Is the doctrine of reincarnation compatible with Christian dogma?

1. Is the doctrine of reincarnation compatible with Christian dogma? Reincarnation and Christianity“That which is called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist, from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which already existed began to be called Christianity.” ~Saint Augustine, Epis. Retrac., Lib. I, xiii,

2. Biblical Answers Bible does not explicitly teach reincarnation in either the Old or New Testament— But neither does the Bible teach the doctrine of the Trinity, nor Jesus himself teach eternal damnation The absence of direct Biblical warrant for the doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t mean the Bible is against it—the same might be true for reincarnation

3. Many scholars feel that the idea of reincarnation within Christianity existed prior to the gospel and Revelation writings; that it was an unexpurgated part of the early writings Malachi wrote in the 5th century BCE: “Behold, I will send you Elijah (Elias) the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” Reference to this prophecy appears 10 times in the Gospels, and is indicative of belief in reincarnationist doctrine before the ministry of Jesus

4. Origen:anything that defects from God must eventually be brought back to him. As he triumphantly affirmed at the end of his "On First Principles", men are the "blood brothers" of God himself and cannot stay away forever. • Originally all beings existed as pure mind on an ideational or thought level. Humans, angels, and heavenly bodies lacked incarnate existence and had their being only as ideas. • God is pure intelligence and all things were reconciled with God before creation • Individual beings became weary of their union with God and chose to defect or grow cold in their divine ardor. As the mind became cool toward God, it made the first step down in its fall and became soul. The soul, now already once removed from its original state, continued with its defection to the point of taking on a body.

5. Origen, cont. • The Biblical account of man’s “fall” becomes an allegory for a cosmic and metaphysical event wherein pure disincarnate idea (mind) became fettered to physical matter. • Love is one of God's qualities, and it follows that God will take an interest in the redemption of his creatures. After the drama of incarnation the soul must find and assume once again its identity as mind and recover its ardor for God.

6. Origen, cont. • To hasten this evolution, in the fullness of time God sent the Christ, who came both as a mediator and as an incarnate image of God's goodness. • By allowing the wisdom and light of God to shine in one's life through the inspiration of Jesus Christ, the individual soul could swiftly regain its ardor for God, leave behind the burden of the body, and regain complete reconciliation with God.

7. Salvation, Providence, and Grace“Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.” ~Thomas Aquinas • Pauline view: heaven and hell are the only two possible final destinations of humanity • But what of those who are not “saved”? Should the millions of Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and others, all of whom have a sense of personal immortality, be merely written off? Should a newborn, unbaptized baby who dies be cast to eternal damnation?

8. Hell = loss of being • Heaven = fullness of being While not denying the notion of hell for those who utterly lose their sense of personal being, heaven is not necessarily the total plenitude and total realization of being If we believe in the possibility of an afterlife at all, we must face the possibility of spiritual entropy: in some cases annihilation of being is inevitable (i.e., hell) Likewise, other beings long for some sort of return to earth, another chance to do and learn more, perhaps after growing weary of a perfect world (i.e., heaven)

9. How would you answer Him if He asked you to return and work for Him, to finish a job you did not or could not complete in this life?

10. Christian View of “karma” • Is the Hindu “law of karma” not too mathematical, too concise? • Christ’s love is so generous, so immense, so selfless—there’s no place for such moral calculus • The self-emptyingness of God to which a Christian is called to respond becomes the way of salvation that frees us from the imprisoning aspects of karmic law and enables us to use it as a springboard for release • Instead of weariness at the prospect of submission to the karmic wheel for countless rebirths to come, the Christian could see it as a cause for rejoicing, knowing that s/he is on the way to eternal bliss and everlasting life by being an aid to others on the path • The Christian scheme of salvation can encompass karma and rebirth as the Gospel encompasses and completes Mosaic law

11. Divine Providence“Behind a frowning providence/He hides a smiling face.” ~Wm. Cowper • The fact that God does care for his creatures is Biblical and indisputable; however, what he provides may be a very bitter pill! Christian faith assumes the goodness of God, that love is at the core of all things. • Reincarnation helps mitigate the absurdity and tragic disproportionateness of life, especially when we see our lives as a chapter in a longer evolutionary process of realizing our full moral and spiritual potential available within the infinitely merciful providence of God.

12. God’s Grace • Grace is not a substitute for human goodness; rather, it is the condition of its realization. It is that which makes possible the goodness! • Grace : free will as capital : labor Capital is that which makes possible the enterprise; capital without labor is fruitless. Grace works the same way: it allows us to accomplish those spiritual tasks necessary for spiritual growth

13. Geddes MacGregorProfessor Emeritus of Theology at Univ. of Southern California; taught at Bryn Mawr; Episcopal priest, author of more than 20 books “I cannot personally see any sound reason why reincarnationism should be accounted...irreconcilable with an orthodox Christian view of what God provides for the working out of the salvation that Christ...has made possible for those who can appropriate it. But I do not mean to suggest that it should be promptly inserted into the articles of Christian faith....I do not pretend for a moment that reincarnationism is plainly taught in Scripture, even though [there are] some suggestions of it there....Christians who find the notion helps them to make sense of their own faith...need have no qualms about accepting it as a viable option for an honest Christian. Far from diminishing the force of anything in Christian experience, it may vivify Christian faith, enrich Christian hope, deepen Christian love, and abundantly clarify the human mind.

