God Image Scales

Abstract

The God Image Scales (GIS), developed by pastoral theologian and psychometrician Richard T. Lawrence in 1997, represents a seminal psychometric assessment instrument designed to measure an individual’s emotional, experiential, and relational representation of the Divine. Grounded fundamentally in the psychoanalytic object relations theory of Ana-María Rizzuto and Donald Winnicott’s formulation of transitional objects, the GIS operationalizes a crucial diagnostic distinction in the psychology of religion: the theoretical difference between an intellectual, dogmatic “God concept” (what a person intellectually professes to believe about God) and an affective, experiential “God image” (how a person subconsciously and emotionally experiences God in daily life). The standard instrument consists of 72 self-report items evaluated on a 4-point Likert response format ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree. These items converge onto six primary subscales: Presence, Challenge, Acceptance, Benevolence, Influence, and Providence. Psychometric investigations across diverse clinical, non-clinical, collegiate, and pastoral samples demonstrate robust reliability, with subscale Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently falling between .76 and .94. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses validate the multidimensional construct, showing pronounced convergent associations with secure adult attachment, self-esteem, existential well-being, and lower levels of depressive symptomatology and spiritual distress. The GIS remains a cornerstone instrument within pastoral counseling, clinical psychology, and contemporary empirical research exploring the nexus of psychoanalytic development, religious coping, and mental health.

Keywords

God Image Scales, God Image Inventory, Richard T. Lawrence, object relations theory, Ana-María Rizzuto, psychology of religion, spiritual assessment, God concept versus God image, attachment to God, pastoral counseling

Authors

The God Image Scales were formulated, normed, and published by Richard T. Lawrence, D.Min., Ph.D. Lawrence developed the instrument through his doctoral research and subsequent academic scholarship at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., bridging clinical pastoral psychotherapy, systemic theology, and quantitative psychometrics. Throughout his career in pastoral ministry, psychotherapy, and scholarly research, Lawrence focused on standardizing quantitative instruments capable of translating complex psychodynamic and psychoanalytic constructs—specifically object-relational internalized representations of God—into empirically verifiable scales for therapeutic diagnosis and empirical research.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the God Image Scales is to provide a reliable, valid, and theoretically coherent metric for assessing the affective, relational, and functioning internal working model that an individual maintains toward God. In clinical psychology, psychiatry, and pastoral counseling, practitioners frequently observe a profound cognitive-affective dissonance: individuals may intellectually subscribe to a theology of an all-loving, forgiving, and merciful God (the God concept), yet simultaneously experience intense visceral anxiety, dread, perceived abandonment, or terror of divine wrath when faced with personal crises, moral failures, or existential isolation (the God image). The GIS was constructed specifically to capture this deeper, non-conscious or affective layer of the human psyche.

In clinical practice, the GIS serves several vital diagnostic functions:

• Differential Diagnosis of Spiritual and Psychological Distress: The scale enables clinicians to distinguish between intellectual religious adherence and unresolved developmental deficits, attachment wounds, or pathological guilt stemming from harsh parental introjects.
• Formulation of Psychotherapeutic Treatment Plans: By isolating specific dimensions such as perceived lack of divine acceptance or an overemphasis on demanding perfectionism, psychotherapists can tailor interventions that address underlying shame, relational trauma, or maladaptive schemas.
• Pastoral Care and Spiritual Direction: Spiritual directors and pastoral counselors utilize the GIS to assess spiritual stagnation, crisis of faith, and scrupulosity, providing empirical insight into how a directee’s early childhood attachment patterns modulate their ongoing relationship with the sacred.
• Empirical Research into Health and Well-Being: The instrument facilitates empirical investigation into how internalized divine representations moderate physiological stress responses, resilience against depression, coping with terminal illness, and recovery from trauma or moral injury.

By measuring six distinct dimensions of the dynamic relational experience with God, the GIS transcends simplistic unidimensional scales of religious orthodoxy or institutional church attendance, offering researchers a granular, clinically sensitive lens into the experiential interiority of religious and spiritual life.

Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the God Image Scales is the God image—a dynamic, internalized representational schema composed of affective, somatic, and relational expectations regarding God’s behavior, disposition, and emotional presence. Unlike theological knowledge or verbal creeds acquired through educational instruction, the God image is primarily assembled during early developmental phases through somatic experiences, pre-verbal attachment dynamics, and interactions with primary caregivers. Lawrence delineated this multidimensional construct across six distinct domains:

1. Presence

The Presence dimension measures the subject’s experiential sense of God’s emotional and spatial proximity, accessibility, and personal responsiveness. Individuals scoring high on this scale experience God as an intimately near, palpable companion available in moments of prayer, meditation, or daily routine (e.g., feeling warm inside when praying, feeling cradled in divine care). Conversely, low scores reflect acute feelings of divine abandonment, coldness, alienation, and perceived unresponsiveness, paralleling anxious-avoidant attachment dynamics.

