With their increasing appreciation for the Catholic concepts like the imago Dei, today’s modern evangelicals take another step closer to fusing with hardliner Catholics. Two of those evangelicals recently offered (archive) some false and unsupportable claims about the effects of adopting this doctrine. Today, let’s explore those claims—and see how they could be tested, but never are.

(OP means “original post.” It’s the source post that sparks a discussion. Also, bear in mind that Calvinism and Reformed theology are not exactly the same, but for our purposes they’re similar enough to use as synonyms.)

(From introduction: Frugal Gourmet’s dolmas recipe. And oh god I hope I pronounced ‘imago Dei’ correctly.)

This post first went live on Patreon on 12/14/2023. Its audio ‘cast should be available by now as well!

Imago Dei: The basic concept

In Latin, imago Dei simply means “the image of God.” Of course, Christians only ever mean their own god by this word, rather than any of the many thousands of other gods in humanity’s history, so really it means “the image of Yahweh.” Over at La Wiki, Fount of All Knowledge, we can see that the Bible frequently mentions this idea in both the Old and New Testaments. 

If you check that Wikipedia link out, you’ll also notice a number of convoluted theological interpretations of imago Dei. We won’t get into those today, but these get extremely convoluted. They matter only to the sorts of Jesus fanboys who’d argue about exactly what shade of red his mantle should be in paintings.

For most Christians, imago Dei simply represents a way to conceptualize both humans as they look today and their imagined relationship with Yahweh. It’s a way to link themselves to their god, his power, and his authority over the universe.

Consider imago Dei as you might a penny. In a very real way, just as an American penny represents and bears the authority of America’s monetary system, humans represent and bear the authority of Yahweh. They are a symbol, as well, of his power and authority. Similarly, just as defacing or destroying that penny is officially a violation of America’s authority and rules (archive), humans doing something that Yahweh doesn’t like is a violation of his authority and rules.

Imago Dei originated as a Catholic notion (of course)

For many years, imago Dei was a Catholic teaching. Catholic leaders still clearly consider it to be the entire center of their understanding of humanity. In the wake of the changes made by Vatican II in the late 1950s (archive), this doctrine only became more important.

Around 2004, the Vatican published an extensive paper about it (archive). This paper was the result of numerous meetings between 2000-2002. In this paper, their theologists position the imago Dei as the way to figure out how to handle modern ethical questions they have about stuff like abortion and the death penalty. As they write:

The International Theological Commission offers the following theological meditation on the doctrine of the imago Dei to orient our reflection on the meaning of human existence in the face of these challenges. [. . .]

It was not until the eve of Vatican Council II that theologians began to rediscover the fertility of this theme for understanding and articulating the mysteries of the Christian faith. Indeed, the documents of this council both express and confirm this significant development in twentieth century theology.

Imago Dei has a rippling effect across all of Catholicism. As Joshua Hochschild wrote for Medium (archive) a few years ago:

According to this notion, there is a special relationship between God and humanity, because humanity bears some mark or imprint, some divine spark, of the Creator.

This is broadly “theological,” but not specifically Christian nor even “religious” in the sense of belonging to a particular faith observance or practice. As a claim about human nature, it has roots in classical philosophy as much as theology, and is relevant to all domains of human inquiry and activity. [. . .]

In sum, we might say that the Catholic vision of the person is that human beings are made for a truth and goodness which is transcendent, perfect, and personal.

By the way: Did you notice how Hochschild snakes the imago Dei into the secular world? He falsely asserts that it’s not “broadly ‘theological'” or “even ‘religious'” in nature. That’s how Catholics rationalize their trampling of Americans’ civil liberties and human rights. Their entire notion of natural law does the same dishonest thingand in the same manner, and for the same reasons.

The imago Dei is 100% is religious. After all, it asserts that a god created humans and that morality and a nation’s laws should flow from that belief. Outside of religion, outside of Christianity in particular, it’d be blithering nonsense. Within Christianity, the imago Dei at least makes a little sense.

Once again, Calvinists wreck everything

But you know who loved the Catholic doctrine of the imago Dei almost as much as post-Vatican II Catholic theologians?

