Tempocentrism

Posted in Common Heresies | Thursday, November 18th, 2004 | No Comments

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Tempocentrism (thinking our own generation is always right) causes some of the same
problems as ethnocentrism. It makes the mistake of assuming that Bible teachers know
more about God than Bible characters. Really. There are teachers who claim that Paul
just didnt get it, but that we know better now. All this without the inconvenience of
being tested in Arabia, stoned, shipwrecked, flogged, or visited by the presence of Jesus.

Even our approach to interpreting the Bible is colored by our time period. Before World
War II, German-speaking theologians decided that recent advances in science and
scholarship qualified them to finally decide what the Gospel really meant. (As I recall,
other German-speaking people in that same time period decided their intellectual status
qualified them to make a few decisions about the final fate of the Jews, Gypsies and
Slavs). The flaming spiritual experiences of earlier Christians was as unreal to them as
the spiritual experiences of underground Christians are to us.
Talk about naivete. To slightly paraphrase Sheldon Vanauken, these theologians
guiding principle was the mind of the infinite God is not unlike that of a German
theologian.
The Bible says Jesus came in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4). The world didnt
need to become any more sophisticated, any more educated, to become the right place
for the Messiah to be born.

Cultural universal
A cultural universal (also called an anthropological universal or human universal),
as discussed by George Murdock, Claude Lvi-Strauss, Donald Brown and others, is an
element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all human cultures worldwide.
Taken together, the whole body of cultural universals is known as the human
condition. Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits that occur universally
in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations.
[1]
Some anthropological
and sociological theorists that take a cultural relativist perspective may deny the
existence of cultural universals: the extent to which these universals are "cultural" in the
narrow sense, or in fact biologically inherited behavior is an issue in the "nature versus
nurture" controversy.

Idloculture
Idloculture ls deflned us u system of knowledge, bellefs, behuvlors, und customs shured by
members of un lnteructlng group to whlch members cun refer und employ us the busls of further
lnteructlon ( Flne 1979 : 734). Termed by Gury Alun Flne, ldloculture respeclfles the content of
culture by focuslng on the level of smull groups und the soclul lnteructlons thereln. Developed before
the soclology of culture gulned populurlty ln the dlsclpllne und ut u tlme ln whlch mucro, structurul,
polltlcul, und economlc upprouches were domlnunt und culture wus seen us u vugue, umorphous,
fructured, lndescrlbuble mlst ( Flne 1979 : 733), ldloculture mukes the culture concept useful by
focuslng on emplrlcully observuble group lnteructlons us the locus of culturul creutlon. To reground
culture ln group lnteructlons, Flne druws from the symbollc lnteructlonlst trudltlon und reseurch on
group dynumlcs. Whlle the ldloculture concept respeclfles culture ut the group level, lt ulso ldentlfles
the process through whlch elements become u purt of un ldloculture. To become u purt of un
ldloculture, un ltem must be Known, Useuble, Functlonul, Approprlute, und Trlggered (KUFAT). An
ltem must be u purt of u known pool of buckground lnformutlon. If the ltem ls not known by ut leust
two group members, lt cunnot become u stuble busls of ongolng lnteructlon.