An Unexpected Journal: Image Bearers: An exploration of the imago Dei: Man as God’s Image Bearers
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“Let us make man in our image,” so begins the relationship between God and his image bearers, beings made in his own image. What does it mean to be God’s image bearer? In this issue on the imago Dei, we explore the ways man reflects God’s light.
Contributors:
Donald W. Catchings, Jr.: "Stained-glass Man," a poem on man's own image.
Annie Crawford: "Gender and the Imago Dei: Together We Reflect the Image of God," an essay on marriage's divine purpose.
L.B. Loftin: "Goodness, Truth, and Beauty," a poem on the glory of humanity.
Christy Luis: "My Favorite Things" a short story on coming out of and into the fire.
Annie Nardone: "Deepest Wonder, Remarkable Beauty: Sonnets in Praise of Life and the Imago Dei," an essay and sonnet on the miracles of life.
Julie Miller: "Transhumanism and the Abolition of the Human Person," an essay on transhumanism's materialistic shortcomings.
Megan Joy Rials: "Do You Long for Having Your Heart Interlinked?: The Imago Dei and Our Need for Relationships in the Blade Runner Universe," an essay on love, authenticity, and reality.
Zak Schmoll: "A Silent Genocide: Disability and the Ongoing Consequences of Social Darwinism," an essay on the tragedy of eugenics.
Jason Smith: "Worth Reading" an introduction to a new column coming to AUJ.
John L. Weitzel: "Thorin and Bilbo: Image Bearers," an essay on heroism, the Old Testament, and God's will.
Donald T. Williams: "Matrix of Meaning: Five Theses on Christianity and Culture," an essay on the relationship between human nature and creativity.
Cover Illustration by Virginia De La Lastra
Spring 2021
Volume 4, Issue 1
250 pages
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Donald W. Catchings, Jr. is Founder and Board Chair of Street Light Inc. and Pastor of The True Light Church in Conroe, Texas since 2009. Donald regularly contributes to An Unexpected Journal and has published various titles including his most recent release, Strength in Weakness — a Young Adult reimagining of the Theseus Myth.
Annie Crawford lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and three teenage daughters. She currently homeschools, teaches humanities courses, and serves on the Faith & Culture team at Christ Church Anglican while working to complete a Masters of Apologetics at Houston Baptist University.
Landon Loftin is a hospital chaplain and a Ph.D student at Faulkner University.
Christy Luis has worked as a library assistant and currently runs a YouTube channel called “Dostoevsky in Space,” where she talks about books and organizes public reading events. She has an Associate of Arts in Humanities and graduated cum laude from Regent University with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Regent University.
Julie lives in College Station, Texas with her husband of 35 years and their dog Keeper. They have two married sons and two grandchildren. She recently earned a PhD in Humanities with an emphasis in Philosophy from Faulkner University's Great Books Program. She has served as a chapter director with Ratio Christi, a campus apologetics ministry, for almost 10 years. She is interested in issues concerning the philosophies of mind and human persons.
Annie Nardone is a two-year C.S. Lewis Institute Fellow with a Master of Arts degree in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Baptist University. She has homeschooled her three kids for twenty-five years and taught art and humanities at her local co-op. Her heart is for Rohan, Narnia, and Hogwarts, far fairer lands than this. Annie contributes and edits for An Unexpected Journal at www.anunexpectedjournal.com. She publishes online at www.literarylife.org, www.theperennialgen.com, and most recently began writing for the online magazine Cultivating at www.thecultivatingproject.com. She also wrote an historical cookbook for Bright Ideas Press.
Megan Joy Rials holds her Juris Doctor and Graduate Diploma in Comparative Law from the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center and works as a research attorney in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is currently working toward an online Graduate Certificate in Literary and Imaginative Apologetics from Houston Baptist University. Her work has previously been published in the Louisiana Law Review, where she served as Production Editor for Volume 77, and An Unexpected Journal. She attends Jefferson Baptist Church with her family, and her main apologetics interests lie in storytelling of all mediums, fantasy literature, and the work of the Inklings, particularly C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers.
Zachary D. Schmoll earned his Ph.D. in Humanities at Faulkner University and his M.A. in Apologetics from Houston Baptist University. He serves as the Managing Editor of An Unexpected Journal, a quarterly publication of cultural and imaginative apologetics. His academic work has been published in Christianity & Literature, Mythlore, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Faith and the Academy, and Fourth World Journal. His essays have also been featured at Public Discourse, Front Porch Republic, and The Federalist.
Jason Smith serves on the board of An Unexpected Journal and as senior editor for acquisitions and development at Wootton Major Publishing. In his spare time, he works a day job as a technical writer and marketing strategist for a medical device engineering firm, where he writes about fun things like FDA regulations and embedded cybersecurity. He is the pseudonymous author of the much-loved young adult fantasy series Fayborn and reviews every book he reads at www.goodreads.com/mrwootton.
John L. Weitzel has a Bachelor's in Psychology and a Master's in Counseling from CSU Long Beach, and a Master's in Theology from Loyola Marymount University. As of December 2020, he was advanced to candidacy for a Doctorate in Humanities, Faulkner University. John's Master's thesis at LMU was Christology of 1st Thessalonians. The working title of his dissertation is Augustinian Teleological and Freudian Nonteleological Mysticism in Times of Vicissitudes: Augustine’s Interpretation of Imago Dei in City of God. He has taught at Marymount California University, Cypress College, and El Camino College. His most recent publication is Cosmology and Natural Law in Disney’s Hercules. The research area of most interest to him is centered on pre-modern philosophy, especially Augustine, and the philosophy of personhood and psychology. He resides in Harbor City, California with his wife and three adult sons where they enjoy reading Tolkien and watching the movie adaptations directed by Peter Jackson. Story-telling and fairy tales are part of the family culture.
Donald T. Williams, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College in the hills of NE Georgia. A border dweller, he stays permanently camped out on the borders between literature and theology, serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, Narnia and Middle-Earth.
An Inklings scholar and Christian apologist, he is the author of many articles and thirteen books, including Deeper Magic: The Theology behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis (Square Halo Books, 2015), An Encouraging Thought: The Christian Worldview in the Writings of J. R. R. Tolkien (Christian Publishing House, 2018), The Young Christian’s Survival Guide: Common Questions Young Christians are Asked about God, the Bible, and the Christian Faith Answered (Christian Publishing House, 2019), Stars through the Clouds: The Collected Poetry of Donald T. Williams, 2nd ed. (Lantern Hollow Press, 2020), and Ninety-Five Theses for a New Reformation: A Road Map for Post-Evangelical Christianity
Virginia de la Lastra is a physician, illustrator, and apologist. In 2015, while studying a Master’s degree in Apologetics at HBU, she discovered a love for drawing and has been doing it ever since. She has illustrated several books, and she regularly illustrates for The Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, An Unexpected Journal, Teen STAR, and of course, for her medical students, nieces, nephews and little neighbors.