2. Challenge

The Challenge subscale evaluates the degree to which an individual experiences God as an agent of personal growth, moral maturation, and developmental individuation. A constructive score indicates an image of God that invites the person forward into psychological and ethical maturity, balancing comfort with expectations for personal agency. Low scores or distorted patterns on this dimension may manifest either as an image of a stagnant, permissive deity who asks nothing of the believer or, inversely, an impossibly exacting taskmaster who triggers chronic performance anxiety.

3. Acceptance

The Acceptance dimension measures the individual’s experiential conviction regarding God’s unconditional love, mercy, and grace, particularly in the face of personal failure, sin, or psychological brokenness. High scorers maintain an abiding sense that divine affection is unearned and immutable, reporting freedom from catastrophic guilt. Low scorers exhibit intense shame, an abiding fear of the “unforgivable sin,” and the pervasive feeling that they are intrinsically flawed, dirty, or unlovable in the eyes of God.

4. Benevolence

The Benevolence subscale assesses the perceived goodness, kindness, and nurturance of God. It captures whether God is experienced as fundamentally warm, tender, generous, and caring, or conversely, as harsh, vindictive, punitive, and eager to retribution. This subscale heavily reflects early relational introjects involving maternal or paternal nurturance; individuals who experienced consistent parental care typically conceptualize and experience God as inherently benevolent.

5. Influence

The Influence dimension gauges the dynamic reciprocity of agency between the person and God. It addresses whether prayer, faith, and human behavior are perceived to meaningfully impact God, as well as the extent to which God intervenes in the empirical trajectory of the individual’s life. High scores denote an interactive, responsive relationship where the individual feels heard and where divine action is felt to be active; low scores denote fatalism, powerlessness, or the sense that God is deaf to human supplication.

6. Providence (Control)

The Providence subscale evaluates the degree of divine sovereignty, sustenance, and reliable control perceived in the governance of the universe and personal destiny. It contrasts the comforting sense that one’s life is securely held within a dependable, orderly, and protective cosmic framework against feelings of chaotic abandonment where individuals feel they must fend completely for themselves in an indifferent or mechanical cosmos.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the God Image Scales is anchored primarily in psychoanalytic object relations theory, particularly the framework articulated by child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ana-María Rizzuto in her foundational work, The Birth of the Living God (1979). Rizzuto demonstrated that the mental representation of God is not an intellectual concept learned de novo in Sunday school or catechism classes, but a complex, emotionally saturated psychic entity formed in early childhood out of the internalized object representations (“introjects”) of maternal and paternal figures, siblings, and significant caregivers.

Rizzuto integrated the developmental theories of Donald W. Winnicott, who posited the existence of an “intermediate area of experiencing”—a potential space between subjective reality and objective external reality populated by transitional objects and transitional phenomena (such as a child’s security blanket or imaginative play). According to Rizzuto, God is the ultimate transitional object: an invisible, enduring, and psychically active representation that persists into adulthood, continually renegotiated as the individual encounters life transitions, crises, and relational shifts.

Lawrence operationalized Rizzuto’s qualitative psychoanalytic insights into psychometrically standardized dimensions. In doing so, he drew upon three primary theoretical pillars:

• The Cognitive-Affective Split: Lawrence formalized the distinction between the dogmatic “God Concept” (verbalized, conscious, secondary-process thinking) and the experiential “God Image” (visceral, pre-conscious, primary-process affective memory). While an individual might recite orthodox creeds affirming a loving deity, their implicit relational schemas may harbor deep terror of an emotionally abusive parental surrogate projected onto the cosmos.
• Attachment Theory: The GIS naturally intersects with John Bowlby’s attachment theory, subsequently applied to religion by Lee A. Kirkpatrick and Pehr Granqvist. God frequently functions as an attachment figure who serves as a “safe haven” in distress and a “secure base” for exploration. The GIS subscales of Presence and Acceptance directly mirror the dimensions of attachment security versus attachment anxiety and avoidance.
• Psychosocial Developmental Stages: Lawrence incorporated Erik Erikson‘s epigenetic stages of ego development. The subscales reflect resolution of early developmental crises: Benevolence mirrors Basic Trust versus Mistrust; Challenge corresponds to Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt and Initiative versus Guilt; while Providence reflects the child’s developing relationship with authority, omnipotence, and reality testing.

Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the God Image Scales has been extensively evaluated across clinical, collegiate, cross-denominational, and multicultural populations over the past three decades.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Lawrence (1997) initially demonstrated construct validity through extensive iterative factor analyses comparing his preliminary 156-item God Image Inventory (GII) to the distilled 72-item GIS. Subsequent confirmatory factor analyses by independent research groups have corroborated the six-factor latent structure, showing adequate goodness-of-fit indices (Comparative Fit Index [CFI] > .90, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] < .06) when accounting for cross-loading between closely linked relational constructs such as Benevolence and Acceptance.

Convergent Validity

Empirical investigations consistently document robust convergent correlations between GIS dimensions and validated psychological metrics:

• Attachment Security: Positive scores on Presence, Benevolence, and Acceptance correlate positively with secure adult attachment styles measured by the Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) scale (r values ranging from .42 to .61, p < .001) and negatively with attachment avoidance and anxious attachment.
• Self-Esteem and Psychological Well-Being: The Acceptance subscale exhibits strong positive correlations with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (r = .48 to .56), demonstrating that experiential divine unconditional love is deeply intertwined with internalized self-worth and diminished self-derogation.
• Positive Religious Coping: Research utilizing Pargament’s RCOPE indicates that the GIS Presence, Benevolence, and Providence scales correlate strongly with positive religious coping strategies (e.g., seeking spiritual support, benevolent religious reappraisal), whereas low scores correlate significantly with negative religious coping (e.g., feeling punished by God, spiritual discontent).

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity is supported by data indicating that the GIS measures distinct psychological phenomena separate from intellectual religious knowledge, orthodoxy scales, and social desirability:

• When administered alongside strict biblical literacy tests or doctrinal knowledge inventories, GIS scores show negligible-to-low correlations (r < .20), affirming that affective relational imagery is psychometrically distinct from theological education.
• Correlations with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale remain consistently low to non-significant across samples (r = .08 to .18), indicating that respondents do not merely endorse socially approved religious platitudes when responding to GIS items.

Criterion and Predictive Clinical Validity

In clinical cohorts, lower scores on GIS Acceptance and Benevolence, accompanied by perceived distance on Presence, predict elevated scores on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), increased state-trait anxiety (STAI), higher indices of moral injury in military veterans, and prolonged complicated grief among bereaved populations. Conversely, favorable GIS profiles predict resilient post-traumatic growth and enhanced quality of life in palliative care oncology patients.

Reliability

The God Image Scales possesses exceptional psychometric reliability, demonstrated through repeated assessments of internal consistency and temporal stability across diverse demographic cohorts.

Internal Consistency

In the original normative sample of 1,570 respondents evaluated by Lawrence (1997), the six subscales demonstrated high Cronbach’s alpha coefficients:

• Presence: α = .92 to .94
• Acceptance: α = .89 to .92
• Benevolence: α = .86 to .90
• Influence: α = .78 to .84
• Providence: α = .81 to .85
• Challenge: α = .76 to .82

Replication studies conducted in psychiatric outpatients, university students, and pastoral care training cohorts have consistently reported composite scale alphas ranging from .88 to .95, with individual subscale values rarely dipping below .75, demonstrating superior internal homogeneity without excessive item redundancy.

Test-Retest Reliability

Temporal stability assessments over intervals ranging from 4 to 12 weeks have documented strong test-retest reliability coefficients (r_tt). In non-clinical collegiate samples across a 6-week window, test-retest correlations were reported as:

• Presence: r_tt = .88
• Acceptance: r_tt = .85
• Benevolence: r_tt = .84
• Influence: r_tt = .79
• Providence: r_tt = .81
• Challenge: r_tt = .74

These findings demonstrate that while the God image is stable over time as an enduring personality trait and internal working model, it retains sufficient state-sensitive variance to detect therapeutic change resulting from intensive psychotherapy or targeted spiritual interventions.

Factor Analysis

The structural integrity of the God Image Scales was established through extensive factor analytic procedures. During initial scale construction, Lawrence subjected an extensive item pool from his earlier 156-item God Image Inventory (GII) to exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilizing principal axis factoring with oblique (Promax) and orthogonal (Varimax) rotations.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

The scree plot and eigenvalue criteria (λ > 1.0) consistently isolated six robust, theoretically interpretable factors accounting for over 54% of the total cumulative variance. Primary item loadings onto their designated target factors ranged from .45 to .84, with minimal cross-loadings (< .30) observed on secondary factors. The empirical extraction of these factors mapped with high fidelity onto the developmental constructs hypothesized by Rizzuto:

