(Guest Post) Against Reincarnation
Against Reincarnation by Richard Reinhardt
Reincarnation is such an outrageous idea, you wonder how people ever came to believe in it. After all, it separates the body from the soul, as though it were a garment that could be exchanged for a new one, and thoroughly confuses personal identity. And I think that that’s why the Church rejects it. Christianity is the religion of the person, for when the Divine Person descended to assume the nature of man, He exalted the human person who carries that nature. Reincarnation depersonalizes humanity and the inevitable consequence of it is that it depersonalizes one’s relationship to G-d. Indeed, in a universe of reincarnated souls, no one has a personal relationship with G-d, because he represents any number of other persons who possessed the same soul, and whose sins and merits are taken into consideration in responding to one’s prayers.
Taking a positive approach: It would seem that if G-d descended to present Himself to us in order to save us in this world, when we are separated from Him by all the temptations of the flesh, we can surely be confident that He will present Himself to those who are open to Him after they depart this world and ascend into the realm of being which is the proper domain for the revelation of God’s healing love. For what conceivable reason would He restrain his eagerness to confer the goodness of Hig Glory upon us?
Someone might say: ‘Perhaps G-d wants to give us another chance at the merit of cooperating with His grace, or for the atonement of suffering, so that the Light he confers would have a more perfect relationship to the person receiving it.’ Well, if that’s the issue, there’s a much easier way to address it. Make sure that people live as long as necessary to do all the cooperating they need to do, or suffer all the suffering they need to endure. G-d could just as well have us live 700 years as 70 years, 1000 years as a 100 years. In fact, the Bible tells us that men used to live that long. I think we can assume that each person lives as long as he needs to establish his eternal destiny according to the standards of the Father, hidden from us, as they are, in the mystery of His Wisdom. Indeed, we might even infer from the Biblical stories of our longevitous ancestry, that our lives, which we measure in decades rather than centuries, are as complete when they come to an end as the lives of our forebears who lived so much longer.
Then there’s the argument from empirical data. There are children who purportedly demonstrate a knowledge of a past life that they could not have by any natural means. First of all, even if that did indicate that they were reincarnations of other people, we could not infer from that, that children who don’t have any knowledge of past lives are also reincarnated. At best, it makes a case for saying that the rare child demonstrates knowledge of a past life is reincarnated. Children who don’t aren’t. But even that goes much too far because the doctrine of reincarnation is invoked to explain their remarkable knowledge of another person’s life. It’s not proven by the data. It is a theory to explain the data. It is perfectly legitimate to accept the data but reject the explanation, for which no further proof is offered.
What other possible explanation could there be?
First of all, we don’t need to offer another explanation. It is perfectly respectable to say, ‘I don’t know.’ Don’t we do that all the time when some difficultly comes our way and, no matter how bad it is, we say to ourselves: ‘This is from the loving G-d, it must be for some good end.’ We don’t have to be able to explain God’s Providence in detail (which has not been revealed to us) in order to justify or validate our understanding of His Providence in general (which has been revealed to us). Similarly, we know that the soul is not reincarnated. Okay, I can’t explain how this little girl knows just where some woman hid her wallet before she died, but that doesn’t mean that reincarnation exists. It just means that I can’t explain God’s ways in detail.
Besides that, I think a quick look at the history of astronomy can add light to our problem.
It used to be that the greatest minds agreed that the planets moved in circles. The circle is the perfect form and they held it unfitting to the dignity of the celestial bodies to trace any less perfect an orbit. The intellect alone, uninformed by empirical realities which only the eye could reveal, could not begin to fathom the complexity of astronomical phenomena, or the maze of laws and chaos which governs the heavens. How naive their speculations seem to us, who have grown accustomed to checking out the facts before spinning theories.
We ponder the mysteries of Providence with our rational minds. Where sacred tradition guides the way, we can be certain of our knowledge. But when asked to explain the details, where is the eye that can see what is actually going on? We don’t have one. Our speculations are as groundless as those of the ancient philosophers who assigned circular orbits to the heavenly bodies because by the light of reason, unassisted by concrete knowledge, that’s what seemed right. The only intellectually honest thing to say is that the universe of thought and intention in the Divine creative act that forms a soul is at least as complex as the heavens. How can we, who have no concrete knowledge of what really happens there presume to explain the occasional strange phenomenon that arises?
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9
The confession of ignorance is one of the foundations of faith. In the reports of children who remember what they could not have known, we confront our ignorance and are called to that confession of ignorance which places us before the greatness of G-d.
Richard Reinhardt
I just want to extend my appreciation to Richard for this post. Richard has contributed to a number of topics in the past, and I would extend the invitation to any of you who would like to move beyond only commenting, should you be interested in writing a Post. However, just so we all are aware, the views represented in this post, or in any future post by a Guest, do not necessarily reflect my own.
K.
Well Richard, for one who assumes that the longevity of our ancestors in the Bible is a historical fact & not a symbolic one clearly doesn’t have the Biblical insight to make judgments on what is necessarily right & wrong regarding what the Bible actually says. You may as well also believe that the world was created in six days while your at it. Reincarnation is in any case more plausible than the idea of a bodily resurrection. Reincarnation as a means of living successive lives until one achieves perfection is more plausible then believing in resurrection. Since you may believe that life begins at conception, how can an embryo have a bodily resurrection? A quick insight into anthroposophy will do you some good, so as not to make appalling statements such as: “Reincarnation is such an outrageous idea”.
