TomNicholas.org

INTRODUCTION — What Anthropological Missiology Is, and Why It Matters

Every Christian wonders at some point:

How do I share Jesus with people who don’t see the world the same way I do?

How do I speak the gospel into the real cultural world my neighbors, friends, and community inhabit?

Those questions lead us into a field called anthropological missiology—the study of how the gospel takes root inside real human cultures rather than floating above them. It is the practice of honoring people’s real-world stories, symbols, fears, and hopes while faithfully presenting the God of Scripture.

But here is the critical insight:

Anthropological missiology did not begin with missionaries.

It began with God.

Before the church ever crossed cultural boundaries,

God crossed the infinite boundary between heaven and earth.

Before we learned to translate the gospel,

God translated Himself into human terms.

Before we ever considered how to communicate with “other cultures,”

God was already communicating with the very first culture: humanity.

If we want to know how to share Christ effectively in our own communities—Native, rural, suburban, young, old, secular, or religious—we must first study how God Himself communicates with humanity.

And the story begins in Genesis.

1. Eden: God’s First Missionary Encounter With Humanity

Genesis 1–3 is not myth.

It is not symbolic literature.

It is not a cultural story reworked into Scripture.

It is real history, the history of our beginning.

A real God Creates real human beings Places them in a real garden Speaks to them in language they can understand

When Adam and Eve fall, something astonishing happens:

“They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden…”

— Genesis 3:8

Whatever the exact nature of this “walking” is, the point is unmistakable:

God approaches humanity. God initiates the conversation. God uses a relational form humans immediately recognize.

From the beginning, God does not force humans upward toward abstraction.

He comes downward toward incarnation.

This is the earliest expression of anthropological missiology:

God speaks human because He created humans to hear Him.

2. After the Fall: God Continues to Speak into Human Experience

Sin fractures human perception, but God does not abandon communication.

God speaks to Cain

“Why are you angry? … If you do well, will you not be accepted?”

— Genesis 4:6–7

This is not a philosophical argument.

It is counselor-like, relational, moral, direct.

God instructs Noah with absolute clarity

In a world filled with corruption:

God gives Noah detailed instructions God communicates specific measurements God explains what is coming and why

This is communication tailored to a real man living in a real world facing a real crisis.

And after the flood:

“Then Noah built an altar to the LORD…”

— Genesis 8:20

Noah is not inventing religious practice.

He is responding to divine instruction already given, tracing back to Eden.

From Eden to Cain to Noah, the pattern is clear:

God speaks into real life. God uses concrete forms, not abstractions. God reveals His character in ways people can grasp.

3. One True Flood, Many Cultural Memories

Nearly every major culture carries some version of a flood story:

Mesopotamia Greece India and China Numerous Indigenous tribes Pacific Island cultures African and Middle Eastern traditions

This is not evidence that Genesis borrowed from myth.

It is evidence that the nations preserved distorted memories of one real event:

The global flood in Noah’s day.

Genesis gives the accurate historical record.

The world’s flood-stories are broken echoes of that history.

So when God uses the flood and its symbols—especially the rainbow—He is not entering a mythic world:

“I set My bow in the cloud as a sign of the covenant…”

— Genesis 9:13

God takes a visible phenomenon in the real world

and gives it divine covenant significance.

This is anthropological missiology firmly rooted in literal history:

God speaks into human memory, knowledge, and experience while correcting it with truth.

4. Sacrifice: A Divine Revelation, Not a Human Invention

Sacrifice appears in almost every ancient culture.

Skeptics claim Israel copied pagan sacrifice.

But Scripture shows the opposite:

God clothed Adam and Eve with skins (Gen. 3:21) → the first sacrifice. Abel’s sacrifice was accepted because it was offered according to God’s instruction (Gen. 4:4). Noah immediately sacrifices after the flood (Gen. 8:20). Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job all sacrifice long before Israel encounters any pagan cults.

This means:

**Sacrifice originates with God.

Pagan sacrifice is a corruption of original revelation.**

From the beginning, God used sacrifice as a communication tool:

sin is real death is the consequence mercy requires substitution atonement must come from outside the sinner all sacrifices point forward to Christ, the true Lamb of God

Sacrifice is not syncretism—it is God’s missiological pedagogy in a fallen world.

5. Babel: God Confronts Culture with Culture

At Babel, humans attempt to create unity without God.

God responds in a profoundly anthropological way:

“The LORD confused their language…”

— Genesis 11:9

Language is the deepest cultural marker.

By multiplying languages, God does not punish humanity with chaos—He creates cultural diversity.

This is not a retreat.

This is preparation.

Because later, at Pentecost, God reveals:

The gospel can enter every language No culture must erase another The kingdom of God is multilingual, multiethnic, multicultural

Anthropological missiology begins not in Acts 2, but in Genesis 11.

6. The Patriarchs: God Speaks Through the Cultural Grammar They Already Know

The patriarchal world—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—is a world of:

oaths altars covenants hospitality blessings inheritance name-giving sacred geography

God uses all of these forms:

He meets Abraham in covenant-form. He uses name-changes to signify destiny (“Abram → Abraham”). He uses altars to mark sacred encounters. He uses hospitality to reveal divine presence (Genesis 18). He uses blessings and promises in the legal language of ancient inheritance.

Abraham does not need a new cultural system to understand God.

God enters Abraham’s world to reveal His will.

This is anthropological missiology through and through.

7. Where This Is Going (Without Rushing There)

We are not yet asking:

How should we do mission? How should we adapt to culture? How do we avoid syncretism?

All of that is coming.

But if we begin with ourselves, we will try to imitate missionaries.

If we begin with God, we will learn to imitate the Missionary.

This article has shown only the beginning:

God’s anthropological missiology in Genesis:

God enters real human culture—history, memory, language, ritual, symbol—to reveal who He truly is.

In Article Two, we will slow down again and look at something so foundational it deserves its own entire piece:

The Covenant — God’s most powerful anthropological communication tool in the ancient world.

From treaty structure to covenant signs, circumcision to Passover, blessings to curses, we will see that God chose human cultural forms—not to be shaped by them, but to fill them with His glory.

And once we see how God does this,

we will better understand how God is working today—

in Indigenous communities, in urban centers, in Montana ranching culture, and in the places you and I live and serve.