A problematics of belief structures and the creation of the concept of the self

Martin Hogan

A Problematics of Belief Structures and the Creation of the Concept of the Self

A Problematics of Belief Structures and the Creation of the
Concept of the Self

Author: Martin Hogan

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Martin Hogan
Concept of the Self


 GLOSSARY
 CHAPTER 1 – THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAN, GOD AND SELF
 CHAPTER 2 – GODS AND THE SELF IN HOMERIC LITERATURE
 CHAPTER 3 – SELF GOD AND OTHER IN EARLY CHRISTIAN
LITERATURE

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GLOSSARY
Belief Structure ( also Harmony):
Why a structure and not a system? A sytem implies for a given input there is a
predicatble output; that by living in a certain way, we will achive a known result.
This is not the case with religion, one's behaviour will not of itself grant access to
heaven or any rewards (heaven, rain, a child, a prosperous and contented life &c),
which are in the end at the choice of God.
Whilst one can believe ‘in’ something, it is not a thing in isolation and as such is an
incorrect statement, lacking as it does details of the referents. Humans work with
structures and it is naïve to think that, or to claim that any one part of human life
exists apart from and not connected to other aspects of life. Belief itself is a very
complex and involved notion, such that many books have and will be written on it, as
any cursory survey of a library will show; hundreds of books pertaining to
developments of the referent of belief but little attempting to create an ontology. The
term ‘Belief Structure’ is not a definition of a thing but the acceptance that a
definition of a thing that, inne ipse does not exist; rather, that is, belief is a concept of
(belief in…; belief of…). To enter into a discourse is to create a referential dynamics
and, as such, this cannot be considered as simply a consideration of an ontological and
epistemological dichotomy.
Instead, we have a matrix of involvement that does not defy definition but rather leads
us to multiple and complex definitions, definitions of things that lead us to further
examination of topics and away from our starting point. A Belief Structure then is not
an edifice, within which a particular branch of human knowledge resides, it is not
some embracing concept that holds specific and defined pieces of a complex jigsaw, it
is an admittance that there is a question of relationships that has not been explained
because it lies buried within other branches of knowledge, or perhaps hidden in a prehistory and certainly obscured by the works of philosophers, psychiatrists and
politicians of the past thousands of years. As with Foucault in this ‘Archaeology of
Knowledge’1, it is easier here to define what is not being said than what is.
1

Foucault, M, Archaeology of Knowledge, Tavistock, 1972

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There is not point at which I can claim definitively that ‘A caused or resulted in B’,
only that there is some connection between the two events. Nor can I claim that ‘a
nation believes or believed’, any more than I can claim that ‘my family believe’, for
all such statements are general but it is only by making such general statements that
one can then place it within a context and move on to that which is more specific.
The Belief Structure is dynamic and to paraphrase Heraclitus, one cannot expect to
step into the same place twice and have an identical occurrence.
The purpose of this work is to identify the relationship between belief and the self,
from its beginnings in early Greek literature, not to re-analyse a definition of either
belief or of the self; as such a belief structure is a definition of human perspective and
interpretation. It is a description of a thing in flux and as such it is up to the reader to
interpret and question the relationships within a ‘Belief structure’ and to identify its
constituent referents. When the question is raised ‘what about…’; one must come
back to the Belief Structure’ and place the missing pieces as part of the structure still
to be explored and developed.
References to two types of Belief Structure will be made: hominem interallum reder
(Man in the process of reverting) and hominem reputare (Man reflecting back [to its
self]).
i) Hominem Interallum reder (or Vedanta) is a Belief Structure that is referential
to external events and factors. Man is aware that all actions have affects upon
and are affected by external events and its Belief Structures are formulated in
such a way as to attempt to articulate the connections between events (that
which is Human, Natural, Animal, etc.). That which is referential to the
external incorporates its interpretation within its Self, rationalising a circular
continuity of thought and action, creating a striving to maintain a status quo.
ii) Hominem reputare (Karma) is a Belief Structure that is referential to the Self
in the first instance. Man acts upon the world through its Self. Its motive
relies upon its personal requirements and the satisfaction of its own needs and
desires; its primary motive is Self fulfilment. Its interpretation of events lies
within the temporal, exploring contextualities that exist within the domains of
the human experience and can be referenced back through that which is
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primarily human before that which is divine. It is this second group to which
modern man belongs and the creation of this group is defined within the first
part of the work. The implications of this development is explored in the later
sections.
Deity:
The Oxford English Dictionary definition is:
pl. deities) a god or goddess (in a polytheistic religion): a deity of ancient Greece.
• [mass noun] divine status, quality, or nature: a ruler driven by delusions of deity.
• ( usu. the Deity ) the creator and supreme being (in a monotheistic religion such as
Christianity).
- ORIGIN Middle English (denoting the divine nature of God): from Old French
deite, from ecclesiastical Latin deitas (translating Greek theot s), from deus ‘god’.2

That which is other than temporal (that is, not merely or only temporal but also a
stage removed from the temporal); the longevity (even if persisting within a plant or
other animal, it will possess some existence before or after [or both] of that entity that
it occupies) of a deity is considerably greater than that of the human, it belongs to that
which is other, beyond the temporal human existence and form. It is that in which
humans believe but it is not all that is believed and it is for this reason that a Deity
does not comprise a Belief Structure but only a part of it. To this we must add social,
political, environmental and other factors and understand the relationships of the
various referents if we are to begin to understand the structure. The definitions
contained within the OED are sufficient for this Glossary and for an understanding of
this dissertation.
Harmony ( also see Belief Structure):
There is an etymological link between harmony and structure, but if we use the word
‘harmony’, or the interpretation of ‘world-view’, we will miss the difference – that a
structure does not of necessity possess a specific and unalterable form, and what has
been defined in a specific way and accepted, need not necessarily be so now or
2

Oxford English Dictionary Online: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?

subview=Main&entry=t140.e19797

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previously. The form remains formless, the understanding linked to each component
but still not dependent upon the shape or form of any particular one, although
dependent upon their presence in some form or other.
Referent:
That to which one refers when expounding or explaining a stance; unlike the
reflexive, the referent is not a binary relationship, nor one of equals. The referent
makes up the complex of links and relationships that comprise a Belief Structure and
can be different for different individuals or indeed, can be different for the same
individual at different times. From the position of us – from the standpoint of that
which is human – there is no certainty for the future or for the past, only of
possibilities and ‘the likely hood of…’ and the degree of certainty lies within our
understanding of the relevant referents and of their complexities.
Self:
The OED sociological definition is perhaps more suitable to this work:
self, the self In sociology, the concept of self is most frequently held to derive from
the philosophies of Charles Horton Cooley, William James, and George Herbert
Mead, and is the foundation of symbolic interactionism. It highlights the reflective
and reflexive ability of human beings to take themselves as objects of their own
thought. For Mead, ‘it is the self that makes the distinctively human society possible’
(see Mind, Self and Society, 1934). In this work, a distinction is usually drawn
between two phases of the self process: the ‘I’, which is spontaneous, inner, creative,
and subjective; and the ‘Me’, which is the organized attitudes of others, connects to
the wider society, is more social and determined. The ‘Me’ is often called the selfconcept—how people see themselves through the eyes of others—and is much more
amenable to study. The self evolves through communication and symbols, the child
becoming increasingly capable of taking the role of others. Mead's discussion
highlights this growth through the ‘play’, ‘game’, ‘and generalized other’ stages. The
generalized other refers to the organized attitudes of the whole community, enabling
people thereby to incorporate a sense of the overarching community values into their

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conception of self.3
The self can be a noun or an adjective, here it is better to think of it as a collective
noun, even as an adverb, a critical internal referent to a Belief Structure. The self
identifies a relationship between one human and another, it identifies that which is
human; it identifies that which belongs to a group. More specifically here, it is used to
delineate the difficult to define and understand ground between that which is modern
(The Self) and the creation of a concept of the self, centred around that which is
human, all that which is too human, within the Greek consciousness.
The self is not taken as something a priori, as it has been in the works that deal
specifically with the Greek Tragedies, or Roman and Middle Eastern history. This
begins with a suggestion of a definition for the self, which precedes the philosophical
and historical definitions of the Greek and Roman care of the self outlined in Michel
Foucault’s work on that period of history. The creation of a concept of the self, or the
articulation of a care of the self, as we find in Greek and Roman literature is of great
significance and it is also significant that there is an absence of an analysis of the
creation or imposition of the radically different referent that was their understanding
of the self.
Whilst we often consider the self as the individual, it must be borne in mind that it can
mean the one or the many. To quote from Genesis:
You whose names is Jacob,
You shall be called Jacob no more,
But Israel shall be your name.4
It itself, this can be seen as the renaming of an individual but as any knowledge of the
Bible and of history will remind us, the term ‘Israel’ is used for an individual, for a
group, for a nation. This context should be borne in mind throughout this work.

