The Buddhist-Christian Dialogue Part 4: The Self Part 4
The question now in our search for a point of exchange in Buddhism and Christianity is whether of not Pneuma introduces a new Personalism. Does the idea of Spirit as the principle of life which constitutes personality and creates self-identity, another smuggled in soul theory in disguise? Could it be the case that we are in effect speaking of the immortality of the person (puggala) through the immortality of the soul? We’ve already discussed how the Bible offers very little evidence for an ontological entity separate from the body that could be called the soul. John Macquarrie comments on the subject:
“What then do we mean by ‘spirit’ when we apply the term to the being of man? We have already seen that the word is meant to indicate that extra dimension of being which belongs to man and makes him more than just a physical organism or an unusually complex animal. We need not suppose that spirit is some kind of substance. To reify spirit is to commit an error in categorization and even tends to reduce spirit to the level of that very thinghood, beyond which the symbol of spirit was meant to point us in the first place. But the dominance of things, both in our thinking and our language, is so great that we tend to conceive whatever it is about which we think or talk on the analogy of another thing.
Thus modern Western thought has tended to follow Descartes in regarding spirit as res cogitans, the ‘thinking thing’. Spirit is not another thing or substance. It belongs in a different category. It is rather a dynamic form, a quality of being that differentiates man (and whatever other spiritual beings may exist) from animals, plants, sticks, and stones.
de Silva suggests we put this to rest by contrasting the biblical view of Spirit with the soul of substance philosophy. “In the first place, according to substance philosophies, the soul is man’s natural possession; it belongs to him and is inseparable from him. In contrast, the spirit in man which makes him an authentic person is not his by a natural right; it is not what man merits or attains to or achieves. The spirit is not a priori in man. It is given.” We go to Barth again:
Man has spirit. By putting it this way we describe spirit as something that comes to man, something not essentially his own but to be received and actually received by him, something that totally limits his constitution and thus totally determines it.
To summarize his view, to say that man “has” spirit is not to say that man “is” spirit. “Secondly, in substance philosophies the soul is considered to be immortal and indestructible. But the Spirit which elevates man’s spirit to the Divine can be withdrawn and man can cease to be. Spirit is not a divine spark in man which is of the very essence of the Divine”, de Silva references Barth again:
It is not that man, having Spirit, is of divine essence even if only in a part or in the core of his being. On the contrary, the creatureliness of the whole man cannot be more evident than in the fact that he stands in need of this ‘may’, of this freedom to live which is not immanent in him but comes from without.
The Spirit is in man and belongs to him as the mathematical centre is in and belongs to the circle. Without the circle there can be no centre. The whole man is of the Spirit, since the Spirit is the principle and power of the life of the whole man.
This must not be confused with the Hindu Advaita view, He is not a ‘Thou’ which is identical with the ‘That’. He is not an ephemeral bubble that appears on the surface of the Ganges, a temporary form assumed out of something eternally abiding.”Thirdly, the soul in substance philosophies is an independent reality, having the power to be within itself. But the finite self as spirit is qualified by its relation to Spirit and is dependent on that relationship. The finite spirit is dependent for its self-actualisation and self-transcendence on its participation with the Divine Spirit.”
Spirit is thus the principle of man’s relation to God, of man’s fellowship with Him. This relation and fellowship cannot proceed from man himself, for God is his Creator and he His creature. He himself cannot be its principle. If this is indeed possible for him, and if he on his side realises it as movement from him towards God, this is because the movement of God towards him has preceded and because he may in his movement imitate it.
I’ll add a final comment from Barth that I’m not sure why de Silva did not use
For in the language of the Bible the soul is simply the earthly life of man, and not at all a divine or heavenly component of his being. All that we are justified in saying with regard to the nature of man as the soul of his body is that in the unity and distinction of these two elements (which are both earthly) we can see an analogue to the being of the cosmos. But with equal justice the same can be said of animals.
