This essay was born of a realization: anthropology has no category for counterfeit. The discipline is skilled at describing rituals, performances, and practices as “authentic cultural expressions.” It interprets meanings, classifies symbols, and records variations. But what it cannot see is effigiation — the simulation of fidelity, where semiotic gestures borrow the form of truth while displacing its substance.
This blindness is not incidental but structural. Since Franz Boas (1858–1942), anthropology has operated under what may be called the myth of neutral culture: the assumption that cultural practices can be described without moral evaluation. Boas, reacting against racial essentialism and theological universalism, trained generations of anthropologists to suspend judgment in the name of objectivity. Language, cuisine, ritual, law, and art were catalogued as if they were specimens in a case — distinct, colorful, and interchangeable, but never true or false, just or unjust.
What began as an antidote to pseudo-scientific racism hardened into a methodological axiom: describe, but do not judge.The result is a discipline that can catalogue masks but not faces, gestures but not grounds. Rituals of injustice are classified as “symbols of authority,” looting is rebranded as “redistributive festival,” counterfeit holy days are catalogued as “sacralized time.” Fidelity and fraud collapse into one undifferentiated category: culture.
Neutrality is not merely naïve; it is a category mistake. Culture is not a free-floating cloud of practices but a moral climate. Every ritual encodes a judgment about what is permissible, admirable, or tolerable. Every law is an anthropology in miniature — a declaration about what a human being is and how that being may be treated. To describe culture without moral ontology is to erase reality itself.
This essay contends that culture is never neutral. It is corporate morality made visible. Its semiotic forms — rituals, codes, narratives, institutions — are typophora: gestures that either correspond to real onto-types defined by God or counterfeit them through effigiation. Semiotics severed from ontology are not neutral but fraudulent.
Our critique is not aimed at anthropology as a whole but at its persistent commitment to methodological neutrality.Three strands are in view:
Descriptive relativism — the Boasian tradition, developed by Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and others, which treats thick description as sufficient and suspends evaluation. This is our direct target.
Critical anthropology — Marxist and post-colonial variants that deploy moral language but untether it from ontology, replacing truth with ideology. We critique this as meta-effigiation whenever it merely rebrands fraud without correspondence.
Moral/ethical anthropology — more recent attempts (e.g., Kleinman, Zigon) to reintroduce moral evaluation. We welcome this trajectory, insofar as it abandons neutrality and submits to ontological ground.
Scope Claim. Wherever anthropology collapses fidelity and fraud into undifferentiated “culture,” it performs meta-effigiation — a second-order counterfeit, where scholarly neutrality legitimizes first-order counterfeits. Where anthropology moves toward tethered evaluation, it steps beyond the neutrality we reject.
The anthropological myth of neutrality thrives on conceptual vagueness. To dismantle it, we must state clearly the terms that anchor this framework. These are treated more fully in the Glossary , but they are relisted here to prevent neutralist redefinition. These terms are examined fully in Essay 1 (Ontology Part 1) and Essay 2 (Ontology Part 2) .
A. Onto-Types
Onto-types are real kinds, delimited by divine prerogative. They are not human inventions but categories defined by God’s auctoritas essendi — His authority of being. Truth, justice, fidelity, mercy, and holiness are not abstractions but ontic realities. To ignore them is to treat illusion as substance.
B. Typophora
Typophora are the semiotic gestures cultures employ to reference these real kinds: myths, codes, rituals, institutions, and narratives. They function as bridges between ontology and practice. But these bridges are only as sound as the reality they span. Anthropology errs by treating typophora as self-validating signs, as if gestures could substitute for ground.
C. Exempliatio Fidelis
Faithful exemplification occurs when a cultural form corresponds rightly to an onto-type. Marriage laws that uphold covenant fidelity, speech codes that restrain slander, property laws that restore victims rather than enrich the state — these are exemplifications of reality. They refine culture not because they are aesthetically superior but because they are ontologically correspondent.
