I. Etic Divergence as a Physical Phenomenon

As a physical phenomenon, etic divergence occurs whenever a speaker thinks the two p's in the word paper are the same when they are not. The linguist hears phaper, recognizing that the first p is an aspirated ph and the second p is not. The speaker thinks they are the same. The linguist knows they are not.  He knows that the second p was physically modified.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linguist Kenneth Pike described this phenomenon "EMIC SAMENESS in the face of ETIC DIVERGENCE.  "In some instances the insider [native] responds so strongly to the sameness that it may take special training for him or her to hear the difference.”

 

For the native speaker, the two sounds are “emicly” the same; for the trained linguist the two sounds are not the same. They are different. 

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II. Etic Divergence as a Spiritual Phenomenon

The apostle Paul was aware that a Divine meaning could  be replaced with meanings which “belonged to the people.” Aware that “innate positive universal could be replaced with a negative particular actions,”  he admonished Timothy to "Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus" (II Timothy 1:13).  The  problem of replacing Divine Meanings with meanings which belong to the  people  is not new

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Besides Etic Divergence being a physical phenomenon occurring in the mouth, it is also a spiritual phenomenon occurring in the soul. It occurs whenever a society surrenders to contextual environmental pressures and begins to reject the meanings attached to “sound words” ( II Tim 1:13), meanings which are eternal, fixed, and unchanging.

We now live in postmodern environment in which the "standard" of using “sound” or “healthy” words" is under constant attack. On a daily basis, words in the English language are being corrupted. New meanings are being attached to words which were once “sound.” In the process, those controlling the narrative are producing  “unhealthy” words, “a stepping stone from truth into falsehood.” 

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Now Paul was fully aware that Divine meanings attached to forms common to all could be replaced with meanings which “belonged to the people.”  In the words of Greek scholar R. C. Lenski:

“Here we have Paul’s verdict on modernism with its claim that all these words are ‘outworn categories of thought,’ ‘old thought patterns’ that we have long ago outgrown. They have  only antiquarian value.  ....We must  [now] substitute categories and patterns of thought which the wisdom of our day produces, that are derived from our science, democracy, sociology, philosophy; although just what these new patterns are to be is as yet in the process of determination. The one thing certain the old logoi [words] can no longer be worn.

 

So instead of the Bible containing "God-breathed" words which have inherent meanings, the Word of God contains what one prominent missiologist calls "an accurate record of Spirit guided perceptions of human beings who were committed to God.”  But the rejoinder of theologian Edeward Carnell is: "sense perceptions cannot report to us anything meaningful," even when they are "Spirit guided.”

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For contextualizing missiologists, there exists no sound, true, or healthy words.  There  exists no meaning attached to a form which is which is exact, true, and never changing.  Whatever a word may mean, its meaning is determined and shaped by the social context which the apostle Paul calls the "material forces of the environment" (Col 2:8). According to Paul, such meanings do not “accord with Christ.”  They exist as misrepresentations of Divine Truth.

 

For example, succumbing to environmental pressures of the Amazonian Bolivian Rainforest, the Chácobo restructured the nuclear family, making the mother-daughter dyad the dominant of the nuclear family (See: Who will make the beer?).  The effect? A leaderless, dying society.

 

Living east of them in Peru were their linguistic cousins, the Sharanahua. Because their environment was different, so were the forces that threatened their existence.  The psychological need for securing a steady supply of meat compelled the Sharanahua to restructure the nuclear family (See: Who will provide the meat?).

 

This they did by replacing the covenantal “one flesh” principle of husband-wife set forth in Genesis 2:24 with the biological dyad of father-daughter. Sharanahua fathers treasured daughters more than wives because daughters were the means of gaining a meat provider. 

 

Anthropologist Janet Siskin precisely points out that “this [the father-daughter dyad”] is the nonsexual relationship that is the building block of the household and a prerequisite for cooperation between men and women.”  Without daughters there would be no household-of-five and no security for the father in his later years of life.

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III. The Need for "Sound" and "Healthy" Words

Both the Chácobo and the Sharanahua had, at some point in history, replaced a Divine Meaning for  one determined and shaped by contextual  pressures. Now if one is to judge what ought to be, then one needs what the apostle Paul calls “sound" or "healthy"  words, words to which are attached meanings which are fixed, eternal, and never changing. 

 

But anxious man has a problem. Rejecting Providence, in the words of theologian Rienhold Niebuhr, “He [man] seeks to protect himself against nature’s contingencies; but cannot do so without transgressing the limits set for his life. Therefore all human life [all cultures] is involved in seeking security at the expense of other life. The perils of nature are thereby transmuted into more into more grievous forms of human history.” 

 

Convictions.

1. Spiritual Etic Divergence, the intentional replacement of innate Positive Universals with learned Negative Cultural Particulars which 'belongs to the people" is real. 

2. Social scientists, anthropologists, and cultural psychologists who hold to a bottom-up, outside-in epistemology are compelled to do the unthinkable, that is, merge two mutually exclusive concepts, the soul and the brain.

3. For the materialist, such unethical behavior is acceptable because in the words of biologist Richard Lewontin, "Materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”