From this point on de Silva begins constructing a theology of anatta and pneuma together as anatta-pneuma. “We have now arrived at a stage when we could bring the distinctive Buddhist concept of anatta and the distinctive Christian concept of pneuma together, and see how they are interrelated. The yoking of these two concepts together opens up new dimensions of our understanding of the meaning of personhood, which could facilitate inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue. There are three dimensions in which we could see the mutual relation of these two concepts, each enriching, deepening and filling up the gaps in the other. They are not exclusive dimensions; they merge with one another.
There is firstly the psycho-physical or nama-rupa dimension. Here anatta means the rejection of atta or an eternal self or soul. Buddhism is unique in its rejection of any permanent entity within man, and this is a corrective to the wrong notion that has invaded popular Christian thinking. Christian theology can be greatly enriched by the absorption of the anatta doctrine into its system of thought.
However, the pancakkhandka analysis seems to reduce man to a psychosomatic organism. But pneuma points to a dimension of reality which cannot be exhausted by a scientific or psychological analysis of finite life; it signifies that extra dimension of finite life which is constitutive of authentic being which makes a person more than a bundle of aggregates or merely a psycho-physical organism or an unusually complex animal.” Pneuma is not some kind of ‘thing’ or a substance parallel to the substance of physical entities; it is a dynamic quality of being which lifts man above finite existence
“There is secondly the ethico-social dimension. Ethically anatta means non-attachment, particularly to the false notion of the self or soul, which is the root cause of all evil. Relinquishing self, abolishing self is therefore the primary concern in Buddhism. It is the concern of every religion, but Buddhism stands unique in its ethical discipline designed to root out everything that inflames the self. But, overstressing non-attachment from a purely individualistic point of view can lead to isolation and a socially irrelevant ethic. Pneuma affirms this social dimension. It signifies the fact that to be is to be related; ‘all existence is co-existence.’ Man is therefore a socially responsible being. Authentic being is not what one attains for oneself, but something that is shared; something that brings persons into relationships with one another. Love is the basis of this shared life. It is love alone that is capable of uniting persons in such a way as to negate exclusive individuality and to complete and fulfil personality. But if one is not disciplined in non-attachment and forgets the ideal of self-obliteration, one will turn love and inter-personal relationship into a selfish game. Therefore anatta, with its stress on non-attachment will always be a safeguard against such a danger.”
Three, the transcendent dimension. Annatta means the realization of emptiness, a state of bliss where the self has been completely transcended. de Silva offers his pneumatological cosmo-anthropology as a means for Buddhists to have an intellectually satisfying solution to the contradiction of apparent annihilation. Here pneuma means the capacity for transcending oneself, of being transcended, of going out of oneself and beyond oneself, of losing oneself in communion with Reality. One ceases completely to be a self contained subject by going out of oneself, but the primal man’s self-hood is always being fulfilled by being transcended. “The underlying principle is that communion differentiates by negating exclusive individuality and by perfecting personality. Personal identity will be retained in a complete harmony without that identity being expressed in the exclusiveness of self-contained individuality.” “Anatta serves to stress the non-egocentric aspect and Pneuma the relational aspect of personhood. Anattii-Pneuma therefore signifies what might be called non-egocentric-relationality, or egoless mutuality. Thus, the anattii-pneuma formula captures in a nutshell, as it were, the essence of the nature of man.”
In order to round out the ammount of work ive contributed here, I would like to add several more to this, Fourthly that the God-Skeptical Buddhist, recognizing that he is a spiritual being can be brought to the knowledge of God and be made aware of his freedom in God. Creaturely freedom subject to the effects of Karma and delusion can never be considered such without grounding it in God’s freedom, and God as Spirit is perfectly free, and because our own spirit is determined by his freedom our freedom is a gift to be treasured for its own sake, liberated from sin karma by the regeneration of the Spirit. From Barth again:
This is the unfathomable abyss into which we consciously or unconsciously gaze whenever we say I, Thou, He or She, or use any personal or possessive pronouns. Behind this I, Thou and He, as also behind Mine, Thine and His, there always stands unexpressed but necessarily latent the human self and therefore the human freedom which we cannot acquire for ourselves and which can and actually is given us only by God, because He alone is originally free
Fifthly so that he can attend to his duties as a free creature and glorify God which is the chief end of man, thereby totally rejecting the sentiment of Nietzsche who characterizes the “No” to Spirit, the No to God, the No to other men, the attitude of the “Self-for-sake-of-self”. Barth explains the anthropology of man through his relationship to Jesus Christ this way,
Real man lives with God as His covenant-partner. For God has created him to participate in the history in which God is at work with him and he with God; to be His partner in this common history of the covenant. He created him as His covenant-partner. Thus real man does not live a godless life-without God. A godless explanation of man, which overlooks the fact that he belongs to God, is from the very outset one which cannot explain real man, man himself.
