does an AI-generated or even virtual reality (VR) Jesus’ avatar represent a theologically sound and biblically faithful Christ? A question arises, how did the early Christians depict Christ? This part takes three pathways to study the portraits of Christ—Docetism, Monothelitism, and Iconography viz. the Nicaea II, AD 787. The paper presents a theological reflection whether Christ can be depicted faithfully through digital technology. It highlights the potential pitfall of idolatry in digital theology and offers an Evangelical Christology with implications in theological teaching, prayer, and doxology. The entire argument is called ‘Pixelated Christology’ which offers a way to advance Christological portraits in digital spaces.