3

Oxford English Dictionary Online: http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?

subview=Main&entry=t88.e2031
4

Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, JPS, 1985, pg. 55

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A Problematics of Belief Structures and the Creation of the Concept of
the Self
An Introductory Note
Ideally, one would begin an investigation into the relation of belief and the self with
an analysis of the relation within a known Christian/European context. To do this
would be to compare developments that showed a divergence (as for example
between Catholicism and Protestantism) and at a later stage this will be discussed.
Initially however, I wish to explain the origins of the European understanding of
belief and the self, to map out some ground-rules and to define the area under
discussion – belief, structure and self are all topics potentially worthy of their own
discussions even now. For these reasons, this work will come under the heading of
theological philosophy and politics, whilst still utilising tools from anthropology and
sociology, as well as history and other areas of the social sciences. It is difficult to
define the tools used within a project when the definitions currently being used make
no sense to the period and conditions under consideration. To create a concept of a
belief structure within the early Greek period, it is not possible to divide their
behaviour into post-Enlightenment discussions, rather we must re-visit ideas of what
was being done and what was achieved, without direct reference to currently
utilitarianism – direct references to Christianity, for example, cloud the issues raised
within a culture that did not have a monotheistic culture, which did not directly argue
about religion, which did not have a form of social government that would be
acceptable now, and so forth.
The origins of the modern European and Christian ideas of the self can be traced back
to the Greek era, from which the European culture charts its rise. Whilst the Christian
Belief’ itself belongs to the Levant, the associated structure has links with the Roman
and, through that, the Greek world-view. Whilst the theology of the Judaeo-Christian
Bible is of Levant origin, the earliest texts (for both the Christian and Hebrew texts)
are in Greek, the traditional political home of the Christian Church is Rome (although
finally settled upon at a late date, the argument was between Roman cities – Rome
itself and Constantinople)5. I begin with an outline of different approaches to the
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origins of belief and the purposes of belief for the human condition. Whatever model
is followed, it will inevitably be defined as ‘belonging to’ a specific school but this is
an outline of models that can be contained within structures, not a rigid definition –
even a rigid structure has flexibility within its confines – to overuse the required
metaphor. Politics, time and geography remain variables throughout and in this sense;
the concept of a belief structure is dynamic. Any definition of the term will hence
remain not complete because it will change over time. Here I will concentrate upon
some main themes. The definition must of necessity contain references to what is not
included as this is, as it were, the outer perimeter of the definition and it is more
sensible to explain what is not there because of the variability of some terms that are
there but are not clearly delineated at this stage.
God and Gods?
Here we are concerned with the relation of belief. That there is a thing(s) in which
one believes, for which one has a belief or a thing(s) which incorporate a belief is
taken as given. Belief is a palpable part of existence, something that everyone has
and everyone can speak on. At the outset then, we must refrain from adding any
descriptions to the noun.

Belief sits at the centre of this work, what is being

investigated is the relation of the human and the Deity to belief.
These questions will not be asked in any form because within the context of a
problematics, the existence or otherwise of a deity is not relevant, in that it is already
take as intrinsic to the subject. There are a variety of things that cannot be seen but
are discerned through their affects; gravity, sound, magnetism, motion, a painting or
other representation of… and so on. Without actually seeing something, we know it
is there by the affect it produces. So too there is the concept of belief. A belief
requires a root or a definition, which lies beyond the scope of this introduction, so this
is an attempt to outline the basic structures used to articulate a belief. The question of
God(s) cannot be ignored however because as soon as one speaks of belief, it is
common to enter into a discourse upon a Deity, even for those who profess to not
believe. Already, there is a conflict of definition as we find ourselves instantly
The use of the Greek language to record these texts was at the instigation of the library at
Alexandria, under the control of the Ptolemy’s, thereby completing the embracement of the Greek
presence, even during the waning days of their power.

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entering into a debate of what does or does not exist, instead of concentrating upon
the interaction of elements of human existence that constitute belief and it is this
conflict and interaction of events that has led me to use the term ‘Belief Structure’, not
simply ‘belief’.
In many parts of the world, the question of one’s religion is as much a subject of
political interference as is one’s ethnicity and to such a degree that questions relating
to sex, religion, nationality, colour and sexual orientation are gathered by many
organisations attempting to monitor their employment policies or usage of their
services within a community. In England, to not have a religion was impossible until
the 1980’s, where the options of ‘atheist’ or ‘none’ were not included on the data
collection forms. Even though there has been a long standing political and social
problematisation of religion, not least concerning the division of church and state,
English institutions such as the police, military and health services, have by default
labelled their members as Church of England and as such are by default sectarian;
presupposing a belief and imposing the same through their own structures; here again,
belief is centred around a Deity and again we must move back from this and
incorporate the notion of Deity within the socio-political and communal context of
belief. In order to understand something deeply rooted in the European way of life
(indeed, all human), we must constantly bear in mind what we are not saying and
what we are not talking about as much as what we are saying – the separation of types
of belief structure are is what is identified in the first section and to identify this, we
must go back beyond Christianity; using references to more recent times to help
identify events but not to make direct comparisons.
To not believe in God does not end the debate however. One does not believe in God
‘because…’ or one does not believe in God ‘but in …’ Debate is not precluded but
exacerbated by the claim that one does not believe in God, for there is still a feeling of
a need to define a belief in something. This is to confuse cause and effect however.
The pejorative ‘you must believe in something…?’ often imputes a causal ontology,
with the relationship between Man6 and its belief poorly defined; does a belief
comfort Man giving succour a posteriori, helping to justify whatever decisions have
6

Man is used as a proper noun throughout to denote the species genera and is described with the
pronoun of third person singular.

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been made and actions taken? The question of belief remains central then. There is a
clear socio-political disjunction of definition that lies beyond the scientific dictionary
definitions of ‘belief’ and ‘faith’ and it is in defining this that the term ‘Belief
Structure’ is used. The definition of a concept lies within other concepts and a
thorough understanding of the interrelation of the subject matter, it is not a singular
event or idea7.

Whether one is discussing religious, political, social, economic,

sporting or other issues, the question of ethics and one’s personal commitment to a
cause will be raised – how should one conduct one’s self – and beneath this lies the
question of belief: The structures by which one is justified or with which one seeks to
justify8.
The question of the existence of one or more deities is disputed (even if this concept is
as difficult to conceive as the concepts of theoretical astrophysics), what is not
disputed is that Man has a concept of Deity and, if lacking a belief in what can be
defined as a Deity, a belief in something other, something else.

The comment

‘Neither history nor anthropology knows of societies from which religion has been
totally absent’9 has been repeated since the earliest writings and is still true, begging
the question of why and how a (Belief Structure rather than something complex or
advanced as a religion) such a thing would com about. All investigations into a
reality, into that which is will seem causal, determinative or creationist without this
being the case. Once a series of events begins, it can be described but not halted and
whilst there are a number of sentient decision and choices, it is not possible to guess
at or explore them all.

7

As well as the dictionary definitions of belief that are given in Appendix A, a religious definition
must include the experience of belief, of the transcendence of the ‘otherness’ and beyond the mundane,
Belief acts as a mental fulcrum to attain a state / condition of acceptance.
8
The relationship analysed here is that between Man, its Self and God. The relationship from God to
Man is one of omnipotent creation and as such it is not subject to alteration or change. Whilst God has
free will in having created the world, the continued existence of Man can only be understood through a
reference beginning with Man; to begin otherwise would be to presume the Will of God.
9
Rappaport, R A – The Sacred in Human Evolution (Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 2:2344) (1971). http://www.jstor.org/journals/00664162.html. The full sentence reads: ‘Neither history nor
anthropology knows of societies from which religion has been totally absent, and even those modern
states that have attempted to abolish religion have replaced it with beliefs and practices which
themselves seem religious.’ The piece goes on to quote Romer’s Rule from Hockett, C F and Ascher,
R (‘The Human Evolution’ Current Anthropology, 1964. 5:135-68): ‘The initial survival value of a
favourable innovation is conservative, in that it renders possible the maintenance of a traditional way of
life in the face of changed circumstances.’ Whilst the arguments put forward are in line with the
definitions of this introduction, the conclusions drawn from them are not, as will become clear in due
course.