Indeed, it cannot even speak of him. It gropes past him into the void. It grasps only the sin in which he breaks the covenant with God and denies and obscures his true reality.
Calvin tells us that this is done by
placing our trust in Him;
serving Him in obedience to His will;
turning to Him with each of our needs and therefore seeking our salvation and all good things in Him;
worshipping Him with heart and mouth as the One who is the Author of all that is Good.
Calvin is making a summarization of the whole content of his catechism, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the sacraments which will be touched on after completing this book review in an interim post comparing the Noble Eightfold Path with my own understanding of Christian Ethics. (As source material there I will be interacting with but not directly studying or reviewing Vision and Transformation by Sangharakshita)
(I warned you this would be an Evangelical Project)
The Resurrection of The Body
The following chapter covers The Resurrection of the Body, which de Silva categorically denies, at least in some sense, following Barth who affirmed a “Body like” Resurrection, I’ll add de Silva’s explanation for a kind of resurrection, specifically found in the Hebrew conception of community.
Basically soma signifies the corporate solidarity of every in-dividual as he is found in a personal-communal relationship. This is perfectly in line with the personal-communal nature of the self which we considered earlier. Soma stands for both personality and solidarity in a mutual relationship. For St Paul, personality is bound up in the solidarity of historical existence; personal life has meaning and can be lived only in a social solidarity which is essentially a divinely ordained structure. This view of St Paul is rooted in the Hebrew understanding of man, although the word soma has no immediate Old Testament background. Yet in its highest sense of corporate solidarity it has close affinities with the Hebrew word “basar”. This is very likely the point from which Paul started and
The concept of Basar as solidarity is interesting. He quotes J. A. T. Robinson for the definition:
Basar stands for the whole life-substance of men or beasts as organized in corporeal form ….
True individuality was seen to be grounded solely in the indivisible responsibility of each man to God …. It rested, that is to say, in the uniqueness of the Divine Word or call to every man, which demanded from him an inalienable response. It did not in any way reside in him as basar. The flesh-body was not what partitioned a man off from his neighbour; it was rather what bound him in the bundle of life with all men and nature, so that he could never make his unique answer to God as an isolated individual, apart from his relation to his neighbour. The basar continued, even in the age of greater religious individualism, to represent the fact that personality is essentially social.
In the idea that man is called into a responsible relationship with God, soma acquires a distinctive sense in opposition to sarx . J. A. T. Robinson again:
. . . however much the two may come, through the Fall, to describe the same thing, in essence, sarx and soma designate different aspects of the human relationship to God. While sarx stands for man, in his solidarity of creation, in his distance from God, soma stands for man, in the solidarity of creation, as made for God.
“Thus, while there can be no resurrection of the flesh, there is a resurrection of the body. This does not mean, however, that sarx and soma are two different and separable parts of man, one mortal and the other immortal. ‘Each stands for the whole man differently regarded -man as wholly perishable, man as wholly destined for God.’,” from P. Althaus:
The body is, on the one hand, wholly koilia, that is, the sum of the sensual functions which make our earthly life possible; as such it passes away with this earthly world. On the other hand, the body is wholly soma, that is, the career and object of our action, expression and form; as such it is a limb of the body of the risen Christ and will be raised with the personality (though the Hebrew would make no such distinction between the body and the personality). Because the one and the same body is both koilia and soma, any concrete or objective expression of what dies, and what is preserved and purified through resurrection is impossible.
