When one begins to analyze how meanings are attached to forms common to all, we cannot ignore the naturalistic bottom-up, outside-in explanation set forth by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss who proposed:  “It is only forms and not contents which can be common.  If there are common contents they must be sought......outside the mind."

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Rejecting Plato’s idea that the form plus meaning-content “tied together”  in the mind was the source of Universal Ideas, Lévi-Strauss unties the two and declares: “meaning content must be sought outside the mind.”  The result?  A “structuralist” explanation as to how Social Existence “among the elements of the world” (Col. 2:8) Preceded Meaning.

 

Now the consequence of detaching inherent meanings from forms or ideas common to all is to create two kinds of data, first, forms structured in the brain; and secondly, meaning-content imported from "outside the brain" aka "mind."  In addition, every society has the freedom to demolish a Divine meaning by merging two mutually exclusive concepts together, in this case, the concepts of mind and brain. 

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To be a true materialist, one must, according to neo-Darwinist David Webster,  say: “We think with our bodies.”  For the materialist, "'mind' is, in effect, an illusion produced by our failure to understand the evolutionary history and the neurophysiological complexity of the human organism."   Anthropologist Lévi-Strauss would agree. 

 

Now what Lévi-Strauss' explanation regarding the source of knowledge failed to explain was how thousands and thousands of bits of data  can create meanings which must be imported to the brain and then, without error, attach the created meanings to the correct forms which are “structured” in the brain. 

 

According to Lévi-Strauss, only then can people think and talk about concepts like family, marriage, relatives, freedom, duty, animals, plants, and things.  But is such a linkage mathematically possible? Can the existence of these invisible “structures” in the brain be empirically verified?

 

The non-contextualizing theist believes it is more rational to believe form and meaning-content were "package right" when the LORD breathed into an inert form mental data and the form became a living cultural language-speaking being possessing a mind filled with etic data or “sound words” to which are attached Divine Meanings. 

 

But this "packaging" of form and meaning-content "right" at creation eventually produced an epistemological problem. It is the problem as to how out cultural sameness there emerged cultural diversity. To my knowledge, the only anthropologist who has attempted to explain this phenomenon was the late Marvin Harris. Sadly, the problem has been ignored by contextualizing missiologists for whom all meanings “belong to the people” and for whom there exists no "Law written on the heart."

 

Now for Harris, the cultural materialist, the epistemological starting  point is “infrastructure,” or what the apostle Paul calls “the elements of the world” (Col 2:8), those elements which are essential to human existence. To exist as a human being, according to the materialist, there must exist a biological “fit” between a society’s life-way and the “elements of the world” aka “infrastructure.”  

 

But “fitness” also demands a new cultural law-way whenever there is a change in infrastructure. This means if a society moves from one ecological niche to another, environmental "fitness" demands a new cultural law-way. There exists no shared Universal Script for Living which contributes to the psychic unity of mankind. 

 

While for Harris, “evolution is the record of how out of sameness differences emerge,”  he fails to explain to his readers as to what constitutes “sameness.”  Not so for the theist.  For the theist there exists a Universal Script for Living figuratively “written on the hearts” of all people.  Unlike scripts which belong to a people, the Divine Script is appropriate for every kind of environment.

 

Now for the non-contextualizing theist, it is history which provides us with "a record of how out of sameness differences emerged."  This process in history is call ETIC DIVERGENCE. It is a spiritual record of how, after the Tower of Babel, there emerged from one Law Script for Living thousands of diverse scripts. 

 

The Emergence of Diverse Scripts for Living

Now if Adam and his progeny had fulfilled God’s command to "be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28), there would exist no spiritual phenomenon called ETIC DIVERGENCE.  We would all be sharing the same Cultural Law Script for living, the same family type, and the same language. It was a period  in history when “the whole earth used the same language and the same words” (Genesis 11:1).

 

But as the human population began to increase after Noah, instead of moving out and filling the earth and “subduing it” by scientifically classifying its species as commanded by the Lord, they chose to remain in one place, living under one law-system and speaking one language. Looking down from heaven, the Lord declared:

“The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out

to do will be impossible for them! Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other. In that way, the LORD scattered

them all over the world, and they stopped building the city” (Gen. 11:2)

 

Then as mankind began to fill the earth and enter diverse physical environments, they began to succumb to environmental pressures and began rejecting the Cultural Law Script for Living “written on their hearts.” The LORD ceased to be their Provider. 

 

As illustrated below, these diverse linguistic groups began replacing the nuclear family as the basic unit of society with some new type of classificatory systems, each classificatory family type being protected by the Rule of Exogamy. In the Biblical system there occurs no merging of status positions. 

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                                     Biblical                                         Classificatory

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Convictions

1. The materialist’s doctrine of “environmental fitness” is in fundamental fitness to the doctrine of Providence.

2. Spiritual Etic Divergence is real.  It explains the why we have cultural diversity and the multiplication of new family types through the world

3. Now while God's Truth can be suppressed, it is impossible to detach Divine Meanings from Universal Forms.  God has not ceased to speak.  God is not dead.