www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Did the Church accepted reincarnation in the early times?

Currently I'm doing a probation to be a Philosophy's teacher, observing a class. Then the teacher said that the reincarnation was accepted until the V century, being suppressed by a Pope's encyclical. Could you please comment the question?

I knew that Origin defended and I said that was not admitted by the Church in its entirety.

But now I read some resources that affirmed Origen do not defended it, but only his disciples. And contemporary Fathers of the Church rejected the reincarnation thesis.

I asked about a wise priest and he only said, if St. Paul, one of the first christians, said that without the resurrection our faith is vain, the Church could not believed in the reincarnation. However, I did not consider that argument sufficient, as do not leave out the possibility of others christians assuming it, by Greek influence, for example.

I know of nothing in Scripture that would support belief in reincarnation. If anyone in the early Church accepted the notion, it must have been due to other influences.

Followers of kardecist spiritism, a religion which appeared in France during the XVIII, I think, very strong today in Brazil, says that Biblical passage "Who do not born from the high..." indicates the belief in the reincarnation.

Well, I am no theologian or church historian. I am just a guy. In any event, I think Origen, through Hellenistic, pagan, influences, taught "that the life of the soul did not begin when the soul was joined to the body", but that the soul preexisted and had fallen in that earlier state - a belief condemned by the Church.

On life after death, I always thought Origen believed not in reincarnation but more in the possibility of universal redemption for all souls, which theme would later be taken up by the late Hans Urs von Balthasar in today's day and age. I know of no major current within early Christianity to have believed in reincarnation per se, not even among the gnostics I think.

Remarkably, however, there is a major portion of Judaism, specifically some Hasidim (with names like the Baal Shem Tov from centuries back near Ternopil, Ukraine) who propagated a Jewish mystical text called the Zohar which can be dated to the 11th Century A.D. but which some attempt to date back all the way to the time of the writing of the Talmud. These Hasidim believe the Zohar propagates a belief in the transmigration of souls after death. They also believe Judaism allows for panentheism.

In any event, it seems to me, the belief in any transmigration of souls after death In Christianity was clearly not really considered by any I think. Don't know if this helps, but it is only my 3rd post and I'm just figuring my way around. Very nice forum and I am glad I found it.

The Church never accepted "reincarnation"; i.e., that the human soul could be embodied multiple times. Origen was condemned not for teaching reincarnation, but the preexistence of the human soul. That is, like the good neo-platonist he was, Origen believed that since it was immortal, the soul must have existed from the beginning of creation. The souls of every person who ever lived and ever would live were just "out there", and were plopped into a human body whenever a new person was born. But Origen gets fuzzy about what happens after a person dies. In essence, the soul goes back "out there" until the general resurrection, at which point we run into Origen's doctrine of Apocatastasis, which is another story.

The Second Council of Constantinople, when it condemned Origen, did so for both his doctrine of the preexistence of souls and of general Apocatastasis (yet nobody every condemned Gregory of Nyssa for teaching Apocatastasis, probably because Gregory was more cautious in saying that God "desired" to restore all of creation, and not asserting that God "would" restore it).

They also point to biblical texts like Job 1:21 (see especially the King James Version, or Septuagint perhaps) as hinting at reincarnation, since for them reincarnation is a teaching that is best left not explicitly written down, but orally taught.

The short answer is "no", and it is implicit in the rejection of Origen's theory of the preexistence of souls by the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Each human person is a unique psychosomatic entity--one body united to one soul, created at conception, and destined to remain united for all of eternity.