Comment by Andreas Saint-Prix — January 18, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
This post had a rather Gnostic flavour. “Flesh is bad, spirit is good, the good spirit must not be permitted to reinhabit evil flesh, etc.” I accept this notion of the need to either progress or regress, as nothing in our universe seems to be truly static. But given the Biblical teachings about the ressurection of the body “incorruptible”, I would suggest that after this life, the spirit obtains either a greater body (the heavenly body) or, alternatively, either an inferior body or none at all (hell). By no means does this summarize my views on the afterlife, but I do believe that bodies are of cosmic importance.
Comment by Theophilus — January 18, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
For Andreas: Why would an embryo *not* be able to have a resurrection? Everything that is needed for a life is present at conception…passed on from both the female and male parents. If everything needed for a body, and a life, is present at conception, and simply needs to age…that is, develop or, as we are used to, AGE…then the idea of even this tiny embryo resurrecting is completely plausible. A quick look into basic biology might likewise do *you* some good…
For Richard: “Reincarnation depersonalizes humanity and the inevitable consequence of it is that it depersonalizes one’s relationship to G-d.”
I question this. Mainly, i question the assurance you hold that humanity and personality, as it is, depends on a *personal* relationship with God.
The singe sin of one affected many…the single act of grace of one, likewise affected, and still affects, many. That is, one man’s act damned us all. One man’s act saved us all.
I question the basis of implying humanity is not fully human apart from such a *personal* relationship. God calls *us*, collectively, a body.
One body.
Comment by stephanie — January 18, 2008 @ 6:16 pm
I have always thought that reincarnation, believed in by millions, is a sad and sorrowful idea, perhaps thought up by men to explain life, or perhaps initiated by evil spirits to cause a soul to focus away from Gods saving grace. As for people who “remember” past lives, so much of it is silly and cannot be proven. Some of it is based upon fact and I have read many different explanations of this. In some cases, I believe that the “inherited memories” are a part of it……we are all very much a part of the grandmothers and grandfathers and families who went before us. However, I have also read, that sometimes an evil spirit may be to blame, feeding facts and truths to some deluded soul, to be uncovered and wondered about, in the hopes that it will be turned away from any saving grace of Christ, to the occult, or some other religion. After all, spirits have been around since the beginning of time and have knowledge also of many things, and how better to confuse a soul than to suggest that this life is only one of many and the things of the Bible are not true. For does the Word of God not say, “It is appointed for a man to die once and then be judged……” Kate
Comment by Kate — January 19, 2008 @ 10:19 am
I basically agree with this blog entry.
Comment by Anonymous — January 19, 2008 @ 7:31 pm
Hi Andreas,
I made no commitment to the historicity or symbolic meaning of the longevity of our ancestors, but who am I (and I might add, who are you) to be so certain that the Biblical text is not historical? Were you there? I can’t help but wonder what you do with the six days of creation, after all, the first and second and third days came and went without the benefit of a sun! Your judgment that reincarnation is more plausible than resurrection is interesting. It’s a shame you didn’t explain what you mean.
Richard
Comment by Richard — January 20, 2008 @ 11:35 am
Hi Stephanie,
You wrote: “Reincarnation depersonalizes humanity and the inevitable consequence of it is that it depersonalizes one’s relationship to G-d.”
I question this. Mainly, i question the assurance you hold that humanity and personality, as it is, depends on a *personal* relationship with God.
Richard: If G-d doesn’t acknowledge us as individuals who possess the dignity of human persons, who will?
Comment by Richard — January 20, 2008 @ 12:54 pm
dignity of human persons as a *whole* was my point.
Comment by stephanie — January 20, 2008 @ 2:28 pm
Coming back to life after being dead is an idea not acceptable to many. Would God allow someone to return to life to spend the same shameful life again? Will it not defeat the purpose of death? Why do we die? Is it not because we have served our usefulness? Why are we born? Is it not because God thinks we would be useful in the new environment?
At Matthew 9:17 it is written, “Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” New wine is not poured in old wineskin. If wine is the soul and wineskin is the body, then it means new souls are born in new bodies. Now is the union of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ was reincarnation or resurrection?
God is pure spirit and the soul in human body is just the wine, a mere fermented juice. It means a mere drop of pure spirit trickled to add flavor into the wine that was in Jesus. Jesus was different to us human because He had God’s pure spirit in him and we are without it. Jesus was the new personification of the familiar form of Adam, he was born sinless; but we are born as sinful as Adam. Jesus was incarnation of God; but we are the incarnation of evil.
So, reincarnation is not altogether a weird idea; we are averse to it because we want to believe in resurrection. We want to cling to this idea without even understanding what it means.
Resurrection means to recall or to evoke someone’s presence so that he may be born again. Prophet Isaiah had predicted that a redeemer would be born. Abraham’s children waited for several centuries; they had hoped a redeemer like Noah, Moses, Samson and several like them would come and free them from bondage. It was an act of attributing human characteristics to abstract idea; the idea was the birth of a redeemer. Their hopes were realized in Jesus. The characteristics of the redeemers combine were conjoined to the spirit of God in body of one person Jesus. It was the resurrection of all those persons as Christ.
It is up to the readers to decide which among the two reincarnations or resurrection is the right belief.
Comment by Abranches — February 4, 2008 @ 11:04 pm