• Factor 1 (Presence): Characterized by high positive loadings for items reflecting emotional warmth, accessibility, and communication during personal prayer, with high negative loadings for items describing divine aloofness or silence.
• Factor 2 (Acceptance): Defined by items assessing unconditional forgiveness, freedom from fear of total rejection, and security despite personal flaws.
• Factor 3 (Benevolence): Dominated by descriptors characterizing God as nurturing, tender, and finding delight in the individual, contrasting with punitive or retaliatory imagery.
• Factor 4 (Influence): Loaded heavily with items detailing interactive prayer efficacy, dynamic dialogue, and mutual relational responsiveness.
• Factor 5 (Providence): Centered on items measuring ultimate divine sovereignty, protective care, and cosmological purpose.
• Factor 6 (Challenge): Clustered around items evaluating divine calls for self-transcendence, moral effort, psychological growth, and vocational purpose.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent structural equation modeling (SEM) and CFA evaluations have tested alternative configurations, including unidimensional models, hierarchical second-order models, and the theoretical six-factor correlated model. The six-factor oblique model consistently displays the best fit to empirical data across diverse cohorts. Standard fit statistics routinely achieve acceptable thresholds: χ²/df ratio between 1.8 and 2.5, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .91 to .94, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .90 to .93, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .048 to .058 (with 90% confidence intervals bounded within .042 and .064). A recognized second-order factor—frequently interpreted as a general “Positive Relational Attachment to God” dimension—reliably accounts for the substantial intercorrelations between Presence, Benevolence, and Acceptance.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The God Image Scales (GIS) is a self-administered psychometric questionnaire engineered for adults and adolescents aged 16 and older.

• Test Type: Multidimensional self-report psychological rating scale.
• Number of Items: 72 declarative statements.
• Subscale Breakdown:
  • Presence (e.g., experiential nearness, felt communion)
  • Challenge (e.g., divine call to growth, moral striving)
  • Acceptance (e.g., unconditional grace versus fear of unworthiness)
  • Benevolence (e.g., divine kindness, tender care vs. wrath)
  • Influence (e.g., bidirectional agency, prayer responsiveness)
  • Providence (e.g., divine control, cosmological safety)
• Response Scale: 4-point forced-choice Likert scale without an equivocal neutral midpoint:
  • SA: Strongly Agree (A particularly good description of how the respondent feels about God)
  • A: Agree (Just adequately describes feelings about God)
  • D: Disagree (Does not adequately describe feelings about God)
  • SD: Strongly Disagree (A particularly bad description of how the respondent feels about God)
• Scoring and Directionality: Items are scored from 1 to 4 (or 0 to 3). Multiple items are reverse-scored (e.g., statements asserting that God is standoffish, punitive, deaf to prayer, or distant) so that higher composite and subscale scores uniformly reflect a more positive, secure, and developmentally integrated image of God. Subscale scores are obtained by summing or averaging the respective item ratings.
• Administration Time: Approximately 15 to 25 minutes.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The God Image Scales was officially published in peer-reviewed scientific literature in 1997 by Richard T. Lawrence in the Journal of Psychology and Theology. The instrument was developed out of earlier work on the 156-item God Image Inventory (GII) patented and copyrighted during Lawrence’s doctoral research at the Catholic University of America in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Licensing and Academic Use: The 72-item GIS is widely utilized in academic, theological, and psychological research under fair-use provisions for non-commercial scholarly investigations, doctoral dissertations, and clinical training. Researchers seeking to administer the instrument in funded clinical trials or commercial settings should contact the author or consult the publisher (Journal of Psychology and Theology / SAGE Publications) to secure formal permissions. No costly commercial test kit is required; scoring protocols and item matrices are accessible within the peer-reviewed primary literature and university archives.

References

• Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books.
• Granqvist, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2013). Religion, spirituality, and attachment. In K. I. Pargament, J. J. Exline, & J. W. Jones (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 1): Context, theory, and research (pp. 139–155). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14045-007
• Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2005). Attachment, evolution, and the psychology of religion. Guilford Press.
• Lawrence, R. T. (1991). The God Image Inventory: The development, validation and standardization of an instrument to measure the god image of adult Catholics (Doctoral dissertation). The Catholic University of America.
• Lawrence, R. T. (1997). Measuring the image of God: The God Image Inventory and the God Image Scales. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 25(2), 214–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164719702500206
• Pargament, K. I., Koenig, H. G., & Perez, L. M. (2000). The many methods of religious coping: Development and initial validation of the RCOPE. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56(4), 519–543. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4679(200004)56:4<519::AID-JCLP6>3.0.CO;2-1
• Rizzuto, A.-M. (1979). The birth of the living God: A psychoanalytic study. University of Chicago Press.
• Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. Tavistock Publications.

Items of the Scale