D. Effigiation and Pseudo-Instantiation
Effigiation is the counterfeit: the simulation of an onto-type without divine warrant. A show trial simulates justice while enacting vengeance. A holiday rebranded for commerce simulates sacred time while hollowing it out. A ritual of “solidarity” simulates mercy while accruing political capital. Effigiation is not variation but fraud — a pseudo-instantiation that borrows the form of fidelity to displace its substance.
E. Culture as Corporate Morality
With these terms in place, the axiom may be stated directly: culture is corporate morality enacted at scale. It is not choreography without meaning but judgment in practice. Every law and custom, every festival and narrative, is an evaluative claim made visible. Semiotics that track reality refine; semiotics that sever from reality corrupt. Neutral description that collapses the two is itself a form of effigiation — a meta-fraud in which the discipline simulates objectivity while legitimizing counterfeit.
Anthropology often treats culture as a collection of neutral traits: foodways, festivals, gestures, kinship systems. But describing surface traits without grounding them in ontology is like describing personality without reference to character. The analogy is instructive.
A. The Analogy
Personality is the outward expression of an individual’s character. Tone, gesture, and habit are extensions of inner moral substance. A charming manner may mask corruption; a brusque demeanor may cloak integrity. Personality is never autonomous — it borrows its meaning from the character it manifests.
Culture functions in the same way at the corporate level. It is the “personality” of a people: the shared rituals, codes, laws, and narratives through which a society expresses its moral order. But culture, like personality, cannot be severed from its ground without becoming a mask. A society may appear tolerant, progressive, or sophisticated, but these outward traits are only as true as the underlying moral order they disclose.
B. Micro-Interactions as Moral Residue
Culture is not only expressed in grand institutions or public rituals; it is composed of countless micro-interactions. Every gesture carries a moral footprint. A greeting reveals intention — benevolent, indifferent, or manipulative. A casual exchange carries a modality — generous, exploitative, or negligent.
This is not incidental. Each micro-interaction is the downstream register of upstream commitments:
Axiological weight — what is valued or despised.
Deontic weight — what duty is honored or evaded.
Modal weight — what consequence is anticipated or ignored.
Even spontaneous acts bear these moral traces: trust is built or eroded, justice reinforced or denied, dignity honored or diminished. Over time, these residues accumulate. Repeated gestures harden into patterns; patterns are ritualized; rituals become cultural norms. Thus culture is not a neutral “cloud” above individuals but the sediment of innumerable ADM-encoded moral residues, crystallized into shared practice. (Axiology, deontology and modality is discussed in more detail in a separate essay).
C. Implications
The implication is decisive: culture is never neutral, because personality is never neutral. Every interaction already encodes evaluation. Anthropology’s neutrality paradigm catalogs the mask and calls it the face. By ignoring the upstream moral register of micro-interactions and the trajectory of their accumulation, it confuses expression with essence, gesture with ground.
Cultures, like persons, must therefore be discerned not by surface traits but by their correspondence to reality. Micro or macro, spontaneous or ritualized, all interactions leave a moral trace. To describe them as neutral is not objectivity but abdication — and in so doing, to legitimate fraud.
If every micro-interaction carries a moral footprint, then culture itself is the accumulation of those residues over time — rituals, practices, and institutions sedimented into shared order. What is needed, therefore, is not a descriptive catalogue of traits but an audit of correspondence: do these accumulated residues mirror reality, or do they counterfeit it?
The measure is Christ Himself — the perfect embodiment of divine ontology. A culture is refined insofar as its semiotics mirror His truth, fidelity, and mercy; it is degraded insofar as it enthrones appetite, domination, or deceit.
To make this evaluation practicable, we propose the Christic Correspondence Index (CCI): a four-domain audit of cultural fidelity across values, duties, means, and fruits. It evaluates not the color of the mask but the integrity of the face beneath.
We audit cultural fidelity through the fourfold moral frame of axiology, deontology, modality, and praxis (ADM → P):
Axiological (Value): Does the culture affirm what God values?
Indicators: perjury rates; truth norms in media; sanctity of human life; cultural treatment of honesty and dignity.
Deontic (Duty): Does it uphold covenantal obligations?