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Here then will follow definitions of terms and ideas used to identify what a Belief
Structure is within the parameters of the thesis. In anthropological terms, the point
can be shown by what is not said in the introduction of ‘In Pursuit of Gender’, where
the difficulty of defining gender amongst the contributors was discussed at length
because whilst in some cultures the idea of two genders and clearly differentiated
gender roles was accepted, in others (see also Hidden from History and other works),
it is not. A further point within the question of sexual orientation concerns tolerance
and how and if a society with a monofuctional sexuality can exist within or create a
multi-faceted society; aspects of the use and functions of power and control will be
considered later.10

The Purpose of God / The Purpose of Gods / The Purpose of Man11
The existence or non-existence of God/s is not a part of the argument outlined here
but the relationships between them has significant repercussions.
To deal with the question of which created which: Again, this leads to an enquiry
upon the existence or non-existence of Deity/ies and as such is not relevant. The
question being posited here is: As Man has a concept of Deity, where could this have
come from and what purpose could such a concept serve – either for the Deity or for
Nature?

It must be stressed that although an evolutionary approach (which has

become a normal mode of scientific investigation) is adopted within this section, it in
no way negates the possibility of the existence of a Deity/ies to be discussed later; this
is merely a section of definitions of tools to be used later. An argument that Man does
not have a past outside of the Judeo-Christian or other text is not rejected. Put simply:
there is a stratum of knowledge available to Man and some have chosen to use it,
others have not. To help define the terms used, I have decided to approach these
10

Having questioned the definition and concept of gender, a discourse around the problematics has
been created. The absence of such a discourse for the codification and political assimilation of Belief
Structures within the social construct of an age of understanding of the functions that lead on to
redefinitions of religion and that shift the points of reference and self reference indicate that the set of
epistemological, metaphysical, historiographical and historiological questions posited of sexuality
(politics, sport and so on) have not been applied to the ontological concept of Belief Structures.
11
Purpose should not be taken in a dogmatic sense but as a pejorative, as a question dealing with the
relationship between those concerned. There is no necessary derivative or any necessary deterministic,
‘Darwinian’ interpolation intended to be drawn.

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arguments at the more fruitful starting point, then to extrapolate and interpret these
terms upon Greek and early Christian Belief Structures. If we are not to cast aside all
other religions than our own as ‘overtly wrong and pointless’, we must attempt to find
suitable ontological grounds and terms with which to define a genealogy of Belief
Structures.
As has been hinted at, the Belief Structure for Man lies at the root, it is a structurally
ontological reference point by which Man establishes a link between that which is
Man and that which is not Man, a point through which the thought processes of Man
must pass if it is to manipulate its environment.
On Nature
Why Darwin? The name of Darwin is synonymous with the thoughts of the twentieth
century. Whenever we speak of ‘development’ or ‘progress’, we become involved in
a debate that includes Darwin and, even though he contributed very little to the debate
on religion and society, his name is still very much associated with the subjects
because of the usurpation of his ideas into ‘Social Darwinism’ and the very notion of
the ‘progress’ and the ‘evolution of ideas’. To use the name of Darwin here is not to
simply quote him but to use his name within a context in which it has come to be
readily used even if not correctly understood.

This then is a discussion of the

relevance of ‘interpretations of Darwin within the context of belief’ and how that
relates to this thesis.
As soon as we begin to speak of the Greeks, we also begin to speak of the
‘development’ of ideas, of progress, of the ‘evolution’ of concepts of philosophy,
history, art, politics; we begin to trace the ‘progress’ of these topics through from the
pre-Socratic to the post-Alexandrian world that was Greece, tracing hundreds of years
and thousands of square kilometres as though it were a single entity. These concepts
cannot be ignored, so here is an outline of what the implications of ‘Darwinianism’ is
within the context of this thesis.
From a Darwinian perspective, the concept of God in itself does not seem to serve any
specific function (the article by Rappaport cited above describes religion as a
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‘cybernetic’ or ‘information’ function.). In ‘The Descent of Man’ (pg. 612), Darwin
states that ‘…a belief in all pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal…The
idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man,
until he has been altered by long-conditioned culture.’ Darwin attributes a belief
structure to Man as an all but universal attribute but then subjectifies the statement by
codifying monotheism as a cultural improvement. As with the existence or otherwise
of a Deity, the quantity is also not relevant to this inquiry, what is significant is that
there seems to be ‘a belief in all pervading spiritual agencies’. The decision to
worship a multiplicity or a singularity of Deities seems more a socio-political choice
than a strictly biological-Darwinian evolution and hence deliberative. Whilst Nature
might imbue Man with the capacity to have a Belief Structure, the utilisation of that
capacity is left to Man in exactly the same way as was the thumb; existence of a thing
does not define its use.
On social constructs, Darwin (Descent, pg. 119) states ‘ We have now seen that
actions are regarded…as good or bad…as they affect the welfare of the tribe…’ and
that ‘with man we can see no definite limit to the continued development of the brain
and mental faculties, as far as advantage is concerned’ (pg. 149). Having applied his
observations of plant and other life forms to Man, Darwin has promptly abandoned
his analysis of transformation and selection and instead opted for a definition of Man
that is an offshoot of the principles of natural selection, by definition, where mental
and social developments of any kind are justified because natural selection, by
definition, only permits advancement according to defined principles.

What is

missing from the Darwinian supposition is an analysis of what a Belief Structure
might be and what could be its purpose for Man; why would a Belief Structure have
been developed as a ubiquitous mental facility for man? Either such a phenomenon is
accidental, or it is derived as a response to circumstances.

The ‘belief in…’

commences with creation, so some attempt must be made to place the origins of belief
and the concomitant structures within the context of early human history – either as
creations of Nature or of Deity/ies.
The Creation of the Capability to Believe

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Belief is a central attribute of Man. Indirectly and directly it shapes much of the
behaviour of the species and so a sketch of the assumptions is necessary to anchor the
later arguments.
Does God exist? For most, in one life upon Earth, the question remains moot – not
provable or unanswered, for some it is beyond doubt. Is life pre-ordained or does
Man have free will? In either case, for most of Man the next event remains an
unknown and so each must ‘strut and fret his hour upon the stage’ 12 as best they
might. Whatever are the positions adopted, the following is an attempt to synthesise
the concept of a Belief Structure within a Darwinian / Deistic conjunction.
There is a difference between Man and those things around it and it is the use to
which Man puts the world and, assuming that there is merit in the Darwinian
assumption of evolution, this begs the question of why and how Man developed as it
did (the question remains important precisely because of the absence of a clear
genealogy back through the apes; if Man was simply a slow natural development,
traces of such would be evident).13 Darwin states (Origin, pg. 263) ‘…it may not be a
logical deduction, but to my imagination…’ (that life is as it is) ’…not as specially
endowed or created instincts, but as consequences of one general law…multiply, very,
let the strongest live and the weakest die.’ (and this is known in modern terminology
as reduced instruction protocol) Clearly, there is an indication from Darwin that Man
is a descent of the apes but the evidence for the move is lacking. It is possible
however that such a change was more sudden than evolutionary and it is here, I
hypothesise, that the Darwinist can place the origin of the Belief Structure. For
reasons lost within the past of the Rift Valley, or the end of the last Ice Age, there
evolved a creature from the ape family that was able to adapt its environment because
it faced extinction. Whereas Zenning (Timeless Rock Art, pg. 68-9) claimed early
painting ‘…reflected their simple, innocent desire to control nature.’ I argue that the
art is a representation of a human conjunction with Nature and that the purpose of a
12

Shakespeare, Macbeth V, 5 although of course, there is no need for menace or gloom in its actions.
The strutting and fretting is simply the act of one who does not know how to be certain of what will
happen next. There are many instances of Man living in ignorance of the future and here the action is
just as much a strutting and a fretting but is here the strutting and fretting of someone ‘ad-libbing’, not
someone in despair at not knowing the outcome.
13
The Darwinian evolutionary concept is primarily passive and reactive, the question to be borne in
mind throughout is what aspects of Man are not reactive and how could it come about that Man would
or could develop an outlook or approach that strove to alter and to change?