“If we are to understand the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection aright, we must completely rid ourselves of the Greek idea that the material body is bad and evil, and so must be destroyed, and that the immortal soul survives death and cannot be destroyed. In Greek thought, the body was a tomb, as the phrase ‘soma sema’ indicates, and the aim of life was to escape from this tomb. But for Paul, the aim oflife was not escape from the body but the transformation of the body; a re-creation or resurrection of the whole person for life on a spiritual plane” Oscar Cullman puts this point sharply:
“Resurrection is a positive assertion: the whole man who has really died is recalled to life by a new act of creation by God.
Something has happened -a miracle of creation! For something has also happened previously, something fearful: life formed by God has been destroyed.”
de Silva’s theory reminds us that there is nothing in man that is not subject to anicca, dukkha and anatta and (finally) offers a theory of the Christian hope for survival. Meanwhile he expands the concept of annatta far beyond the traditional buddhist definition. “There is nothing in man, no karmic force, that can endure beyond the grave-‘but the word of God endures for ever.’ This ‘word’ is that by which God has called man into a relationship with Him and it is in this relationship that man finds his authentic being, and not in any condition of virtue or spirituality or merit or karmic force of his own. This view therefore reaches the utmost depths of the doctrine of anatta.” It truly could be said, as de Silva already said, that a Christian conception of anatta has the ability to penetrate deeper than the Theravada view.
The Link of Continuity
“The real truth behind the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is that the person continues as a person without the loss of identity. St Paul, using the analogy of the seed, says that it is put into the ground and that something different comes out of it, but this something different is what God has given according to his choice, ‘to each kind of seed its own body.’ St Paul is thus showing by way of analogy that at one and the same time there can be dissolution and difference and yet identity and continuity.” I’m paying close attention to this passage because it must account either for the continuation of the relationship God has with me, or it must account for the continuity of my First Person Perspective continuing after death. He opens with a quote from Emil Brunner:
The concept of the spiritual body (soma pneumatikon) expresses the wholeness of the person as an individuality created by God. I, this particular man, who am not to be confused with anyone else, I am to rise again. ‘I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine’ (Isaiah 43: I). That which is stamped upon us even in this earthly body, our individual character, is not to be annihilated but on the contrary to be perfected. ‘It is not another self than mine that is created, but in “raising” me God preserves myself, in order to perfect it’ (Althaus). The spiritual body is what is to belong to us in eternity as individual persons to whom God in eternity says ‘Thou’
“This earthly body is the organ of distinction, self-expression and individuality in one sphere of existence. The spiritual body is the organ of distinction, self-expression and individuality in another sphere and perfects the distinction, self-expression and individuality that belonged to the physical body. The individual will not be obliterated into nothingness or absorbed in the divine at death. He will continue to be the same individual preserving his identity in a different mode. The phrase ‘spiritual body’ must not be confused with any spiritualistic or naturalistic notions. It must be understood as a double negation which negates both these wrong notions. On the one hand it negates the spiritualistic notion that the spiritual body is the transformation of this present physical body which survives death, or which is in a mysterious way revived at the Parousia. It also negates any dualistic notion of a spiritual entity that continues after death. Further it contradicts the theory of a continuing element such as Vinnana, citta, or karmic energy. On the other hand it negates the materialistic notion that flesh and blood can inherit the Kingdom of God. Spirit is not a department of human biology or psychology. Spirit is, as Tillich says,
God is present to man’s spirit, invading it, transforming and elevating it beyond itself. A spiritual body then is a body which expresses the spiritually transformed total personality of man.
Spirit is the principle of individualisation because it signifies a relationship with God into which man is called, and in which man becomes what he is because God, who is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, calls each one by his own name to a unique fellowship with Him.” “It is the spiritual body which transcends conditioned existence is not the same as the body that lived (na ca so) because there is nothing ‘taken up’ from this body in the resurrection. The whole body dies. On the other hand the spiritual body has an identity and continuity with the physical body, it is no other (na ca anno) because soma is, as Althaus, quoted earlier, put it: ‘the career and object of our action, expression and form.’ But this identity is what is given in a relationship apart from which no individual exists, and it is in this relationship that the individual continues to live here and in the hereafter”.