Indicators: marriage fidelity in law; enforceability of oaths; protection of children; impartial protection for strangers.
Modal (Means): Does it constrain means by righteousness?
Indicators: due-process integrity; prohibition of torture; refusal of ends-justify-means logic; transparency in governance.
Praxis (Fruit): Do its practices yield righteous outcomes?
Indicators: victim restitution rates; relief for the oppressed; rhythms of rest for laborers; pathways for repentance and restoration.
Together these domains form the Christic Correspondence Index (CCI): a heuristic tool that distinguishes fidelity from effigiation. The CCI is falsifiable at the level of correspondence claims; if a practice measurably increases impartial justice/restoration, the index must reflect it.
Anthropology, committed to neutrality, collapses fidelity and fraud into one category of “culture.” It catalogues the ritual without testing the ground. But description without correspondence is not science; it is aestheticism. The CCI insists that culture must be weighed, not merely admired.
Low CCI (Effigiation): Cultures that monetize outrage, weaponize accusation, or normalize propaganda simulate discourse while betraying it. Speech becomes spectacle, not truth.
The CCI exposes the line. Semiotics either track reality or counterfeit it. There is no neutral middle. The checklist it found at the end of the appendix. See below.
Culture is not spontaneous. It emerges from the transmission of ontology into semiotic form. To understand how cultures either refine or decay, we must trace the path from divine reality to human practice.
Ontology is not open source. The Creator alone holds the double prerogative: auctoritas essendi (the authority to define kinds of being) and auctoritas instantiandi (the authority to instantiate them). Justice, mercy, fidelity, and truth are not conventions but created kinds. They delimit what may be faithfully enacted in culture.
Human societies access onto-types indirectly through typophora — rituals, laws, myths, codes, narratives, and institutions. These are semiotic bridges. But their legitimacy depends on correspondence:
Exempliatio fidelis (faithful exemplification): when typophora align with onto-types.
Effigiation (counterfeit): when typophora simulate correspondence without warrant, masking fraud in borrowed forms.
Anthropology errs by treating both as culture equally, thereby conflating fidelity with simulation.
This mechanism does not suggest cultures can create new ontological kinds; they can only instantiate or simulate. Every cultural form is therefore a test case: a faithful extension of divine reality or a fraudulent inversion of it. Neutral description that erases this distinction is not objectivity but complicity.
The myth of cultural neutrality can be sustained only in the abstract. When examined in lived domains — family, speech, property, time, justice — the ontological commitments of a society become unavoidable. Each domain discloses whether its typophora exemplify reality or effigiate it.
Marriage is not a cultural invention but a divine onto-type, instituted in creation (Gen. 2:24) and reaffirmed by Christ (Matt. 19:4–6). It is covenantal, exclusive, and generative. Family law and custom are typophoric expressions of this covenant, and their form reveals whether a culture acknowledges or effigiates the reality it claims to mirror.
Fidelity (Exempliatio Fidelis)
Cultures that uphold covenant fidelity in marriage — protecting exclusivity, honoring vows, safeguarding children — exemplify the divine onto-type. Divorce, where permitted, is constrained by seriousness rather than convenience. Sexual ethics are ordered toward permanence, responsibility, and the flourishing of future generations. Here, family law mirrors reality: fidelity as covenantal trust.
Effigiation (Counterfeit).
Cultures that reduce marriage to a temporary contract of preference enact effigiation. Serial monogamy normalized as lifestyle, contractual unions treated as consumer options, or family law subordinated to state expedience simulate the form of covenant while hollowing it out. Children are treated as commodities, fidelity as a lifestyle choice, and marriage as a consumable brand. The typophora remain, but the reality is displaced.
Anthropological Neutrality Exposed
Anthropology, under neutrality, catalogs both covenantal fidelity and contractual dissolution as “marriage systems,” treating them as equally valid cultural expressions. But one is a faithful exemplification of divine order; the other a counterfeit simulation. Neutrality here is not objectivity but erasure — a refusal to distinguish covenant from fraud.