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Belief Structure within early homo sapien was to construct a relationship between
Man and its environment. Evolutionary theory suggests not that creature (as cited in
the Darwin quotation, see above) multiply and vary in order to survive but there is a
subtle balance between excess and moderation and that variation is brought about of
necessity and by external forces. Whatever the conditions that gave rise to the
creation of Man, the conditions were not such as to require an ‘advanced culture’ that
would be seen as such by Darwin. The modern (European) world is where this
introduction will end and there are numerous recorded civilisations all over the Earth
that clearly did not take a route to Darwin’s higher ‘culture’; Darwin himself
encountered instances of social and economic stasis (Descent, pg. 187) ‘… Mr Coan
… remarks that the natives have undergone a greater change in their habits of life in
the course of fifty years than Englishmen during a thousand.’ But regarded this as an
aspect of the primitive and not of any advanced nature of the indigenous Belief
Structure.
A Belief Structure then is that which is defined through a set of rituals and
(individual) beliefs that come together to create a socially and politically cohesive
group. It might be, as Mauss 14 described, that ‘Taking into account the monotony of
its actions, the limited vanity of its representation, the sameness which is found
throughout the history of civilisation, we might assume magic to be a practical idea of
utmost simplicity.’ but this is to already remove the expression from its cause. What
Mauss described as monotonous and simple (-istic?) are in fact actions of precise
repetition with all of the complexity required.
Here then is a relationship between Man and Nature, the meeting place of theology
and philosophy. It is through distancing itself from an event that Man comes to any
understanding from Socratic15 inquisitorial education to Kantian reason to
phenomenology.

The conceptualisation of a Belief Structure as an evolutionary

function is an aid in the ability to create and maintain abstract uses for parts off its
environment – the creation and use of tools, fire and so on. Without an outside
reference point (that is, a reference to an ‘other’), the articles would be abandoned,

14
15

Mauss, M, General Theory of Magic, Routledge, 1972. (pg. 91)
Plato, Republic, Book I, & c.

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returned from whence they came. This is not to say that Man must use, alter and
change its environment, only that it retains the ability so to in some circumstances.
As its root then, a Belief Structure could have a Darwinian function and from this
both through selection and outside impetuses to change – it will vary, multiply and
survive.
To put this in more theological terms; God would give Man the capacity to
comprehend a Deity for similar reasons (that is, to enable Man to grasp a reason
outside of itself to which it could reference its actions, thus maintaining a temporal
and creative perspective for its actions and behaviours). Divine knowledge being
preserved for the divine would leave Man without a concept of that which was
Divine. Here again Man has interpreted the nature and purpose of the relation with
the Divine and, as has already been noted, in the absence of affirmative ubiquitous
Knowledge of the existence of the Divine, man must do as best it can within the
confines of its existence, with its Faith of and in a Deity as a point of reference – Man
has a knowledge of but no empirical proof of Deity/ies.
This is the nascence of a Belief Structure, which can be described as embracing (the
reference points are Man, Deity, Nature, all returning to all). It is a link between Man
and Nature that permits man to place its actions and behaviours within the context of
the world around it, out of this Belief Structure grew those that can be described as
cyclical. That is, where the point of reference lies beyond the human, where the
reference point lies within the cycles of the seasons and planets and the Greater and
Lesser Cycles pertaining to the social groups, to the more esoteric relations of Gods
and Man and within such a context, the number (or multiplicities) of Deity is hardly
significant as the kernel of the referent remains in the concept of the cycle, or to be
more specific, at an understanding of the Embracing.

This is not to follow

Nietzsche’s argument in Twilight of the Idols, 16 that it is better to worship one god
than many. I am concerned here with defining a relationship between the human and
the Diving, not with social and political arguments regarding multiplicity.
16

Nietzsche, F Twilight of the Idols, Penguin, 1984. Bearing in mind Nietzsche’s comments on other
multi-deistic faiths, his comments were most probably an attack upon Christianity rather than upon the
concept of multiplicity itself.

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Precisely as there is a known basic symbolism for air, fire, water and so on, so too
there is a composite symbolism for Belief Structures and it is this that is represented
in early art through the world on both rocks and pottery. This is not to impute a
common language; two physicists can happily exchange data and number sequences
without knowledge of another language. Classicists can write to each other in Latin
or Greek but with accents that defy audible understanding. The root, if there is one,
can only lead to a point, not a common language; the understanding is of a concept,
not of a swathe of knowledge. The symbolism is an expression of a core, similarities
between geographically diverse regions can be traced back to this core but it does not
imply a continued communication between them over the period.
What is seen as the dominant position of Man on the Earth is defined here as an
adjunct, one belonging primarily to the Industrial Age (but this is a topic that lies
outside of this definition). Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, the role of Man is
that of exercising ‘dominion’ (Gen Ch. I, v. 28) and a notable section of the Books of
Moses are given up to animal husbandry, of managing the bounty of God upon the
Earth; that is, for the care of livestock and the future supply of food; the Egyptian
Book of Days is also primarily concerned with farming, as is much of the archive
from Mesopotamia. Far from being a dominant position, in all but a minority of
instances, the role of Man can be viewed as that of an ‘overseer’ or ‘caretaker’.
Comparisons between the longevity of Man and the longevity of ‘The Land’ (a
euphemism for land, animals, water and other resources) are common for most Belief
Structures and thus place Man within a functional constraint. Within agricultural
societies, the relation between Man, Nature and God as a triumvirate of co-operation
has persisted. As a creation of Nature or of God, the social-biological construct that is
Man is not perfect and is in a constant state of flux. For Nature, flux seems to be a
necessary function of life in that it requires a sharing of resources, with different
plants and creatures (in the food chain) providing sustenance for others and all
maintaining some underlying idea of ‘balance’. As a creation of God, Man still
remains in flux to carry out its role / task upon the Earth17.

17

God has placed Man in a state of flux, or Man has placed itself in a state of flux through its
relationship with God. There is no temporal certainty for Man and the absence of certainty places Man
in a state of flux. Only if Man was absolutely certain of the Will of God would it be able to remove
itself from a state of flux.

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Power and Control
To speak technically and also scientifically, control is a key term that must be
considered and understood; it is the hermeneutical connection between definitions of
Belief Structure, Religion and Theology; the linking together of Man and its
surroundings. Control is a subjunctive of a Belief Structure, with utilisation as the
goal. Without the concept of a Belief Structure and the correlative capacity to control,
Man would not be able to find a continuing and repetitive use for its environment, it
would be unable to ask: ‘what can this be used for?’; ‘can it be used beyond the
Now?’
Standard evolutionary theories explain how a creature will adapt to suit its
environment (owls can see at nigh, racing pidgins were detailed by Darwin, moles
have claws for digging), some make minor changes to their environment, (beavers),
some seem to survive anywhere (cockroach, mice). Unlike other creatures, Man does
not move to a more hospitable environment, rather it attempts to exercise control over
it and despite claims to the contrary from the industrialised cultures of Man, it
remains barely a harvest from barbarism. Control then is a deliberative function for
Man. Once an action is taken, the reference to the Belief Structure is a part of that
process and must of necessity and by definition be deliberative such that the
requirement, or goal; the activity, or methodology of control can, through the ritual of
referencing to the Deity/ies, complete the cycle of the Belief Structure.
Control is not a willed thing, it is the deliberative aspect of a Belief Structure and
cannot exist on its own. Some things are not possible without an other thing but there
is a connection between abstract reasoning, justification and the concept of Deity/ies
both linguistically and neurologically and so without making a step into causalism or
into creationism, the argument that a Belief Structure consists of facets of control
remains; it is true that ‘Darwinian Chance’ could have been responsible but that is to
enter upon a speculative discussion of what Man might have been, not what Man is;
such could be a sub species of as homo erectus but this lies outside of the preliminary
sketch. As Darwin says ‘In man, as in the lower animals, many structures are so
intimately related, that when one part varies, so does another, without our being able,

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in most cases to assign any reason.’18 In other words: what capacities of Man might
be used within a Belief Structure? A Sentiment echoed by Foucault: ‘Mathematical
statements are not added to one another in the same way as religious texts or laws
(they each have their own ways of merging together, annulling one another, excluding
one another, complementing one another, forming groups that are in varying degrees
indissociable and endowed with unique properties).’19
‘What process does a culture put in place to release a self that gets stuck (dries out,
turn heavy or opaque, goes mad, becomes monotonal, stops transforming)?’ asks the
introduction of Self and Self Transformation. 20 More to the point: Why should there
be a dynamics of such a construct?
transform?

