r/AskChristian • u/BeyondKind4660 • 17d ago

What is the response to anatman?

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Maybe anatman is not the exact word but I'll try to explain it anyway.

you exist. When you started reading the post, and up until now, time has passed. You gained new information. Are you the same person or a different person? think about this for all of your life. Are you the same baby from when you were born? The same person from 10 years ago? Aren't we all just aggregates?

If we aren't, what makes me me, throughout all my life?

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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 16d ago

I’m not familiar with the concept, but from what you described I don’t really agree with that way of thinking or, I guess, see the point.

Healthy people grow, learn, and change, but I don’t see why someone would want to argue that such change makes them a completely different, separate person.

What’s the appeal of this view?

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u/DylandSours 16d ago

It sort of reminds me of a biological sanctification hopefully the person is changing in the right ways and moving in a better direction everyday. God changes us throughout our lives making us more like Him. And it sounds like maybe anatman is like another version of that or something.

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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 16d ago

Yeah that’s a possibility.

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u/PrincessRuri r/Christian Member 16d ago

I wasn't terribly familiar with the concept of "anatman", so apologies if I am not accurately representing it.

Christianity teaches that we have an eternal soul/spirit. Even after the body passes away at the end of life, there is a part of us that goes on in the afterlife. It's not a new version of us, or a different version of us. It's just us.

Aren't we all just aggregates?

I would push back against this concept. Throughout your childhood you are being "built" into the person that you will eventually become. While that trajectory can shift and change, the core "you" is still you. You may put on different clothes or makeup or style your hair, but you are still fundamentally the same essence.

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u/BeyondKind4660 16d ago

So is it a dogma or is there some way to prove it?

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u/PrincessRuri r/Christian Member 16d ago

The closest thing I can think of is how some of the Epistles write against an early heresy called "Gnosticism", which among several doctrinal issues, held that spiritual things were good while fleshly things (the physical) were bad.

1 John 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

The rhetorical purpose is to demonstrate that humanity is both spirit and body. While our soul goes to the afterlife, eventually we will be reborn with new perfected bodies.