Speech is never neutral. Words participate in truth or in falsehood, in justice or in slander. The biblical witness is categorical: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21); “Let your ‘Yes’ be yes and your ‘No,’ no”(Matt. 5:37). Cultures, by structuring norms of speech and media, reveal whether they align with the onto-type of truth or counterfeit it through effigiation.
Fidelity (Exempliatio Fidelis)
Cultures that protect truth-telling and restrain slander exemplify correspondence to the divine onto-type of justice. When libel laws uphold reputations, when journalism is bound to veracity, when due process restrains accusations, speech is ordered toward reality. Media in such settings can serve as typophoric witnesses to truth, forming a culture of accountability.
Indicators: low perjury rates; robust due process; media charters that enshrine veracity; strong protections against calumny.
Effigiation (Counterfeit)
Cultures that commodify outrage, normalize propaganda, or weaponize accusation enact effigiation. They preserve the semiotic form of “discourse” but hollow it out. Journalism becomes clickbait; courts trial by media; speech a marketplace of manipulation. The ritual of communication remains, but its covenantal anchor in truth is displaced.
Indicators: prevalence of misinformation; monetized outrage economies; political show-trials; erosion of evidentiary standards.
Anthropological Neutrality Exposed
Anthropology, bound by neutrality, surveys both truth-oriented and manipulative systems as “communication practices.” It records the gesture without testing its ground. Yet one exemplifies divine justice, the other counterfeits it. Neutral description here is not analysis but complicity — aestheticizing fraud under the banner of culture.
Property is not a bare economic arrangement but a moral trust. In biblical ontology, ownership carries responsibility and accountability before God (Lev. 25:23; Exod. 22:1–15). When harm occurs, justice is measured not only by prohibition but by restitution — restoring what was lost to the victim. Cultural handling of property thus discloses whether stewardship is exemplified or effigiated.
Fidelity (Exempliatio Fidelis)
Cultures that protect property through equitable law, require restitution to victims, and guard against theft or fraud mirror the divine onto-type of justice. Contracts are binding, damages are repaid in proportion, and restitution goes to the injured party rather than to the state. Property law in such cultures reflects stewardship: ownership as covenantal responsibility, not absolute autonomy.
Indicators: restitutional justice codes; enforceability of contracts; protection of the vulnerable from dispossession; proportionate penalties tied to victims, not state coffers.
Effigiation (Counterfeit)
Cultures that privilege extraction over restitution, or that treat penalties as revenue streams for the state, enact effigiation. Civil asset forfeiture, exploitative fines, or systemic fraud preserve the semiotic trappings of “justice” while hollowing it of substance. Victims remain uncompensated, offenders are punished without restoration, and institutions profit from injury. This is legalized theft disguised as law.
Indicators: fines flowing primarily to treasury, not victims; predatory seizure practices; systemic exploitation of the poor through penalties; high tolerance of fraud.
Anthropological Neutrality Exposed
Anthropology, in its neutrality, surveys restitutional systems and extractive systems alike as “property regimes.” It describes mechanisms of ownership without distinguishing stewardship from predation. Yet the difference is ontological: one corresponds to divine justice, the other simulates it for gain. Neutral description here is not impartiality but abdication.
Time is not a neutral sequence of hours; it is part of created order. From the beginning, God sanctified the seventh day (Saturday), the last day of the week, as holy (Gen. 2:1–3), later reaffirmed in the Decalogue (Exod. 20:8–11) and in the covenant sign of Sabbath (Exod. 31:13–17). The Saturday-Sabbath is not a cultural artifact but a divine onto-type: the consecration of time as allegiance to the Creator. How a culture treats time and worship reveals whether it exemplifies this reality or effigiates it.
Fidelity (Exempliatio Fidelis)
Cultures that honor the seventh-day Sabbath acknowledge God’s sovereignty over time. Rest is granted equally to master, servant, stranger, and even beast of burden — a radical leveling that dethrones exploitation. Worship is not entertainment but covenantal alignment, declaring dependence on the Creator. Such fidelity testifies that time belongs not to commerce or ruler but to God Himself.