Does a Self or a Belief Structure need to

There is evidence of cultures and the associated religious structures

remaining all but unchanged for millennia and there is evidence of the continuation of
some religious practices after the fall of specific civilisations but the need to
transform is a modern socio-political construct for the anthropologist to investigate, it
is not one relevant for an understanding of the ontology of Belief Structures, where
the internal dogmatics required for transformations have not be constructed; this is a
definition to identify a furcation, a forced splitting, not the alterations and changes
that are within the domain of the scientific anthropologist.
A nascent Belief Structure is interallum redere (in the process of reverting) 21 – that
which is referential to an external cause – but it is also cyclical in that such references
return back to Man and how it and they interact, such a concept can also be described
as embracing, creating its own dynamics of return and self referral which negates the
need for transformation, the requirement to change and modify for its own sake. The
18

Darwin Descent of Man, Square Peg 2003 pg. 43
Foucault, M Archaeology of Knowledge, Tavistock, 1972. pg. 124
20
Shulman, D; Stroumsa, G, Self and Self-transformation in the History of Religions. Pg. 14
21
References to two types of Belief Structure will be made: hominis interallum reder (Man in the
process of reverting) and hominis reputare (Man reflecting back [to its self])
i)
Hominis Interallum reder is a Belief Structure that is referential to external events
and factors. Man is aware that all actions have affects upon and are affected by external
events and its Belief Structures are formulated in such a way as to attempt to articulate the
connections between events. That which is referential to the external incorporates its
interpretation within its Self, rationalising a circular continuity of thought and action, creating
a striving to maintain a status quo.
ii)
Hominis reputare is a Belief Structure that is referential to the Self in the first
instance. Man acts upon the world through its Self. Its motive relies upon its personal
requirements and the satisfaction of its own needs and desires; its primary motive is Self
fulfilment.
19

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transformations that do exist within a culture should be viewed as internal referential
(interallum reder) rights not as a methodology to ‘release a self that gets stuck’ but to
define and codify specific aspects of a Belief Structure within an economic
geography.
For the anthropologist, society already has an internal dynamics, able to ‘move (itsself) on’ and as such it has already transformed itself from that which lives within its
own (or the) world, to that which lives within its own dynamics, within its own
created self referential framework and the question then begs:

Why does a

requirement to volition (and the associated power discourses) seem to exist within
Man and how can it be compatible with the concept of evolution, where there is the
implication of change through modification and adaptation? More precisely: What
could be the origins of an internally constructed aversion to the monotonal?
The existence of a fluid (anthropologically specified) dynamics within a Belief
Structure, one that is defined as a system that will maintain a state of flux and hence
to force (to maintain a rate of) change – to create a climate of adaptation (both interior
(to the self) and exterior, directed towards that which is other) – is to beg the
questions off ontological inquiry where we must explore the how and the why of the
prehistoric through an analysis of the historic.

The pre-historic offers us only

conjecture, based upon the remains of a shadow; we must dismantle that which
constitutes our history (and our understanding of events within a history) and through
that come to some understanding of the mechanics of its construction and through the
exposed dynamics of the paths of the known past we might glimpse the tools that
formed the unknown pre-historic of a Belief Structure. That which lies in the past, in
the time before it was considered necessary or useful to ‘write it all down’, to explain
it all or to justify, lies beyond the reaches of history and, as with Eichhorn quoted by
Wolf,22 we must search through the layers of the known to define the layers of the
contextually sound; to commit ourselves to ‘A true, continuous and systematic
recension.’

22

Wolf, F A. Prologomena to Homer (PUP) 1988 pg. 44

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Not all cultures have Belief Structures that contain the Judeo-Christian imposition of
Guilt23 (Gen. 3; 4; 6; 11; etc.) and of a Fall from Grace or Perfection (this is not the
same as a legend of the decline in the abilities of Man); such an idea has a specific
temporal and geographic home. Whilst the Egyptians believed that they were already
in Heaven and that no world could be better and death was no more than a moving to
another Nile Valley (the Egyptians were, in effect, by their own admission, custodians
of Heaven and this helps to explain the longevity of their geographic Belief Structure
and their civilisation. It is an exemplary area to investigate as a case study of an
Embracing Belief Structure – interallum redere), most cultures created Belief
Structures, Man is then able to appeal to whatever rules are deemed necessary to
create and maintain a socio-politico-economic continuum. Provided that the structure
within itself is able to retain its interallum redere, any laws, proscriptions and
prescriptions, will be accepted.
The internal power structure of a society is not strictly governed by or related to its
Belief Structure, bearing in mind that an internal (political) power structure will
normally only last as long as the ruler, where that rule is imposed by the ruler, rather
than a rule exercised as an extension of the beliefs of the people. Generally however,
rule through fear or by force require surplus manpower and so tend to be ineffective
in small or agricultural communities where labour would either be fully utilised
during planting and harvest periods, or primarily surplus when crop or farm labour
was less intensive (when the Europeans asked the North Americans what they did
when they had planted the crops, they were told that they waited for them to grow;
thus showing that the idea of continuous labour is itself a specifically temporal and
geographic construct. A Belief Structure that considers crops to be the property of all
and a gift from the Gods would not require continuous labour and in these
circumstances, once a task has been completed, the labour can devote itself to
activities in the service of the Deity/ies (in Egypt and Maya, this was the construction
of pyramids, in Peru, it was the construction of gigantic rock carvings). There is no
specific mechanism within a Belief Structure that can control the type of power
Bottero, J, Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (Nevill), Edinburgh, 2001. Of
course, the idea of The Fall is specific to a type of Theology and not as geographic as
Bottero attempts to define it. None the less, it has come to have a significant social
and political affect upon European culture. The relation of guilt and god will be
discussed later with reference to the Iliad and the Pre Socratic philosophers.
23

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structure utilised by a society because the Belief Structure helps to define a
relationship between Man and its environment and providing that a cycle from Man to
the external to the Deity to Man can be explained and more specifically justified,
there is no requirement for a geographic culture to be egalitarian, pacific, military,
dictatorial or anything else. Belief Structures and politics combine to create power
systems, the former on its own defines a mechanics of reference, it is the anchor upon
which Man ties its motives and motivations.
It is the absence of any moral codices that shows, anthropologically, that a Belief
Structure

precedes

the

political

utility

imbibed

from

‘Divine

Law’,

or

‘Commandments’ and such like; it is only after there is a grasping of the context of
the relationships within interallum reder that a structure of conduct could be
understood - could be passed on. Only when there is a socially cohesive group,
already behaving in a particular way, can it be possible for a Prophet to come with the
Words of Deistic Wisdom (Lao Tzu, Confucius, Zoroaster, Mohammad, Moses,
Heraclitus).

Unlike other hermeneutical inquiries, this specifically eschews the

dogmatics off morality and is, as Nietzsche described, approaching from another side,
beyond good and evil. The internal dynamics of an interallum redere Belief Structure
do not prohibit acts of violence, either random and solitary or organised and
protracted; nor do they prohibit geographic expansion or social change but they do
encourage a tendency to ‘…use only that part of their potential of ideas and abilities
which enable them to lead a habitual way of life.’24 In other words, whilst Man has
the potential to achieve more through the adoption of other modes of application, it
(consciously or unconsciously) opts to use its abilities and its potential for technical
adaptation in such a way as to restrict its innovation and confine itself to that which it
knows and understands.

Whilst Rudgley is interested in technical matters and

Shulman is speaking anthropologically, their statements appear to run counter (the
former highlighting a stasis, the latter change within the human condition) but this can
be understood in the different points of reference of hominis interallum redere and
hominis reputare, as will become apparent.
Interallum Redere and the Self

24

L B Vishnyansky, quoted in R Rudgley Lost Civilizations pg. 239

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St Augustine described three types of theology in his criticism of Varro 25 - the
mystical, the fabulous and the natural. For Augustine, there was only one theology
and that was the theology of God, not of Man. He quotes Varro: ‘they call that kind
mythical which the poets chiefly use; physical, that which the philosophers use; civil,
that which the people use’. Augustine criticises this and seeks to define a ‘City of
God’, of a single and unified church and belief system. Structurally however, there is
a similarity in that both Varro and St Augustine seek to define a God for their own
ends, excluding all others. In his final destruction of Varro’s description of the three
gods used by a society, St Augustine wrote:
What can human learning, though manifold, avail thee in this perplexity? Thou desirest
to worship the natural gods; thou art compelled to worship the civil. Thou hast found
some of the gods to be fabulous, on whom thou vomitest forth very freely what thou
thinkest, and, whether thou wiliest or not, thou wettest therewith even the civil gods.
Thou sayest, forsooth, that the fabulous are adapted to the theatre, the natural to the
world, and the civil to the city; though the world is a divine work, but cities and theatres
are the works of men, and though the gods who are laughed at in the theatre are not other
than those who are adored in the temples; and ye do not exhibit games in honor of other
gods than those to whom ye immolate victims. How much more freely and more subtly
wouldst thou have decided these hadst thou said that some gods are natural, others
established by men; and concerning those who have been so established, the literature of
the poets gives one account, and that of the priests another,--both of which are,
nevertheless, so friendly the one to the other, through fellowship in falsehood, that they
are both pleasing to the demons, to whom the doctrine of the truth is hostile.
That theology, therefore, which they call natural, being put aside for a moment, as it is
afterwards to be discussed, we ask if any one is really content to seek a hope for eternal
life from poetical, theatrical, scenic gods? Perish the thought! The true God avert so wild
and sacrilegious a madness! What, is eternal life to be asked from those gods whom these
things pleased, and whom these things propitiate, in which their own crimes are
represented?