14. Edgar Cayce (1877-1945)American healer and clairvoyant Cayce was a devout Christian and Presbyterian Sunday School teacher. He devoted his life to go into a self-induced hypnotic state and heal others from great distances. His “readings” were all purely medical for the first 20 years. In 1920? He was very disturbed to find himself relating the previous incarnations of patients, giving a karmic cause for present troubles. It was only after much study and searching of the scriptures that he reconciled himself to the concept of rebirth. Especially constructive about Cayce’s work is its ethical tone. In one reading, addressed to a young man who had written several times for help, Cayce offered this advice: As already indicated, this is a karmic condition and there must be measures taken by the entity to change its attitude toward things, conditions, and its fellow man. So long as mechanical things were applied for physical correction, improvements were seen. But when the entity becomes so self-satisfied, so self-centered, as to refuse spiritual things, and does not change its attitude; so long as there is hate, malice, injustice, jealousy; so long as there is anything within at variance with patience, long-suffering, brotherly love, kindness, gentleness, there cannot be a healing of the condition of this body. What does the entity want to be healed for? That it may gratify its own physical appetites? That it may add to its own selfishness? Then, if so, it had better remain as it is.

15. Stumbling Blocks? How can people have so many past lives when there are more people in the world today than ever before?One objection often raised by skeptics of reincarnation is the question of world population and how it relates to the potential pool of souls available to be reincarnated. With a world population approaching seven billion there are far more people alive today than there has ever been before. In fact, it is a common belief that there are presently more people residing on this planet than have existed throughout the course of human history! Yet if past-life regressions reveal that people have had multiple past lives, then where did this population of souls come from? There simply weren't enough people/souls around in the past to account for the staggering number of people/souls alive today and since more people are born each year than die, the question naturally arises as to how one can account for the fact that more souls are coming into the world than are departing it. This argument has proven to be a successful stumbling block to many and appears to be a potent argument against reincarnation until one looks at the issue in depth as well as takes the time to do the math, at which point they will soon discover that the objection is based on a number of false premises.

16. The first incorrect assumption is that one is reincarnated immediately after death, whereas most literature on the subject suggests an interval of time passes between incarnations, with periods that that may range from weeks to years or even centuries! Like comets, we may all have 'orbits' ranging from short to very long duration indeed, all dependent upon our pace of spiritual development and experiential desires.

17. The second erroneous assumption is that it presupposes the number of souls in existence at any given point in time to be a fixed number. However, the fact is there is no way of knowing how many individual souls exist. This ties in with the third incorrect assumption, which is that new souls cannot or are not being created. Why this is presumed is curious, however, for there simply is no particularly compelling reason that new souls can't come into existence (or 'wink out' of existence, for that matter.) After all, souls have to emanate from somewhere and at some point in linear time to begin their spiritual journey. In fact, such an idea corresponds neatly to the teaching within reincarnation that suggests there are both 'young' and 'old' souls as well as that there are other souls returning to the Creator once they have 'completed their journey' or reached full maturity. As such, from a purely linear perspective, souls may be emanating from the Creator while others are returning to it at the same instance as part of an immense, eternally ongoing process.

18. Another false premise is the assumption that all people have past lives. While it seems that past life memories are common, very few people have ever been regressed to reveal past lives. As such, there is no way of knowing if a particular person has had a hundred, a dozen, one or no past lives at all. In fact, if we work from the premise that there are newly emerging souls coming into physicality all the time, it would make sense that some and, perhaps, many people alive on earth today are on their maiden incarnation and so would have no past lives on their 'spiritual résumé.‘ The final and most egregious assumption is the belief that there really are more people alive today than have existed throughout human history—a belief that has taken on an air of scientific authority but is, in fact, little more than an oft-repeated but utterly fallacious urban legend. In actuality, when the numbers are properly 'crunched' we find that the vast number of people currently residing on this planet today constitute only a tiny fraction of all the humans who have ever lived.

19. Another common problem... • Fundamental question: Is man a part of God, a spark of the Divine? • Or is maneternally separated from God, a fallen creature? • Your answer in part determines your willingness to accept reincarnation as a valid doctrine

20. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,  Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. William Wordsworth (1770-1850)Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

21. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own.... The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.... Be now for ever taken from my sight, What though the radiance which was once so bright. Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower... Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might. We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. Wordsworth, cont.

22. Joseph Addison (1672-1719)Act I, sc. 1 of Cato Eternity—thou pleasing, dreadful thought, Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and dangers must we pass? The wide, th’ unbounded prospect lies before me, But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it. .....................................................................I shall never die. The soul, secure in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; But thou shall flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.

23. John Donne (1573-1631)The Progress of the Soul I sing the progress of a deathless soul, Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control, Placed in most shapes.... For though through many straits and lands I roam, I launch at paradise, and I sail towards home; The course I there began, shall here be stay’d, Sails hoisted there, struck here, and anchors laid In Thames, which were in Tigris, and Euphrates weigh’d. For the great soul which here amongst us now Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow.... This soul, to whom Luther and Mohamet were Prisons of flesh; this soul which oft did tear And mend the wracks of th’ Empire, and late Rome, And lived when every great change did come, Had first in paradise, a low, but fatal room.