Replica Theory
de Silva has already shown that the body is the whole person. But he has also shown that the body is the organ of distinction, self-expression and individuality. “At death this body is completely destroyed. In the resurrection God re-creates anew a ‘body’ suited to a new sphere of existence in which distinction, self-expression and individuality are preserved. Because this is a re-creation the spiritual body is not the same as the self which existed in an earthly body (na ca so). But because the re-created body preserves the distinction, self-expression and individuality which belonged to the earthly body, the re-created body is not a different person ( na ca anno) .” If the doctrine of anatta is true, really true, then the doctrine of reincarnation cannot be. Reincarnation implies a survival of the self that is the constitutive right of the person by virtue of existing, it may or may not teach the survival of the first person perspective but it does teach there is an eternal, uncreated, substance (meaning it is a thing) or process that we can call citta, memory, vinnana, or karmic energy or some conglomeration of them all, which contradicts anatta. If the doctrine of anatta depends on a dogmatic rejection of both Eternalism and Nihilism, then re-creation is necessary. “Some modern theologians who reject the view that man’s soul persists after the decease of the body have sought to account for the post-mortem identity in God’s memory of us. After I die I will cease to exist but God will go on remembering me, and to be remembered by God is to have my identity preserved. In other words I participate in eternity by being remembered by God.
John Hick has critically examined this view in Death and Eternal Life and found it wanting. According to him this view postulates ‘a static, frozen immortality’. He advocates a much more helpful view, that at the moment of our death God creates ‘an exact psycho-physical “replica” of the deceased person’. He is using the word ‘replica’ not in the sense of a duplicate but in a special sense (please note quotes) to give content to the notion of resurrection. He speaks of resurrection as ‘replication’. Using an illustration he explains what he means:
The pattern of the body can be regarded as a message that is in principle capable of being coded, transmitted, and then trans-lated back into its original form, as sight and sound patterns may be transmitted by radio and translated back into sound and picture.
We should be quite clear that it is not the living organism, the body itselfbut ‘its encoded form that is transmitted’. This encoded form will, as Norbert Wiener, whom Hick quotes, says, contain:
“the whole pattern of the human body, of the human brain with its memories and cross-connections, so that a hypothetical receiving instrument could re-embody these messages in appropriate matter, capable of continuing the processes already in the body and the mind, and of maintaining the integrity needed for this continuation by a process of homeostasis.”
“So it is possible to speak of the resurrection or ‘replication’ of the person who dies as the same one who was ‘encoded’ in his earthly life.
We might say that this encoded form contains the whole of man’s karma-his thoughts, words and deeds. But here we use karma in a special sense. It has no inherent power to transmit or re-embody itself. It has to be brought to life by an act of creation.”
This re-created ‘replica’ theory has three relevant aspects critics must consider:
The replica is not the result of self-generation, so life after death is not self-generated.
Just as a replica is not the same as the original, so the one who is resurrected is not exactly the same as the one before death ( na ca so).
Because replication is a re-creation from the encoded form of the psycho-physical organism, the ‘replica’ is not anything other than the original (na ca anno).
This replica theory thus gives us a new understanding of the truth implied in the formula na ca so, na ca anno. The next section will deal with the state of the afterlife, in the form of a critique of the doctrine of eternal punishment after death (wrongly called here double predestination) but it’s content for the Buddhist-Christian dialogue is minimal, suffice it to say he raises many moral problems with the doctrine of hell, and proposes that Hell be used in its original (patristic) sense found in Clement of Alexandria, meaning purgating fire and that this purgating fire cleanses the ego of attachments and the “I-am” ego and we should move on. The next section will go beyond comparing the Buddhist and Christian concepts of self and compare The Kingdom of God with Nirvana.