Indicators: protection of Sabbath rest in law; universal application across social classes; worship oriented to God rather than spectacle; restraint of economic extraction one day in seven.
Effigiation (Counterfeit)
Cultures that replace the seventh day with a man-made substitute (e.g., first-day observance) or reduce holy time to leisure and consumption enact effigiation. They preserve the semiotic form of “holiday” but strip it of covenantal allegiance. Rest becomes commodified leisure; worship becomes performance; time is enslaved to appetite or state scheduling. These counterfeits are not variations but repudiations of divine order.
Indicators: Sunday leisure economies; “holidays” untethered from covenant; worship commodified as entertainment; disappearance of non-negotiable rest.
Anthropological Neutrality Exposed
Anthropology, bound to neutrality, catalogs Sabbath observance, Sunday observance, and consumer leisure alike as “sacralized time practices.” But the ontological difference is decisive: only the seventh day (Saturday) carries divine authorization. Neutral description here is not analysis but complicity, granting counterfeit time the same status as holy time.
Policy Sidebar — Civil Implications of Seventh-Day Rest
Weekly rest as a universal labor right (no class exceptions).
Employer duty to accommodate seventh-day observance without penalty.
Essential-services minimums with compensatory rest within 72 hours.
“Right to disconnect” statutes aligned to a non-negotiable weekly rest window.
Prohibition of retail extraction quotas on the seventh day.These enactments are not sectarian preference but correspondence to ontological order: time belongs to the Creator; laborers are not chattel.
Justice is not an institutional abstraction but a relational reality. In biblical ontology, sin and crime are first offenses against God and against persons — requiring restitution, reconciliation, and, where possible, restoration (Lev. 6:1–5; Mic. 6:8). Modern justice systems, however, routinely define crime as an offense against the state. This shift from relational infarction to statist affront is not neutral innovation; it is systemic effigiation.
Fidelity (Exempliatio Fidelis)
Cultures that uphold justice as relational restoration exemplify the divine onto-type. When restitution is directed to the victim, when courts are impartial, when punishment is proportionate, and when mercy is possible, justice reflects covenant fidelity. Law here functions not as theater of state power but as ministry of reconciliation, restraining evil while preserving the possibility of repentance.
Indicators: restitution payments to victims, not state coffers; impartiality across social classes; proportional sentencing; structures for repentance and reintegration.
Effigiation (Counterfeit)
When justice is redefined as an affront to the state, punishment becomes extraction, spectacle, or control. Fines feed the treasury rather than restore the injured. Show trials display power rather than establish truth. Selective enforcement protects the strong while oppressing the weak. The semiotic form of “justice” is preserved — trials, courts, sentences — but its substance is displaced. This is not impartiality but institutionalized fraud.
Indicators: fines that bypass victims; disproportionate sentencing; politicized prosecutions; legal systems profiting from incarceration.
Anthropological Neutrality Exposed
Anthropology, committed to neutrality, describes both restitutional and statist systems as “judicial practices.” It records form without testing substance. But the ontological difference is stark: one exemplifies covenant fidelity, the other simulates justice while legitimizing coercion. Neutrality in this domain is not scholarly restraint but abdication.
Model Restitution Clause
Model Statute (excerpt): In adjudicated harms, the primary remedy is restitution to the victim proportional to loss (direct + consequential). Monetary penalties to the state are limited to adjudication costs. Incarceration is reserved for ongoing danger, refusal to restore, or violent predation. Upon full restitution and reconciliation, records are expunged and civil disabilities lifted.
Objective: re-center justice on persons, not revenue; replace spectacle with restoration.
(See Appendix E8: From Restitution to Simulation: The Collapse of Human Justice and the Loss of Ontological Repair & Appendix E5: Authority, Rights, and the Kingdom: An Ontological Analysis of Human Government) .
If culture is corporate morality, counterfeit culture is simulated morality: practices that borrow the semiotic forms of fidelity while displacing their ontological ground. These counterfeits are not minor deviations but systemic frauds. They allow societies to claim legitimacy while enacting rebellion. Anthropology, bound to neutrality, records them as “variation,” thereby legitimizing effigiation as if it were exemplification. Four dominant patterns may be observed.
