The Imago Dei is the underived

center of theology. Briefly, we

can define the Imago Dei as the
idea that humanity has something
in common with God. This is an
oversimplistic definition, of
course--many volumes have been
devoted to unpacking what,
precisely, the "Image of God" in
humanity means--but the central
idea is that humanity has
something in common with God.
My assertion here is simple: that
theology cannot begin without the
assumption of the Imago Dei,
which is, itself, derived from
nothing.
As a thought experiment, try
beginning to work out a theology

in which the Imago Dei is not

assumed. What would this
theology say about God's nature?
If it cannot derive virtues from the
human soul itself, it would have
to turn to divine revelation--but
why should it trust divine
revelation? Why should it assume
that the divine even has the
capacity to speak in languages
we can comprehend--or that we
have the capacity to understand
anything the divine would have to
say? The idea that it's possible to
say anything at all about God is a
concept that is birthed from the
idea that God has something in
common with us.
Theology of any kind cannot exist

without the Imago Dei. Without

something to set us apart,
something of God within our
natures, we cannot begin to
unpack what it means for God to
be God. In Christian thought,
much space is given to the
meaning of the Incarnation, God's
birth as a human being in Jesus.
Very little space, however, is
given to the question of why, of
all creatures that have ever lived
on Earth, God should choose
humans as the species to receive
his essence incarnate. It simply
seems natural that he should
choose us over cockroaches,
jellyfish, blue whales, or eagles.
Christian theology takes the

Imago Dei as axiomatic, so

Christian thinkers rarely consider
radical departures of it worthy of
even cursory consideration.
It is the same across religions,
from the ancient Egyptian and
Greco-Roman pantheons to the
abstract gods of Hinduism to the
dualism of Zoroastrianism. All
theistic religion--and, thus, all
theology--is grounded in the
Imago Dei. In fact, the idea of the
Imago Dei is so deep within the
human psyche that in the last
paragraph, I was able to limit the
purview of the Incarnation to
Earth without arousing many, if
any, concerns of the life that,
statistically, must exist

somewhere else in the cosmos.

The general human agnosticism
to the idea of extraterrestrial life
isn't based on a lack of
knowledge. We have a
reasonable level of understanding
of the processes undergirding life
(even if our sort of life is the only
sort of life) and there are enough
stars in the Universe to drive the
probability that life would develop
elsewhere to, effectively, a
hundred percent. Why, then, do
we pretend to be unsure as to
whether there's life elsewhere?
The obvious answer is Imago Dei-our instinct to believe we are
special, and that, therefore, the
planet that birthed us must be

special. The centrality of the

Imago Dei is most easily observed
in the ongoing dialogue between
the advancement of science and
the objections of religion. There
are certain kinds of scientific
advancements that are generally
accepted by the highly religious.
Generally speaking, physics is
embraced by the religious. While
Einstein had his critics in his own
day, they were not typically
religious critics (I'm not speaking
universally, of course--any idea
has people who oppose it on
religious grounds). Chemistry,
too, is generally acceptable. But
religious opposition to the
findings of biology, astronomy,

and neurology is often vocal and

angry.
What is the fundamental
difference between, say, physics
and astronomy? Both are
grounded in experimentation and
observation, and, in fact, much
astronomy is extrapolated from
physics. But physics didn't
(directly) shatter people's illusions
about the place of the Earth in
the Universe or the size of the
Universe. Chemistry didn't
(directly) undercut the idea that
humanity came about in a
discrete, special creative act from
God. When religion--and I am
speaking here of Christianity in
particular, because the bulk of my

experience with theology is

Christian--encounters what it
perceives as an attack on the
Imago Dei, it responds with
hostility. As time goes on and
reasonable people can no longer
deny the repeatedly observed
realities, religious thinkers begin
to find ways to adapt the Imago
Dei to this new information.
Of course, none of that
demonstrates that the Imago Dei
is a false idea. There very well
may be a deity who has certain
attributes in common with us.
And, what's more, there's no way
to falsify the idea. It is
underived--the central axiom of
religion--and unfalsifiable. It is

the starting point of theology, but

it is also its end point, because
the pursuit of theology has never
been understanding God so much
as it has been understanding
ourselves.