John Calvin. Yes, none other than the guy who invented Calvinism. His conceptualization of the imago Dei figured prominently in his doctrinal teachings. The extremely Calvinist site The Gospel Coalition (archive) tells us how that worked for Calvin:

According to Emil Brunner, “The concept of the imago dei is fundamental to Calvinistic anthropology.” The image of God, which Calvin also equated with the Hebrew word “likeness,” was for him far less concerned with the outward appearance of man than with his soul, “the proper seat of the image.” Calvin explicitly identified the “primary seat of the divine image” as the human mind and heart. However, when describing the imago dei functionally, Calvin clearly favored its rational, cognitive dimension.

(Interestingly, it seems that Calvinists don’t like to capitalize “Dei” in that phrase, while Catholics always seem to do so.)

But Calvin taught—and Calvinists today believe—that Hellbound humans have a kind of corrupted imago Dei. If their god wants to rescue a human from Hell, then that person has an actual newly-restored imago Dei. So in a very literal sense, the unwashed heathens of this world can’t possibly hope to think and reason as well as TRUE CHRISTIANS™ do:

Lastly, it will prove fruitful for the reader to also understand how Calvin defined our redemptive task: knowledge lay at the very foundation and aim of Christianity. [. . .] By God’s grace, only a “remnant” of the imago dei is residual in fallen man. Therefore, in order to correct our idolatry and ignorance, God graciously discloses Himself to sinners in the Holy Scriptures. [The Gospel Coalition]

This explanation for original sin accords well with Calvin’s view of the effaced imago dei as well as his elevated view of the mind in conversion. According to Calvin, human reason became a “shapeless ruin” in light of sin. However, it was not annihilated after the Fall. Calvin insists, “in the perverted and degenerate nature of man there are still some sparks which show that he is a rational animal, and differs from the brutes, inasmuch as he is endued with intelligence, and yet, that this light is so smothered by clouds of darkness that it cannot shine forth to any good effect.” [The Gospel Coalition]

In short, it’s not our imagination. Calvinists really do think of heathens as subhumans who can’t reason our way out of a paper bag—unless, of course, we join their religion. They don’t just act like they think that!

I suspect that one of these days, someone important in Calvinism will begin caring more about recruitment and retention than preening self-glorification and trying to annihilate the tribe’s enemies. That person will realize that Calvinists are evangelicals’ very worst problem. But there won’t be a single damned thing that sweet summer child will be able to do about it.

Let’s meet the two evangelicals reclaiming the imago Dei

The other day, I ran into this opinion post on Christian Post (archive). It’s called “Reclaiming the Imago Dei – the key to identity and purpose,” and it’s written by Kirk Rupprecht and Mark M. McNear.

Rupprecht works as the lead pastor of Commonplace Church in New Jersey. As far as I can tell, Commonplace Church is a basic fundagelical Hell-believing Trinitarian group.

I didn’t notice any Calvinist dogwhistles in their statement of beliefs. Nor did I see any of those dogwhistles in a 2021 “info session” video they uploaded to YouTube. So these are almost certainly regular Arminian evangelicals.

To vastly oversimplify things, Arminians think that people can accept or reject salvation. Calvinists think that Yahweh decided from the beginning of time that someone is going Heaven or Hell, which means there’s really nothing that person can do about it.

That said, this particular church’s leaders think salvation cannot be lost. That makes me wonder if they accuse ex-Christians of never having really been “saved.” Either way, between their Hell-belief and their use of “discipling” as one of their “Who We Are” values, they’re definitely authoritarian in nature. “Discipling” slides over into abuse so easily and frequently that it’s become a big red flag for me to see on a church site.

A Christmas gift for the person who already has everything!

The Christian Post bio bills the other writer, McNear, as “a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.” He graduated from Northeastern Bible College and now runs a practice in New Jersey. I’ll bet you a donut that he attends Rupprecht’s church or has a leadership-type role there. He’s got a published book out, so he likely helped Rupprecht with this post’s wordsmithery.

In their post, Rupprecht and McNear tell us that reclaiming the imago Dei is the perfect holiday gift for the person who has everything:

Have you embraced your identity in Christ? If not, it’s time to reclaim the Imago Dei. That’s the best Christmas present you could ever ask for or receive this year.

Really, now? Let’s see how this reclaiming process works and what someone can predict of a Christian who’s done it. 

(Interestingly, you’ll notice that Rupprecht and McNear’s post capitalizes both words of imago Dei. As I did with the Catholic sources, I’ll maintain the capitalization convention of the previous sentence unless directly quoting today’s OP.)