26

Religion is not a thing in which people are communally or incidentally involved, it is
a thing for their betterment, for the improvement of their lot. The discourse upon
religion has entered into the political realm. Compare this to the religions and beliefs
of the Pharaohs, or the West Asian and East Asian areas, where there was a mode of
25
26

Augustine, City of God, Ch 5 – 6.
St Augustine, op. cit Ch 6.

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behaviour that was required, a social and political requirement to be a part of a society
and the concomitant socio-political structure but not necessarily the need to be a part
of a named religious grouping per se. There is not a ‘politicisation’ of religion, not
even an ‘incorporation’ of religion. The relevance of theology has shifted, it has
become a part of the ‘care of the self’, a part of the particular form of the human that
defines what it is to be human. To misunderstand, or to not worship the God of
choice not only condemns the individual to a miserable afterlife, it gives Man the
right to judge Man for its behaviour, more significantly, for its beliefs, for what is
being thought within its mind, for how it wishes to relate and strives to relate to its
surroundings.
To understand this relationship, we will need to explore the development of the elf
and religion from the Greek perspective; its incorporation into Roman philosophy and
its dissemination into the Roman Empire and into early Christianity.
From the Enlightenment, thought could be defined through three stages of progress
(and here again begins the shadow of what became ‘Darwinianism’); the theological,
when neutral phenomena are seen as the product of the supernatural; the metaphysical
when they are the result of abstract forces; the positive, when observable phenomena
are described as the exclusion of all else. Right of otherwise, these distinctions
clearly show that they had created an ephemeral, a temporal world and that they
believed that they had already achieved (or were very close to achieving) the final
stage of progress – of being in a world that described what it saw to the exclusion of
all else – that is, to describe what is to the exclusion of what is.
There are questions thrown up by the Enlightenments definition of the ideal end of
progress; not least that there is an end and the question of what would happen to the
human imagination and creating if it was unable to move beyond a description of the
observed. The main point here though is that it is not hominis interallum redere but
hominis reputare that is defining its ‘relation to the world’. Augustine expresses
himself more clearly as an example between the references used by the two types of
Belief Structure. Unlike the Greeks of the Classical period, upon which Europe has
come to base most of its structures, Augustine had a concept of progress, although

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they would on the whole here have agreed with his interpretation; 27 the Greek state
was able to act and loosely articulate its dynamics, later civilizations would complete
the lexicon, but this is for a later discussion.
The Enlightenment broke down the structure of human belief to analyse it as a
progression, as a logical series of such that first A then B then C; but also, if C then B
must have been, then A must have been and if C exists and is in a state of being then
B and A must have ceased to exist; if A and B do exist at the same time as C, do those
in the condition of (have the right – or is it a duty?) to stop the practices associated
with A and B? Enlightenment politico-theological arguments can be seen to lead
down the road of justifying attacks on other groups and genocide because they have
not progressed and as such can be deemed ‘redundant’ or ‘backwards’ and such
actions have been documented but such conclusions are to presume that the
philosophers and theologians of their time actually intended such a course to develop.
The consequences of a direct confrontation between hominis reputare and hominis
interallum redere will be considered in detail toward the end of this introductory set
of definitions. Here we see a returning to the reasoning of Aristotle and away from
that of the church fathers, from the Ante-Nicenes.
Progression can only be possible for a Self Referential Belief Structure (hominis
reputare), where the comparison of what it is that constitutes the concept (if not that
which constitutes the conceptual understanding) of the self is conducted within the
Self, where any judgement is specific to that individual and its perceived temporal
significance. That is, an incremental inevitable development; that is, to move and to
progress form ‘now’ to ‘then’ and compare the ‘now’ to the ‘before’.
Hominis interallum redere, like the Greeks (see Dodds op cit.) did not have a word
for progress, only for change – the need for endless dynamic change would not be
understood; the concept of change, can perhaps be best defined as having come of age
when the Ptolemy’s found such a necessity to collect manuscripts, to update what had
gone before and to preserve it. Prior to this, the fear of the past being forgotten was
27

Dodds, E R. Ancient Concept of Progress. Also, to return to the comment so of Vishnyansky ‘…To
change substantially and rapidly, a culture must already have a great potential, a reserve of ideas and
abilities which are known but not put into practice…’ I believe this holds true for physical and
philosophic changes.

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not crucial and the relation to the Self is projected on to a need for the past; the Deity
is not the point of recognition of the Self, but one’s own past and historical relevance.
After Alexander, the Greeks set out not simply to collect woks of art and literature but
to compile definitive editions; there was now a definition of something that could be
called Truth. The reference points for self or social group advancement, for its own
sake, are lacking and changes occur primarily by reference to Deistic requirements.
The atavistic structure is completely different, with all references, stories and
memories of ancestors related through death rituals, life after death and familial
genealogy (such a genealogy should not be confused with the European action of
ancestry. Here the ‘atavistic truth’ of ancestry is subverted to create a lineage that
befits the occasion and that reflects current social status). There is a subverting of the
atavistic truth and its empirically definable behaviours; a rigid epistemological source
is denied in favour of a plastic history that enables past present and future to merge an
shift to create a cohesive whole about the Belief Structure and its Deity/ies. The dyad
of Belief Structure and the subject / object of Belief defines and clarifies the
differences; it is that which places Man outside its surroundings whilst allowing it to
remain a part, it is a ‘Theological Cartesian Cogito’.
What is the ‘self’, what does it mean to ‘have’ a self? A relationship with the first
person singular? For hominis interallum redere the relationship is not significant and
the questions lack relevance. They have an understanding of what it is to be ‘an’
individual but the individual is a component of a group and whilst its attachment to
that group does not constitute a formal duty or any legal obligation, it does constitute
a biological affiliative bond that at least modifies behaviour although not control it; to
break a bond would not be considered. If asked to define its own relation within such
a group, Man would respond by saying ‘we are one’, describing a homogeneity of
temperament and spirit rather than one of dogmatism and action.

Within this

definition, action to change that that is, is not a primary mover; it is survival – and if
survival is not difficult, or under threat, then action (and reaction) are even less
important as more time is devoted to conformity with and expressions of Deistic
ceremony, ritual and referencing.

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Summary
This is a basic outline of a Belief Structure. The existence of Deity/ies remains
unprovable and the associated questions should now have been sufficiently distanced
from this text. One Believes or one does not and in any case, there remains a residual
Belief, an unshakable cogito of some ‘otherness’ and it is this Belief that governs
Man’s relationship with the World. One of the dictionary definitions of belief, which
is the ‘mental acceptance of a proposition’, is a useful start but unless the importance
of the state of mind is fully explored, the theological definition will be missed.
Indeed, in some respects, the theological understanding of belief has returned to its
Germanic root of ‘lub’ - to hold dear, to love – where there is an implied emotional
commitment to and unconditional trust of the other 28.

