In the age of Fake News, missiologist-anthropologist Charles Kraft correctly points our that “All of culture ...is made up what we call forms;”  but then he goes on to say  “…though the forms are parts of culture, the meanings belong to the people. They [the meanings] are not inherent in the forms themselves.  They are attached to the forms on the basis of group agreement.”

   

According to Kraft’s bottom-up, outside-in epistemology aka “a theory of knowledge,” all meanings attached to these forms common to all people must be abstracted from experiencing life within a particular “group” existing in a particular socio-economic-political environment.  It is a theory which cancels the existence of “strong words” (II Timothy 1:13), words to which are attached Divine Meanings which are fixed and constant along with the laws of logic, and ultimately what it means to be “created in the image of God.”  

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Instead, professor Kraft proposes that it is “human biology [which] provides the backdrop for all that we need to know as humans.”

   

In contrast, there are those who hold to a top-down, inside-out non-biological epistemology.  For them the question is:  What does it mean to be created in the “image of God”?  First, being an “Image bearer of God” means having a SELF which transcends one’s brain and biological makeup.  Secondly, Christian philosopher Gordon Clark points out that “the doctrine of the  image of God …is an assertion of an a priori or innate equipment.”  

 

Now the Latin term a priori denotes knowledge which precedes an intentional action, an act which is not a response to a stimulus.  This means the unconscious mind rather the physical brain of every child coming into the world is structured with a priori knowledge which is both cultural and linguistic.

 

In the words of linguist Kenneth Pike, personhood “presupposes having a nonphysical self in addition to the physical brain.”  Like a ship, the physical body needs a pilot who can calculate whether it is safe or unsafe to travel to “numerous ports.” 

 

In order for a pilot to make such calculations, the pilot must be equipped with a set of semantic “tools” to make sense out of his sense perceptions. The classification of one’s sense perceptions would be rendered impossible if the unconscious mind was not structured with universal culture-free knowledge.

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Without innate classifiers structured in the unconscious mind, classifiers like SAME-DIFFERENT, INSIDE-OUTSIDE, MALE-FEMALE, and ONE-MANY, there could be no taxonomic event nor Law of Contradiction. If no concept has an inherent meaning, it means that under certain social-economic-political conditions an uncle can be a “father,” a male a “wife,” a law a “suggestion,” the mind the “brain,” and woke news the “truth.”  For such, “meanings belong to the people.”

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Now those who hold that the meanings attached to concepts common to all “belong to the people” call themselves “contextualizers.”  According to Kraft, one of the chief promoter of this bottom-up, outside-in biological epistemology states: “the assumption here is that supracultural truth exists with God above and beyond and cultural perception or expression of it .... the supracultural ideal that lies outside of culture (is) therefore beyond our grasp.” 

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Now if I, as a Bible translator, had to deny the reality that every child comes equipped with innate culture-free knowledge structured in the subconscious mind and is, by nature, a classifier, it would have demanded that I give up my faith and become a naturalist because,  according to Kraft, “Human biology provides the backdrop for all that we need to know as humans.”  In the words of neo-Darwinist Richard Webster I must “eschew mentalism and adopt a truly biological epistemology”?

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In contrast, there are theists aka “mentalists” who declare the Supra-Cultural Ideal does not lie outside of culture.  In fact, the Ideal “is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation” (Romans 2:15).  Without such culture-free knowledge structured in the subconscious, it would have been impossible for Chácobo sages of the past to create satire critical of their ancestors for having rejected the Ideal. (See: Discovering Innate Rules for Living)

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For the “mentalist,” every child coming into the world comes endowed with a Divine Interpretative System, a supracultural interpretative system structured in the unconscious mind which informs one how to live. The bad news is: sinful man and society have the freedom to reject and replace the Divine Script with a “[script] meanings which belong to the people.”

 

Semantically, as Christian philosopher Gordon Clark points out, for a word “to be meaningful, a word must both affirm something and deny something. It must refer to both what it is and  to what it is not. In this sense all science is taxonomy, because taxonomy involves the content of discrete ideas [aka forms] that can be distinguished from other discreet ideas.”

   

These inherent or Divine meanings are brought to consciousness by being “triggered” in a socio-linguistic situation.   And if no concept has inherent meaning, there can be no universal Truth nor Narrative because the meaning of every narrative contrasts with the meaning of every other narrative. Since the meaning of every cultural narrative is different and distinct, the idea that multiculturalism is the answer becomes a woke principle. 

 

On the other hand, for those holding to a top-down, inside-out theory of knowledge, “The law of contradiction must be innate if truth is possible.  ...If we do not have innate knowledge of rules for right thinking, right thinking cannot start; but right thinking can start: therefore the rules are innate.”

 

Now if all meanings are contextualized, there exists no “right thinking,” no “God-breathed Scriptures” (II Tim 3:16), only “meanings [which] belong to the people.”   Instead, all meanings must be abstracted from contextual “group think.”  But if true, being a Bible translator who “insisted on the priority of the mind in culture,” I was informed,  “is to align one’s understanding  of socio-cultural phenomenon  with the anthropological equivalent of pre-Darwinian biology or pre-Newtonian  physics. …Such a belief is a form of intellectual infantilism…”

 

Now regardless of one’s theory of knowledge, as philosopher Gordon Clark points out, ”our knowledge is always a combination of form and content, we cannot know the form without the content."    For example, when I see a biological form that has a beak, feathers, wings, flies, and lays egg, aka its content, I recognize it to be a bird. This is possible because knowledge is always a combination of form and content.  In this case, neither the form nor the content were a product of “group think.”  Such knowledge is innate, “woven into the fabric of our existence.”  It is brought to consciousness by bringing “triggered” in every taxonomic situation.

 

When the LORD told Adam to name the birds, Adam didn’t ask: What is a bird?  He already knew both its form and its qualities. When asked to name the birds and animals, he was semantically equipped with an Interpretative System which enabled him to know the qualities which constituted each genus. These essential qualities are not based on group experience.

 

Convictions

1. Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker (1954-....), a Jewish intellectual who rejected the teachings of the Torah at the age of thirteen, recognized that without an innate set of taxonomic tools, there could be no science.  He correctly points out that "people in all  cultures carry out long chains of reasoning built from links whose truth they could not have observed directly.  Philosophers have often pointed out that science is made possible by that ability.”   As a mentalist, I would agree when he says: "Science is made possible by that ability.”

2. By acknowledging the existence of an innate set of categorizing tools needed for classifying sense experiences, Pinker, unknowingly, is supporting the theistic position that ESSENCE  aka possession of INNATE KNOWLEDGE PRECEDES EXISTENCE.

3. The canceling of “strong words,” words to which are attached Divine Meanings which are fixed and constant means the canceling of science and the rules of logic. 

4. “Heaven and earth shall pass away,” said Jesus, “but my words [and the meanings attached to then] shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). 

 

Gilbert Prost

May 25, 2021