The inflation of symbolic gestures in place of substantive fidelity. Ritualized slogans, public declarations, and corporate campaigns may retain the appearance of moral seriousness while evading actual alignment with justice or mercy.
Worked Example: Black Lives Matter
The slogan circulated as cultural liturgy — painted on streets, recited in institutional statements, emblazoned in corporate branding. Yet praxis often failed to align with impartial justice: violence and selective outrage undermined the claim, while funds enriched elites rather than restoring victims. More fundamentally, the slogan itself is partial. The biblical onto-type of justice is impartiality: all lives matter as bearers of the divine image (Rom. 2:11). Narrowing this universality into a demographic slogan simulated justice while enacting partiality.
Corporations and universities amplified the semiotic form while leaving systemic exploitation untouched. The effect was simulated fidelity: performance in place of covenantal reality.
The substitution of process for righteousness. Compliance frameworks, bureaucratic procedures, and regulatory rituals simulate moral order while hollowing it out. Process becomes telos; righteousness disappears.
Worked Example: National Security Surveillance
Post-9/11 counterterrorism protocols illustrate this pattern. Populations were placed under suspicion through mass surveillance, secret watchlists, and indefinite detention without trial. Each measure was justified procedurally — forms filed, protocols observed — yet due process was hollowed out. Individuals were penalized without evidence they could confront, monitored without warrant, and detained without trial. The apparatus simulated legality while displacing justice.
Here national security became technocratic theatre: compliance masked the absence of impartiality. Instead of exemplification, effigiation ruled.
The most dangerous counterfeit: the inversion of archetypes. Narratives and tropes are deployed not to witness to reality but to baptize appetite as virtue. Conquest is narrated as “liberation,” greed as “growth,” sexual license as “authenticity.” Typophora are weaponized to legitimate rebellion.
Inversion goes beyond simulation: it reverses the referent. The sign points away from truth, training allegiance to falsehood under the guise of virtue.
Neutrality itself functions as a counterfeit. By describing effigiations as cultural forms, anthropology performs a second-order fraud: meta-effigiation, in which the discipline simulates objectivity to legitimize first-order counterfeits.
Three examples illustrate the pattern:
Show-Trials as Ritual — perversions of justice rebranded as cultural performances of legitimacy.
Looting as Redistributive Festival — theft aestheticized as communal expression or leveling ritual.
Sunday Leisure as Sacralized Time — counterfeit observances catalogued as though equivalent to the seventh-day Sabbath.
In each case, description without ontology rebrands counterfeits as culture. Neutrality is not restraint but abdication, legitimizing fraud under the banner of analysis.
Any frontal challenge to the anthropological myth of neutral culture will meet resistance. Four common objections are predictable; each collapses when tested against ontological reality.
A. “But Christian cultures committed atrocities.”
It is often claimed that societies branded as “Christian” have engaged in oppression, exploitation, or violence, thereby disqualifying Christic correspondence as a cultural measure. The reply is simple: labels do not secure legitimacy. A culture that invokes Christ while enacting domination is guilty of pseudo-instantiation — typophoric fraud disguised as fidelity. The Christic Correspondence Index exposes this hypocrisy by measuring practices, not professions. Atrocities do not negate the standard; they reveal why the standard is indispensable.
B. “Non-Christian cultures can still have admirable values.”
True, cultures outside explicit Reformed Christian confession* may partially exemplify divine onto-types. Common grace restrains evil, and conscience imprints fragments of justice, fidelity, and hospitality. But partial reflection does not erase the standard. The decisive question is whether a culture’s semiotic system as a whole tracks reality or effigiates it. Christ as archetype is universal: any culture may approximate, none may exempt itself. Partial glimpses are not neutrality; they are hints of correspondence against which fuller fidelity is judged. Common grace explains partial correspondences outside Reformed confession. Natural law language can be used instrumentally so long as it’s subordinated to revealed ontology. You judge practices by correspondence, not labels by profession.