There is of course the

additional commitment (certainly for hominis redere) that the love (lub – esteem,
value) need not be returned; existence is a continuum, not a return of good deeds. A
Belief Structure is that set of abilities which enable Man to carry out and to justify its
behaviour of control either of God’s chosen people (eo ipso, it is so that God created
Man and imbued in it the Knowledge of God), or as an evolutionary event that the
archaeological anthropologists have yet to resolve. It is the ubiquity of the Belief
Structure that gives it the appearance of being an innate characteristic and if it is
denied that it is itself innate, then it cannot be denied that its teaching and inculcation
is a human imperative such that the need to educate is all but innate (political, social
and cultural conditions not withstanding); a belief Structure returns to us as the first
manifestation of a joining of the abstract with the temporal. This is not abstract
reasoning, this is Belief and as such it does not rely upon any form of synthetically
arranged logic or reasoning to verify it claims.
There are various interpretations of Deism (that is, the objectified perception of the
‘other’), each developing its own economics and politics relevant to its own society
and geography but there is little purpose in attempting to create a genealogy back to
some primeval noise which is best known as ‘OM’. That they develop is the point
under investigation and instead of sculpting a tree, my intention is to look back to a
28

Whilst ‘love’ and ‘believe’ are words dating back to the earliest records in the English language (see
Appendix A), they have no relevance to the pre-Christian religious discourses because the
hominis/Deistic relationship was not based upon any notion of reciprocity, it was a cyclical , or, after
the Greeks, a linear structure, as explained above.

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point when a sudden change in Belief Structures can be identified; to dig down into its
historiography for a schism that expresses a self referential politics within theology,
that is, to identify the self referential as opposed to interallum redere that has so far
been identified.
From time to time Man has confronted itself with the idea of apocalyptical events but
it took deepest root in the Semitic religions 29 (at least, there has been a significant
political exploitation of the concept from this root), where it seems to be linked with
the concept of Guilt, most famously in the Hebrew Testament. Whilst Guilt might
seem to be an interesting diversion from the norm, it acts more as an explanation for a
given position than any specific change in perspective or points of reference of other
religions (ass such it is a political and economic tool more than a theological tract and
much too deals with the genealogy of a people, relating them to themselves and to
their Deity).
Baines argued that the Egyptians also had a concept of guilt but this is not as strong as
the Hebrew sense (which is again not as strong as modern European senses): ‘I made
every man like his fellow. I did not ordain that they do wrong (izfer, ‘disorder’). It
was their desires that damaged what I had said.’ The instruction for Merikore (the
creator) reads: ‘he has built himself a shrine around them (the people); when they
week, he hears’ (line135)30 Here, the God is giving Man free will. Whilst everything
is relational to the Deity/ies, there is still the ability for the individual to choose their
own course, to be responsible for what they do and not to put all of the onus upon
God to ensure their survival and well being. Man does not have domain over God but
is able to misinterpret the words, here it is Man’s responsibility to exercise
temperance and ensure that the Laws of God are followed. That the creator hears the
weeping of the people is a sign that it is a caring creator, not wrathful or malicious,
aware of the hardships of life and of the need to offer succour to them.

29

Bottero, J Everyday Life in Mesopotamia, Ch 15: How Sin Was Born Edinburgh 2001. See also
Lichteim, M: Ancient Egyptian Literature, California, 1975: ‘I made every man like his fellow. I did
not ordain that they do wrong (izfet, disorder). It was their desires that damaged what I had said.’
30
Baines, J Society, Morality and Religious Practice, in Shafer, B (ed) Religion in Ancient Egypt,
Routledge, 1991.

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What is the relation of Man to its Belief Structure? As Thomas discovered in his
research, it has been difficult within Christian Europe to maintain church attendances
and even when people do attend a Christian service, it has not stopped them from
worshipping other deities at other times 31. Different geographies have achieved very
different results with respect to Christianity and this is one of the more clear
distinctions between hominis interallum redere and hominis reputare. For the former,
the Deity/ies form a part of a structure that encompasses everything Man is it
embraces their actions and everything refers back and through it; there is no notion of
giving in order to receive, or behaving in a manner that will win more than a small
advantage; the failure to have a wish granted is nothing other than that, future wishes
and offerings might prove a different result. For the latter, dealings with the Deity/ies
are viewed as that. Favours are asked and granted or lost because of a personal
relationship with the Deity/ies; Man seeks a level of control (even power) over its
Deity. Religion takes on a reduced function, is of much less significance having or
finding its own role usurped by other interests of the individual as it looks to its Self,
attempting to secure something beyond its present condition rather than within it and
by so doing, it relegates its Deistic practices to satisfying the requirements of the
dogmatis theologia instead of the Deity/ies. Again, in its drive to reference through
itself, hominis reputare will constantly compare, seek for a justification through a
movement of the Self from where it was; interallum redere is justified through the
continuation of existence (not life per se), the placation of distress and the self
fulfilling justification of an embracing Belief Structure.
Belief Structures

will begin to diverge and become distinct as groups become

physically separated and as the prevailing theology is adapted to explain a current
condition as well as to define, proscribe and prescribe modes of behaviour and
conduct but none of this need lead to a specifically radical change in the references of
the structure. Indeed, bearing in mind the human proclivity of stasis, radical changes
in Belief Structures seem unlikely.
A belief Structure manifests itself through Man’s interaction with the world; this
includes physical activities, the pictorial, the written and the oral. Physical and oral
activities are wholly ephemeral; it has been noted that oral tradition can be passed on
31

Thomas, K Religion and the Decline of Magic, Penguin, 1991

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Concept of the Self


with a very high degree of accuracy. Groups sit down and listen to one or more recite
a story and correct them if they change anything (e.g. Rink, H; Tales and Traditions
of the Eskimo, Dover, 1997); this is both a way to learn stories and a game to spot
when a change has been made. So too, oral meetings can seem over as soon as they
begin and if they are remembered, it is in tradition and interpretation, leaving the
future generations wondering if anything has changed or stayed the same. Written
activities are more accurately recorded but every iteration is subject to mistakes or
deliberate alteration32. The examples of forgotten languages (Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Linear A, Linear B, Sumerian, etc.), are useful in understanding a culture as it is at
any time but this will not chart or identify changes; only articulate the present, rarely
with any criticism. This leaves us with the medium of the graphic – that which is
drawn and painted. That which has a specific meaning at the time of its creation and
of its use is the most reliable way of understanding a change several generations later
precisely because we can identify symbols used ostensibly for the same purpose,
ostensibly by the same people (or their direct descendants) in a specific geography.
Much of the art is taken as having some religious significance, so it would appear that
if there is a change in the art, there will also be a change in the religious practices. It
is also possible that there will be a change in the perception of the relationship
between Man and Deity/ies (particularly so if there has not been any apparent change
in the rituals and practices adopted at a site). Within the Catholic Church, the use of
local languages in place of Latin could be viewed as a change in the relationship to
the Deity because it expresses a changed role for the participants – a modification of
their ‘mental acceptance’ to quote and transcend the dictionary definition and the
same can be said for the incorporation of women within the offices of the Protestant
Church. That this change within the Catholic Church is so significant is the point – it
has created an enormous discourse and yet the changes within the Greek tradition, as
will be explained below, does not seem to have created any discourse. In this respect,
the Greek philosophers remained silent upon religion, speaking not of changes but of
how a thing could be used.

32

See Cambridge History of Mediaeval Philosophy, which describes the differences and
inconsistencies in the works of various European scribes. Some alterations were accidental, some
resulting from poor writing, others were attempts at improving a manuscript.

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CHAPTER 2 – GODS AND THE SELF IN HOMERIC LITERATURE
Greek Literature is a difficult concept to define. As has already been said, the
Homeric legends as they relate to the Iliad and to the Odyssey are without a date,
being written about events that occurred around 1400 BCE, first committed to writing
around 800 BCE and turned into a finally approved document in the libraries of
Alexandria by Ptolemy.
Did Homer exist? Did the Pre-Socratics exist? Did Socrates exist? All these people
exist within our beliefs of the Greeks – all these people exist within our perception of
a historico-geographic framework that stretches over a thousand years and a
collection of island and city states from Asia Minor to central Italy. What is identified
here is the spread of an interpretation of the self as a human form, as a direct and
clearly defined representation of the human it-self, hence the specific geography is
less important than knowing that there is a chronologic-political development that
links those areas known as Greece. Within this geo-political context, it is known that
various versions of texts were circulated and such differences show that the referent to
the deity varied certainly within different regions, although our inability to date texts
means that we do not know if there is a significant difference in the time when the
texts were being circulated; the difference is in the naming of Zeus as being
responsible for the war against Troy; was it at the Will of Zeus, or at the willing of
Zeus, or at the counsel of Zeus? This is not a pedantic exercise; if Zeus Willed the
war against Troy, as a means of reducing the population, He also Willed the abduction
of Helen and influenced the minds of men to drive them to such a destruction for the
sake of a woman. If Zeus was responsible for willing a war, then it remains within
the realms of Man to determine at least some of the destruction wrought and at some
stage to call a halt. The different possible openings within line 5 of the Iliad make the
story palpable to those within the Greek sphere but leave open to debate and question
the role of the Gods – the cruelty of the Gods, the knowledge of the Gods. Greek
Gods did not act alone though; they did not have full and sole responsibility for their
actions but acted as a ‘committee’. Having ‘willed’ a war in Chapter I, Zeus then
becomes embroiled in a bitter dispute with the other gods, mirroring the dispute
between the humans in Chapter II.