How ‘reclaiming the Imago Dei‘ substitutes for finding meaning and purpose in life

As evangelicals have done for at least a couple of generations now, Rupprecht and McNear begin by asserting that finding meaning and purpose is a universal human need:

The search for one’s identity has become a popular trend in our culture, but it is an age-old question that has burned in the hearts of human beings for millenniums. And the need for identity comes down to two ultimate questions:
1. Who am I?
2. Why am I here?

In response, I gently suggest that constructing one’s identity is not a “popular trend.” Americans have pursued this task for many decades now. However, not every human being absolutely must seek a purpose in life. Lots of people seem quite happy to go without one. Moreover, most people eventually get a sense of their own identity in all religions and outside of religion as a whole.

Despite those truths, evangelical Christians have for years offered their religion as a shortcut answer to both questions. That’s what we’re in for with this OP. These are hucksters who have defined a problem in such a way as to make their product the only possible solution to it. 

The imago Dei as a shortcut

These two writers clearly ascribe magical properties to the imago Dei:

They are important questions. Yet, while people continue to search for these answers, many don’t realize that God considered our identities vital — so much so, He gives us the answers right from the beginning of time as recorded in Genesis 1:26-27. As the triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) discusses the creation of humankind, He says:
“’Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

See, they tell us? In that one set of verses, humans get their answer to both questions! What a two-fer!

In just two verses of the Bible, we learn an incredible truth about ourselves — a truth that people from all cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities have searched and longed for throughout history. God specifically tells all of us who we are (our identity) and why we exist (our purpose). [. . . ] 

We are created in the image of God, meaning that we bear His image socially, emotionally, intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Humanity, in its original design, reflects the image of the One who conceived it.

And from there, they tell us, nobody alive should ever feel meaningless or without purpose. 

Alas, though, they’re on their way to making a testable claim. You’d think Christians would be very wary about doing that. But nope! As their decline continues, they only make wilder claims.

The imago Dei, cuz God don’t make no junk

It’s important to note that the title of today’s OP centers on reclaiming the imago Dei. Catholics and Calvinists never un-claimed it, but I don’t think the writers of the OP are thinking about them. They’re clearly thinking about Arminians here.

And I’m not sure Arminians ever lost the belief generally. They just don’t call it that exactly.

Back in the 1980s, I remember a popular motivational-style religious poster Christians liked. It featured a drawn picture of a petulant or angry child looking up over prayer-clasped hands. Its text read: “I know I’m somebody ’cause God don’t make no junk!” Here’s one version of it:

I suppose the poster’s creator wanted to remind people feeling meaningless or purposeless that they had to have both. After all, their god couldn’t make a person who was simply “junk.” So in that worldview, everyone is important. Everyone has value and purpose to Yahweh.

That’s about what today’s OP is about. As the writers note:

Think about that for a moment. How could we be insignificant or of little value if we were made to reflect the image of God?
All of God’s creation gives Him glory and points to His design. Yet humans have a special place in His created order — we reflect (as in a mirror) His likeness; His identity has been placed on each of us! There is nothing in Creation, besides human beings, which has been given this important distinction. [. . .]

You are not an accident. You were designed and created by God to reflect His image, to know Him, and to be known by Him. As a result, each person is worthy of being valued and each individual has been given a divine purpose in this world.

Alas, they continue, this ickie evil secular world doesn’t reflect any of those supposed truths! Eww, that gross and grody heathen world!

Also alas, these two OP writers are adding details to the testable claim that they’re about to make.

A false dichotomy and a false dilemma: It’s like Christmas came a bit early!

Now, our writers move smoothly to the question of how so many people can feel that they are meaningless, valueless, and purposeless:

As we look around in our world, it might be hard to understand how this all could be true. Many people are being hurt and abused by others, some people are consumed by such great despair that they take their own lives, while others, feeling marginalized, unwanted, or unloved, seek to find their identity and purpose in a myriad of different ways. 

But they will not for one moment stop to consider whether or not this stuff is true of people in their own religious group. And it most certainly is. In news articles and social media posts from mostly just this month (December 2023), evangelical Christians have:

Again, almost every link in the above list comes from just the past two weeks. And all of them appear to be written by evangelicals. 

Of course, one could argue—and indeed, our two writers do appear to be arguing—that The Big Problem Here is Arminian Christians’ continued and singular failure to embrace the imago Dei. They conclude in the OP that if Christians will simply adopt this belief, then they won’t feel those negative emotions anymore.

And there’s our testable claim!

