ගොඩාක් අය මගෙන් අහනවා ඔබ බුදුදහම ඉගෙන ගත්තානම් ඔබට තිබුන ප්රශ්න මොනවාද කියා ඉතින් මේ මගෙ ප්රශ්න ගනනාවක අරම්බයයි, එනම් "මම" කියා කෙනෙකු නොමැති කියන සන්කල්පයෙ දුර්වලතාවය මෙසෙ ගෙන හැර දක්වමු
Personhood and no-self
So far we have seen that in the teaching of the Christ personhood is the defining feature of the human being. His teaching on the Kingdom of God would be absurd if salvation meant escaping personhood; likewise his teaching on sin if no personal God existed as Ultimate Reality. Now if we turn to finding the ingredients of human nature in the Christ’s teaching we face a major challenge. As mentioned before, he didn’t reveal a clear description of what the human being is in terms of components as we have seen in the Buddhist teaching of the aggregates or in that of the chain of dependent origination. Nevertheless, a common Christian view in defining the ingredients of human nature is that we consist of soul and body, with the soul being the part that departs at death and is rewarded (or punished) as such in heaven or in hell. Although Jesus spoke of body and soul, he did not mean that these are two distinct and opposite entities. Nowhere in Scripture can we find the idea that we are immaterial souls entrapped in a material body like a ghost in a machine, and consequently that eternal life in heaven is that of a liberated immaterial entity called a soul in the presence of God. Such a dualistic view is that of Platonism and Gnosticism, but not that of Scripture. The human being is an inseparable unity of flesh (sarx) and soul (psyche), a psycho-physical unity, not a self (atman) which stands in antagonism to the mortal physical body.
In Jesus’ teaching the soul is rather the quality of being alive. Consider the following verses: For whoever wants to save his life (psyche) will lose it, but whoever loses his life (psyche) for me and for the gospel will save it (Mark 8,35, also in Matthew 10,39; 16,25, Luke 17,33).
Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life (psyche) or to kill?” But they remained silent (Mark 3,4).
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life (psyche) what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? (Matthew 6,25; also in Luke 12,23).
That a human does not have a soul that is immortal by its very nature (a kind of atman) is consistent with the concept of creation out of nothing (ex nihilo). If immaterial souls pre-existed and then were entrapped in matter (as in Platonism), the ex nihilo idea of creation would be compromised. A person is created by God with a physical and a psychical aspect and, as with all creation, human nature is sustained by God. In the words of the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth,
Everything outside God is held constantly by God over nothingness. Creaturely nature means existence in time and space, existence with a beginning and end, existence that becomes, in order to pass away again. Once it was and once it will no longer be…. The creature is threatened by the possibility of nothingness and of destruction, which is excluded by God – and only by God. If creature exists, it is only maintained in its mode of existence if God so wills. If He did not so will, nothingness would inevitably break from all sides. The creature itself could not rescue and preserve itself (Barth 1959, pp. 55–56).10
Therefore immortality in the Kingdom of God is not an intrinsic quality of the soul. Once created, the human being is not indestructible and self-functioning as a kind of a perpetual motion machine. Eternal life is the gift of God through Christ (John 5,21; 10,27–28). In other words, humans are immortal by God’s grace, not by their intrinsic nature. In our ephemeral nature, we are compared to dust (Genesis 3,19), grass (Isaiah 40,6, Psalms 90,5), breath (Psalms 39,5–6) and mist(James 4,14). Apart from divine intervention, the one who dies is extinct.
In effect Buddhism says, ‘Man is nothing (anatta) but man alone can do something to save himself.’ In contrast Christianity could say: ‘Man is nothing by himself and can do nothing to save himself.’ It is by grace that man is saved and not by self-effort.
Secondly, the Buddhist theory of karma and rebirth implies that there is ‘something’ within man, either his karma or an operative mental or psychic force (vinnana) which has the power to cause or perpetuate life after death in ‘persons’ or momentary ‘selves’. The Bible leaves no room for such a belief. Man has no power within himself to generate a life beyond the grave; he has no inherent right to immortality as Greek thought supposed. It is only by the power of God that man can inherit eternal life. He can do nothing to merit eternal life.