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From where we stand, we know only that there was a text (oral then written) that has
come down and has been interpreted that has become known to us at The Iliad. Even
the more recent works of Shakespeare suffers from numerous texts and from the
works of F A Wolf (Prolegomena), R Lattimore and many others, it is clear that there
are many possible readings of Homer. In his essay, The Kypria and its Early
Reception, Classical Antiquity 1995, pg. 164-197), R. Scaife points out that there are
different versions of the Iliad, with particular geo-political implications. Further,
concerning the early extant manuscripts: ‘No papyrus fragments have ever been
identified, and the brief sketch I present here depends mainly on the summary
produced by a grammarian named Proklas, itself only partially preserved in the
Bibliothek of the ninth-century Byzantine scholar Photios.’33 Here, we already
removed from Homer. Not only removed from the story of the Iliad through the six
hundred years between the event and the first writing down, or for another three
hundred years for the comments by Plato but a total of more than two thousand years
from the initial telling of the story (surely an event talked of during its own time) to
the fragments available in the work of Photios.
Aristotle gives us the earliest and most detailed references to Homer in detail in the
Poetics (1459a19-b8) and whilst this might mean that Aristotle ‘restored’ Homer to
the public, it is also likely that his is the first extant work on the subject. Aristotle
does not introduce Homer as a subject for which he believes detailed explanation is
needed, he simply includes Homer as the example of a literary genre. Homer was not
unknown, there was no problematisation of the author or of the subject matter; simply
a statement of eulogy ‘…in addition to what has been said about him previously, one
can hardly avoid feeling that Homer showed godlike genius…’ – comments that
Aristotle could not have made if Homer was not both known and respected, not least
because Aristotle was a respected teacher and would not stake his reputation on
Homer if he was a failed poet.
Aristotle is concerned with the role of Homer as a poet and a dramatist, not with the
nature of the story contained within the Iliad; either to discuss it as an articulation of a
theological quandary, or as a political treaties on the behaviour of Greeks – or of the
Gods. What should the articulation of theology and politics have been from the Iliad,
33

Scaife, R. The Kypria and its Early Reception, Classical Antiquity. 1995, pg. 164-197

26

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Concept of the Self


at a time when the Greeks were discussing forms of government and the roles of men
and gods? There was no referent through the Gods in Homer because the Iliad was
written by and about men; the references to the Gods mirrored the behaviours of the
human participants and as such were not beyond the realm of the human. That the
story was about men and this behaviour was reflected in the behaviour of the Gods is
shown in the ordering of the narratives: the story opens at Troy, then moves to
Olympus. The problematisation of Greek theatre was not considered by the
Platonists; only whether or not such poets and artists should have a role in society,
there is no real criticism (constructive or destructive), concerning the content, no
comments upon the creation and development of a mode of discourse within Greek
theatre and poetry.
Plato is concerned with Homer as a poet and theologian, with the concept of religion
within Homer. The discussion in Plato is primarily of types, he is not concerned with
the actual development of a theology as a problematics; the only development within
Plato is a linear module, through from what is believed to be the earlier to the later
works of his ouvre.34
In contrast to the plastic arts, where the human form was eulogised and the separation
between Man and God all but vanished, within literature, the position of the human
was unquestioned, with the deity (as opposed to theology) being supplemental,
referred through the human (as in the case of the comparison between Chapter I and
Chapter II of the Iliad).
For Homer, Zeus gave the Greeks the ability to appreciate politics by means of aidos
and dike; that is, through (an awareness of) shame and a respect for others35. This is
one of the first descriptions of the human as Homnis reputare – a being that is
referential to the Self in the first instance. The apportioning of such a knowledge
upon the Greeks distanced the human from God in that it made it responsible for its
own actions and also made it the self-referential judge of its own actions. This is
illustrated in the refusal of Achilles to fight, Agamemnon’s disparaging and insulting

34
35

Murcoch, I, Fire and the Sun,
Plato, Protagoras, b-d

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of a prophet in Book I; the treatment of prisoners later in the story and the mirrored
arguments and disputes between Gods and, elsewhere, between men.

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Concept of the Self


CHAPTER 3 – SELF GOD AND OTHER IN EARLY CHRISTIAN
LITERATURE
Did Moses exist? Did Jeremiah exist? Did Jeremiah exist? Did Ezekiel exist? Did
the minor prophets of the Hebrew text exist? Did Jesus exist? Did the disciples of
Jesus exist?
Again and again and for the third exegesis the questions are not relevant. Not only
will these questions not be answered but they must not be answered within a Belief
Structure that is homnis interallum redere, within which Belief is based wholly upon
the external, upon the ‘otherness’ of that which is a being within itself; the referent
lies beyond and remains beyond that which is human. The repetitions and mantras of
the referent creates the essence of the structure, not a default to ‘some form’ of a
scientifically defined reality or truth (cogito veritas).
For homnis reputare, the confirmation of the physical existence of the once removed
literary referents (that is, the existence of those who wrote texts about what homnis
reputare seeks to prove to be factual historical events), serves to further remove God
from the realm of men; increasing the separation through the affirmation of the linear
subjectivity of the temporal.
Having shown the point of divergence of the referents within the two modes of belief
identified and explored the changed referent to the self within early Greek plastic arts
and literature; having looked at the changes in subject matter in the works of Hesiod
(Theogony, Works and Days - theistic), Aesop (zoomorphic); Homer (theomorphic);
identifying areas of change in pre-Socratic thought, from the Eliatic discourse on
cause and effect to Zeno’s paradoxes of separation; the final section can now deal
with the later effects of the Greek concept of belief and the references to the self
contained within it.
Within this section, I will explore how the manifestation of the self referential nature
in Greek literature (Homnis reputare) and the otherwise referential, theistic cultures
(Homnis Interallum Redere) have resulted in self-referential structures such as
Christianity and explain why polytheistic Christianity, particularly icon worship, is
29

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better suited to this model than other theistic cultures as the predominant Belief
Structure. If Christianity is not described as ‘inevitable, but rather as the most
successful of a number of possibilities, then this work outlines the early development
of a route to the development of the relation of the self and a of a sole deity to
Christianity.
There are many books that describe the self, explaining which part of the history of
man is responsible for a particular understanding but here we are concerned not with
any set of definitions of the term, nor specifically with its nature, rather it is with the
use of the adjective of self as a referent for human behaviour and the modifications of
structures of belief. Most, as with Charles Taylor in The Sources of the Self36, seek to
‘…write a history of the modern identity. With this term I want to designate the
assembly of (largely unarticulated) understandings of what it is to be a human agent
… the modern West.’
The questions of ‘dos the self exist’; ‘How?’; ‘What are the sources of its interaction
– its ontology.’ Are not considered, being long lost in the prehistory of the sources of
the self. There remains however, the possibility of surmising an origin from the early
articulation of the ‘Western Self’ and an analysis of how this interacts with the other
cultures and beliefs. It is normal to speak of a ‘self’ or ‘an awareness of self’ when
discussing any socio-geographic ethnography and this is usually discussed in terms of
an awareness of or an understanding of ‘The Self’. Here however, the self is not a
central point from which to construct a world-view; it is a referent than can be either
strong or weak and helps formulate the contextual relationship in which human
activities take place
The questions here becomes ‘how does a particular religion or form of belief fit into
the Belief Structures defined? Is Ether one Or an other? What are the relationships
that are formed between different parts of a belief if we view it as belonging to either
Homnis reputare or Homnis Interallum Redere? How does Christianity affect (or
interact, or is interacted from) other Belief Structures? Is ‘Christianity’, ‘Christianity’
in an altered form, or is ‘Christianity’ another belief under the guise of ‘Christianity’?
Is the difference between geographies more significant than differences in religion?
36

Taylor, C, The Sources of the Self, Cambridge, 1992, pg. ix

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What is the effect upon the literature and the plastic arts of a changed in the referents
of belief and how was a changed discourse articulated?

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A problematics of belief structures and the creation of the concept of the self

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