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"Reincarnation," or multiple lives, is a teaching that is universal. Most of the population of our planet, for most of its history, has believed in "polybiography," or multiple lives for the same soul.
If the soul is immortal-- and all faiths agree that it is-- it must be doing something. Since it is God's will that all souls discover Christ-- and the Scriptures teach that it is-- this does not mean that all souls will know Christ at the same time. Indeed, we can see easily that they do not. Different souls obviously grow at different rates, and some souls are in "pre-school," while others have graduated at the university-level. But, with the passage of time, all souls can move into enlightenment.
Early Christians almost universally taught the idea, and many ancient references ascribe this teaching to Jesus. Indeed, the current "official New Testament" teaches that "John the Baptizer was Elijah." Also,in John chapter 10, the disciples asked Jesus, about the blind man, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, so that he was born blind?" This indicated that they must have believed in karma, for the man was recognized as possibly sinning before he was born.
And when Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was, they answered that he might have been "Isaiah... or one of the prophets." So, they must have believed it possible that the "prophets" could return. This is the teaching of reincarnation. Paul wrote, "Whatever a man soweth, that he must also reap." But in our visible world, this does not occur. Many mean, evil, dishonest people prosper, and seem "successful," even though they clearly do not deserve the "reward" of success. The implication is that this "sowing and reaping" must occur in the afterlife.
As far as the Scriptures of the Jews ("Old Testament") are concerned, it is well-known that polybiography was a very common teaching among the Jews. As one example, Job said, "Naked came I from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there." Polybiography is the only system that makes pure justice possible. If we come from "nowhere" at birth, and return to "nowhere" at death, there can be no justice. But God is just in all His ways, and so, the overall picture of the cosmos must be larger than just the events of this one microscopic planet.
Entire books have been written on the fascinating subject of Christianity and reincarnation, so I will not be able to address the whole question exhaustively in a single article. But I have carefully examined every philosophy from every variety of Christianity (having attended over fifty churches), and I have spoken for hours with ministers from many Christian denominations. No one has been ever able to make sense of the cosmos, without including some form of reincarnation. It is the only view that truly makes sense of all the "evil" in the world.
As for Jesus, reincarnationists believe that his soul's reincarnation as Jesus was the end of a long line of incarnations. (This word comes from Latin, and means simply "in flesh.")
It does not change the idea of reincarnation, no matter what the origin of his physical body. When the egg meets the sperm, in the womb, and forms a "zygote," it grows biologically in that environment and becomes a separate and true "individual" upon taking its first independent breath.
After that point, the soul is irreversibly, irrevocably locked into the body, and can never leave it except for short periods.
I'll check around and see whether I can find a good book on this subject, as your question is very deep and important, and it deserves a thorough answer.
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Thursday, January 04, 2007
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I find your particular concept of reincarnation very interesting.... Now, I am a PanDeist, and PanDeism is not inherently a reincarnation-heavy belief system (you can look up PanDeism on Wikipedia for more info on that), but I have some beliefs about reincarnation that I find fit in with PanDeism, with the idea that we are bits of the energy temporarily dispersed from God.... it is my strong suspicion that whatever energy goes into what could be called the human soul is indeed recycled, but not necessarily all at once....
Picture this: you have three cups of gatorade, one lemon-lime, one fruit punch, and one riptide rush (which is basically grape and therefore is a hazy purple).... these are the souls of some existing persons who die.... now, pour those three cups into a bowl and they will run together (and the color will probably be some unappetizing dark greenish-brown, but unimportant in this analogy).... now, pour out the contents of that bowl into three new cups, and you have created three unique new mixes, although you might be able to figure out how much of each original flavor went into each of the new blends, perhaps by taste alone!! But instead of a bowl we have an ocean, and a few billion cups (constantly going out and coming in), and you have the human race....
Of course, with the population constantly expanding you have "new" material (i.e. additional energy) being added to the mix all the time, mixed in with that of the old souls, which are getting stretched thin).... ultimately, every one of us has some drop of most every person who has lived before-- there's a little bit of Jesus in all of us, a little bit of Buddha, some of Moses and Muhammed and Confucious....
Perhaps bits and pieces of the previous memories and personalities survive, which would explain a lot of things, deja vu, strange dreams, some internal conflict and turmoil, even mental illnesses.... but I also think that some personality aspects would blend to make a particularly strong mix.... the point of such a process would be to improve the quality of these bits and pieces through mixing, cooking in the oven of life experience, then remixing and cooking some more.... like the folding and refolding of steel to cauterize impurities, perhaps the stuff that souls are made of is similarly purified, rarified, led to the point where it is worthy of rejoining God when the Universe meets its end!!
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