But if I expanded my search parameter a bit and focused only on Catholics or Calvinists (the two groups who most seem to like the doctrine of imago Dei), I’d likely still have hundreds of other links to offer to contradict this assertion. 

In fact, let’s do exactly that.

Sidebar: An informal romp through the Catholic and Calvinist wilds of imago Dei

Catholics expressing feelings of unloved-ness, unworthiness, meaninglessness:

Calvinists expressing feelings of unloved-ness, unworthiness, meaninglessness:

  • “I feel like human life is meaningless” [r/Reformed, 2021]
  • “My life lacks meaning and I’ve accepted that God has abandoned me” [r/Reformed, 2021]
  • “I feel so alone” [r/Reformed, 2021]
  • “WHEN LIFE SEEMS MEANINGLESS” [Video sermon from Coopersville Reformed Church, 2022]
  • “Just over the loneliness, depression and God’s silence. I’m beginning to question if God actually does love me.” [r/Reformed, 2022]
  • “I feel like the reason why I’m sinning is because I feel lonely. I feel worthless and all in all I feel lost in this world.” [r/Reformed, 2022]
  • “DEPRESSION AND EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY: EXPLORING A THEORETICAL MODEL”  [PDF paper from 2012; the author’s Calvinist bona fides and scholarly focus can be found on p. 68 of the PDF]

Remember, these are the two groups that have been on imago Dei like white on goddamned rice. It’s been part of each group’s central conceptualization of itself for at least decades, if not for their entire existence from the start. And yet I can easily and within moments find oodles of Catholics and Calvinists saying they sure haven’t experienced the emotional effects promised by Messrs. Rupprecht and McNear.

Also remember that as I said, I think Arminians already believe in and embrace the imago Dei. They just call it different things. I’m pretty sure that it’s an ironclad rule for evangelicals that this general teaching (done in less formal language) must pop up at least once a month in every Sunday School class.

The imago Dei promise that never quite sees reliable fulfillment

For every Catholic or Calvinist Christian claiming that they found a way to Jesus their way clean out of these feelings (like this guy; archive), I bet we’ve got ten others suffering silently and too scared to bring up those feelings amid others of their tribe. And yet here are our two OP writers telling us that embracing the imago Dei reliably solves those negative feelings:

In Jesus, we have a new life, a new lens, a new vision, and a new value. We are God’s masterpiece — loved and known by Him. He has made us in His image — it’s something that we receive and not something we achieve. His image is our very being, and we can reclaim that image over every part of our lives — our family systems, our relationships, our sexuality, our mental health, our treatment of others, our thoughts, our actions, and more.

Have you embraced your identity in Christ? If not, it’s time to reclaim the Imago Dei. That’s the best Christmas present you could ever ask for or receive this year.

Remember, just knowing and embracing this doctrine is what makes the magic happen. That’s it. It’s a purely mental exercise with no real-world components. So yes, it’s like the lazy D&D player’s favorite way to play a mage. All you have to do is tell the GM you wanna cast the spell, and it just happens! There’s no need to carry a billion little bits-n-bobs components for every possible spell! Just say it and spray it!

From 5e D&D Spell Component Database. Can you even imagine what a sticky, stinky mess a mage’s travel pack must be?

Alas for these newcomers to the imago Dei, there’s a wee teeny-tiny little dealbreaker problem with religious beliefs. 

See, beliefs are really just thoughts and claims that someone takes as true. Christian beliefs, in particular, can’t be corroborated or supported by reality. In fact, Christians can’t pay too much mind to reality if they want to stay believers. It constantly contradicts Christian beliefs.

So when Christians promise a new recruit up and down that Jesus is totally there for them and will comfort them in their hard times, but a hard time arrives and that Christian doesn’t feel comforted at all, then their belief may well be jeopardized.

If Arminian Christians tell themselves twenty times a day that “God don’t make no junk,” that they are the very image of Yahweh, that they are the visible power and authority of their god, it’ll still always be just a belief they’re parroting to themselves. They can compare this imago Dei concept to pennies or soldiers or ambassadors’ embassy offices or whatever else in the real world, but that won’t ever make it really real. It’ll just remind them of how very un-real it feels. 

Catholics and Calvinists already know this bare little-t truth. If Arminian Christians really do “reclaim” the imago Dei for themselves, they’ll just be burdening themselves with one more belief that simply isn’t based in reality.

And the glorious truth will still elude them along with their brethren in this belief.