C. “Culture is descriptive, not prescriptive.”
This is anthropology’s central defense — that it merely records phenomena. Yet description always smuggles evaluation. To catalogue Sabbath observance and consumer leisure, restitution and state extraction, impartial trials and show trials as parallel “systems” is already to prescribe relativism. Gesture without ground is not neutrality but aestheticism. By refusing to distinguish fidelity from fraud, anthropology does not avoid judgment; it abdicates it.
D. “This is Eurocentric.”
The charge of Eurocentrism assumes the Christic measure is bound to Western forms. It is not. The metric is ontology: the character of Christ. By this standard, European cultures are judged alongside all others. Where they aligned — conscience, literacy, Sabbath protection, restitutional law — they refined culture. Where they betrayed — colonial exploitation, mercantile domination — they effigiated culture. Conversely, when non-European cultures instantiate restitution, truth-telling, or rhythms of rest, CCI recognizes fidelity without prejudice. Christic correspondence is no respecter of geography.
The anthropological myth of neutral culture is a sleight of hand. By cataloguing gestures while ignoring their ground, it aestheticizes ethics and mistakes masks for faces. Culture is never neutral. It is corporate morality enacted at scale. Every law, every ritual, every narrative is already judgment in practice — either a faithful extension of divine onto-types or a counterfeit effigiation that borrows form while displacing substance.
Neutral description collapses fidelity and fraud into the same category. Sabbath observance and consumer leisure, covenant marriage and serial contracts, restitutional justice and statist extraction are recorded as “variations” of equal standing. But variation is not the same as legitimacy. To call both real is to erase reality itself. This is meta-effigiation: the discipline simulating objectivity while legitimizing fraud.
The measure is not cultural diversity but Christic correspondence. Cultures refine themselves insofar as their typophora mirror His truth, justice, mercy, and fidelity. They decay insofar as they enthrone appetite, domination, or deceit. Geography confers no privilege, labels secure no immunity, relativism suspends no judgment.
There is, in the end, no neutral ground. Semiotics cannot float free of ontology; when signs outrun kinds, culture becomes theatre. Every society must be weighed. And when weighed, it is revealed either as exemplification of covenantal reality or as rehearsal of counterfeit. The task is to discern which — and to name it without disguise.
Audit your institution with the CCI checklist below.
If the anthropological myth of neutrality collapses, critique must yield to construction. It is not enough to expose effigiation; cultures must be called to reform. The Christic Correspondence Index (CCI) provides a framework not only for discernment but for governance. Implementation can proceed along four fronts.
A. Institutional Audit ProtocolInstitutions — from courts and legislatures to schools, corporations, and churches — must publish their CCI score. Each audit should include:
Score (out of 20, with banding);
Hard-stops flagged (automatic degraders such as torture, statist justice, Sabbath displacement);
Evidence log (metrics, case data, and policies cited).
This transparency discloses whether practices exemplify reality or effigiate it. Without such audits, institutions drift into mask-wearing. With them, fraud is made visible.
B. Legislative PrioritiesCultural reform requires legal reform. Five domains demand immediate legislative action:
Victim Restitution Statutes — Laws must redirect penalties from state coffers to victims, re-centering justice on restoration.
Libel & Due-Process Protections — Speech must be tethered to truth; accusation must be restrained by evidence.
Sabbath-Rest Protections — One day in seven, consecrated in creation, must be preserved for universal rest and worship. Laborers are not commodities.
Anti–Civil Forfeiture — Property must not be seized without conviction or restitution. Current practices simulate justice while institutionalizing theft.
Transparency & Anti-Selective-Enforcement — Justice must be impartial, auditable, and insulated from class or partisan bias.
Together these reforms enact the correspondence of law to reality, turning typophoric masks into covenantal substance.
C. Organizational PracticesBeyond law, organizations must embody fidelity in daily governance:
Grievance Processes with Reconciliation Paths — Disputes should first aim at restoration, not punishment.
