Purpose Statement

 

One of the greatest truths revealed to mankind is: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him" (Genesis 1:27).  The statement implies that man is more than a physical brain plus body.  It implies that when God created man, he created a rational being who could think and speak to his Creator meaningfully because both shared concepts or forms that had the same meanings. And unless all minds have at least some thoughts in common, communication with other human beings would be impossible.  

 

Being created in his "image"  also implies that man lives a dual existence; first, as a thinking, language speaking transcendent-being positioned under God and above Nature in the sphere of Culture, and secondly, as a material-being with a body positioned in the stimulus-response sphere of Nature.   

 

Questioning the existence of this natural duality, anthropologist Edmund Leach asked the question: "How is it and why is it that men, who are a part of Nature, manage to see themselves as 'other than' Nature even though, in order to subsist, they must constantly maintain 'relations with' Nature?"   He was, in effect, declaring his need for an INTERPRETATIVE SYSTEM, a system which could explain why people actually see themselves as “other than Nature."  His evolutionary interpretative system provided no answers regarding what was obvious, the natural duality of human existence.

 

Empirically, this dual existence has been manifested in language. It has been revealed in the dual subject-verb pronoun system in the language of the Miccosukee (Seminole) people of South Florida. In fact, the dual  semantic categories of the Miccosukee language compels every speaker to view existence from a Divine Perspective. 

 

As illustrated in the chart below, every speaker has a dual identity. First, as a transcendent-self positioned under God in the sphere of Culture, and, secondly,  as a material-self positioned in Nature.

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Now the question every linguist, psychologist, and anthropologist must answer is this: Does the dual Miccosukee verb-pronoun system above reveal the existence of a Meta-Script "woven into the very fabric of our creation. ...something deep within us that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong" (Romans 2:14 --The Message),  or, the effects of "vital impersonal forces of nature being [magically] organized in behalf of social needs" as proposed by the founder of sociology,  Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)? 

 

In other words, in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre, does SOCIAL EXISTENCE PRECEDE AND RULE ESSENCE/MEANING?  Or does MEANING structured in the unconscious mind PRECEDE EXISTENCE?

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The above Miccosukee semantic data clearly reveals that the unconscious mind has been structured with INFORMATION which compelled every child coming into the world to view reality from a Divine Perspective.  In other words, from a top-down, inside-out epistemology, ESSENCE or MEANING PRECEDES EXISTENCE. 

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Now the bad new is: Every people group has the capacity to reject this innate INTERPRETATIVE SCRIPT (Romans 2:15) and chose "to go their own ways" (Acts 14:16). The effect?  "All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own" (Isaiah 53:6). Linguist Kenneth Pike, a theist, called this social effect ETIC DIVERGENCE, the rejection and moving away from a FIXED STANDARD.  The result?  Cultural diversity and increase in social chaos.

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Our mission, therefore,  is to introduce the reader, especially those involved in cross-cultural ministries, to the implications of what  it means to be created "in His image."  Being created "in HIs image" implies possession of innate Knowledge in which form and meaning-content were linked together when "God breathed into man and man became a living thinking person" (Genesis 2:7).  The materialists strongly disagree. The individual has no place for the postmodern who believes truth is a social construct.

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Gil Prost, (Revised: June, 2020).