The beautiful, glorious little-t truth that brings tears to my eyes every damned time

What forces came together to birth us, our origin story, our birth status, our parents, even our imagined destiny, all of it, it isn’t worth a single shit in a golden punchbowl.

There’s a million “chosen one” stories in our culture, especially nowadays with the Potterverse and similar young-adult universes proliferating. Their heroes aren’t special by dint of anything they’ve done; usually, they’re just children when their epic Heroes’ Journeys begin. No, they’re special because eons ago, it was writ in the stone of Fate that they’d be born. The very gods meddled with the strings of destiny to get their parents to boff. And now, the resulting child is the Chosen One. The Promised Hero. Now they must Do The Special Thing To Save Everyone.

And it’s bullshit. It’s a lie. It’s the worst kind of lie: the kind that messes with so many people’s yearning to be more than what they think they are. This lie gives entirely too many people the false hope that they can jump straight to the finish line of greatness and achievement from the starting line.

I tell you again, friends:

It’s a lie.

It’s a lie.

In truth, meaning and purpose come from within. Whatever magic people possess already swirls within us. 

Putting the pieces together

We start sometimes haltingly with what is often a complete mess. Components don’t match quite right. Puzzle pieces we think should be there aren’t. Others are there that we wish were gone. We face weaknesses we wish were already defeated and strengths we wish were stronger. All those colliding hopes and dreams and wishes and aches slam into the sum total of many billions of exploding stars and storms of atoms and collisions of molecules that string together. There, they agree to share a single mobile shape for all too brief a time.

From the very start of our species, we have always made peace with what we can’t change and changed whatever we could. With whatever’s left, we stride forward to get shit done.

That’s how we create our own meaning and purpose in this life. 

No gurus meditate at the top of the mountain. No approving Destiny, Fate, magic scroll, or god there, either, practices yoga while waiting for someone to climb up and find what they seek forever. And that is as it should be. None of it would or could make us more or less than what we are, nor even change what effect we could have upon our world and humanity itself.

No, not one single belief alone can actually set our feet on the right path. For that matter, feelings might be the worst things imaginable to use as the basis for a life-plan; they are so easily influenced and changed.

It’s worse than a lie; it creates unfixable problems

Instead, if someone embraces what it is to be human in a world that is, so to speak, made out of meat, then negative feelings and feelings of inadequacy and loneliness can be helped through real-world means. That’s not the case with beliefs about the imago Dei. If someone feels lonely or meaningless or purposeless, telling them they have the love of an invisible friend/god/lover/whatever doesn’t really help. It might even be damaging.

Did you happen to notice those links from the wilds of Catholicism and Calvinism? In them, Christians wrote about feeling worthless and lonely and sometimes even worse than that even. Sometimes, a reply to one of these cries-from-the-heart suggests real-world therapy. But if Christians’ claims about the imago Dei were true, nobody would need therapy. Just believing the right beliefs would fix those feelings. That’s very obviously not true.

Worse still (from the standpoint of the claim-makers), many people who accept this belief suffer, and others who reject it are happyor at least getting shit done. There’s no line to be drawn between the belief and the feelings, no correlation to observe, much less a causal relationship to confirm. And by the way, I’m not even considering claims about this belief relating to obedience to Christian rules. We’d be here all day if I did. We’re just talking about emotions.

So Christians’ claims about the emotional effects of embracing the imago Dei are not only untrue but completely superfluous. These claims only add more bricks to the walls of believers’ problems. Christians stand before that wall to try to figure out if they’re being punished or tested, because only after somehow figuring “no” to those pressing questions can they seek real-world help for their needs.

No, they must dive beneath that wall and get past it to find the truth.

One of the most remarkable things about humans is our ability to behold what needs to be done and then to reach out our magnificently-evolved hands to spark fire and use it to light up the entire world. If a task is too big for one, then we can band together with others to build towers all the way to the sky’s limit.

This little-t truth destroys all the blahblah that Christians have used for centuries to try to bottle and gatekeep what is truly the birthright of every one of us and an intrinsic part of the human situation.

That’s the simple reality that gets me just drunk on joy every time I think about it. 

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Captain Cassidy

Captain Cassidy is a Gen-X ex-Christian and writer. She writes about how people engage with science, religion, art, and each other. She lives in Idaho with her husband, Mr. Captain, and their squawky orange tabby cat, Princess Bother Pretty Toes. And at any given time, she is running out of bookcase space.

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