Whistleblower Shields — Truth-tellers must be protected, not penalized, for exposing fraud.
Oath Culture — Contracts, promises, and sworn duties must be treated as sacred, not optional.
Such practices exemplify fidelity internally, resisting the drift into effigiated process-worship.
D. Public ReportingFinally, accountability requires visibility. Annual publication of CCI scores with trendlines over time allows both citizens and institutions to discern refinement or decay. Public reporting disarms the neutrality myth by demonstrating that cultural correspondence is measurable, falsifiable, and visible.
Footnote
*By ‘explicit Reformed confession’ we mean confessional Protestantism grounding authority in Scripture alone; the CCI still evaluates practices, not labels.
The CCI evaluates whether a culture’s practices exemplify reality (exempliatio fidelis) or simulate it (effigiation). It measures correspondence to divine onto-types embodied in Christ. It is not a measure of professions or labels but of practices, outcomes, and systemic fruits.
Culture is audited across four domains, weighted for influence:
Axiological (Value) – 0.3 weight
Does the culture affirm what God values (truth, life, dignity)?
Deontic (Duty) – 0.2 weight
Does it uphold covenantal obligations (marriage, oaths, protection of vulnerable)?
Modal (Means) – 0.3 weight
Does it constrain methods by righteousness (due process, transparency, ban on torture)?
Praxis (Fruit) – 0.2 weight
Do its practices yield righteous outcomes (restitution, Sabbath rest, reintegration)?
Scoring: Each indicator scored Yes (1), Partial (0.5), No (0). Weighted sum yields a score out of 20.
Certain violations automatically degrade a culture’s correspondence, regardless of weighted score:
Justice defined primarily as offense against the state (displacing restitution).
Torture or cruel treatment codified or tolerated.
Selective enforcement by class, party, or status.
Show-trial practices displacing impartial due process.
Sabbath displacement or commodification (seventh-day rest denied).
If any are present, the CCI rating defaults to “effigiation dominant,” even if the numeric score is high.
Evidence log must include: indicator, finding, source(s), and date.
The CCI is falsifiable. If a practice measurably increases impartial justice and victim restitution without violating modal constraints, it must score higher. This prevents the index from being a closed ideology and ensures tethering to empirical fruit.
9–12: Low correspondence (simulation prominent).
0–8: Effigiation dominant (counterfeit).
Purpose. The CCI evaluates whether practices exemplify reality (exempliatio fidelis) or simulate it (effigiation), measuring correspondence to divine onto-types embodied in Christ. It scores practices and fruits, not labels.
Domains & Weights (ADM→P):
Axiological (0.3) — truth, life, dignity are publicly privileged.
Deontic (0.2) — oaths, covenant marriage, protection of the vulnerable, due-process in accusations.
Modal (0.3) — means constrained by righteousness: no torture; real due process; transparency; no ends-justify-means.
Praxis (0.2) — seventh-day Sabbath rest; victim restitution; repentance/reintegration; labor rest; whistleblower protection.
Scoring. 5 indicators per domain; each Yes=1 / Partial=0.5 / No=0. Apply weights; total out of 20.Bands: 17–20 high; 13–16 partial; 9–12 low; 0–8 effigiation dominant.
Hard-stops (non-compensatory overrides): Any present → rating defaults to “effigiation dominant,” regardless of numeric score.
Justice defined primarily as offense against the state (displacing restitution).
Torture/cruel treatment codified or tolerated.
Selective enforcement by class/party/status.
Show-trial practices replacing impartial due process.
Sabbath displacement/commodification (seventh-day rest denied).
Reliability (audit protocol).
Dual raters required; each completes the checklist independently.
Publish Cohen’s κ to show inter-rater agreement.
Provide an evidence log for every indicator (metric/case, finding, source, date).
Falsifiability. If a practice measurably increases impartial justice and victim restitution without violating modal constraints, the CCI must score it higher. This prevents the index from becoming a closed ideology and binds it to empirical fruit.
Publication format. Report: weighted score + band; hard-stops; κ statistic; evidence log; reform commitments with deadlines.
