Reincarnation as Taught by Early Christians by I. M. Oderberg

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Reincarnation as Taught by Early Christians

By I. M. Oderberg

George Borrow loved the Gypsies so much that he roved with them through many

parts of Britain and Europe. Several of his popular books recount his

experiences with them and tell a great deal about this mysterious people whose

origins are still being debated. Some scholars claim they were the original

Bohemians dispersed when their small empire collapsed a few centuries ago;

others point to ancient Egypt -- hence the name: "Gypsies"; or to the

Phoenicians; or again to India.

In The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gypsies of Spain, Borrow speculates upon

the reason for his lifelong fascination with them:

Some of the Gypsies, to whom I have stated this circumstance, have accounted for

it on the supposition that the soul which at present animates my body has at

some former period tenanted that of one of their people; for many among them

are believers in metempsychosis, and, like the followers of Bouddha, imagine

that their souls, by passing through an infinite number of bodies, attain at

length sufficient purity to be admitted to a state of perfect rest and

quietude, which is the only idea of heaven they can form.

Metempsychosis literally means "transference of souls," and is related to the

process of reincarnation. It is often asked, why was reincarnation unknown in

Europe until recently? Why does not Christianity teach it?

Actually, the idea is found in the oldest traditions of Western civilization, as

well as being taught throughout the ancient Near East and Orient. And there is

solid evidence that during its first centuries, Christianity did indeed impart

what it had learned about the pre-existence of souls and their reimbodiment.

Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived during most of the first century AD,

records in his Jewish War (3, 8, 5) and in his Antiquities of the Jews (18, 1,

3) that reincarnation was taught widely in his day, while his contemporary in

Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, in various of his writings, also refers to

reimbodiment in one or another form. Moreover, there are passages of the New

Testament that can be understood only if seen against the background of

pre-existence of souls as a generally held belief. For instance, Matthew

(16:13-14) records that when Jesus asked his disciples "Whom do men say that I

am?" they replied that some people said he was John the Baptist (who had been

executed only a few years before the question was asked). Others thought he was

Elijah, or Jeremiah, or another of the prophets. Later in Matthew (17:13), far

from rejecting the concept of rebirth Jesus tells his disciples that John the

Baptist was Elijah.

John (9:2-4) reports that the disciples asked Jesus whether a blindman had

sinned or his parents that he had been born blind. Jesus replied that it was in

order that the works of God may be made manifest in the blind man, that is, that

the law of cause and effect might be fulfilled. Or, as St. Paul phrased the

thought: we reap what we sow. The blind man could not have sown the seeds of

his blindness in his present body, but must have done so in a previous

lifetime.

The earliest Christians, especially those who were members of one or other of

the Gnostic sects, such as the Valentinians, Ophites and Ebionites, included

reimbodiment among their important teachings. For them it enabled fulfillment

of the law -- karma -- as well as providing the means for the soul to purify

itself from the muddy qualities resulting from its immersion in matter and the

egoism we have developed in the first stages of our journey through earth life.

After the original generations of Christians, we find the early Church Fathers,

such as Justin Martyr (AD 100-l65), St. Clement of Alexandria ( AD 150-220),

and Origen ( AD 185-254) teaching the pre-existence of souls, taking up

reincarnation or one or another aspect of reimbodiment. Examples are scattered

through Origen's works, especially Contra Celsum (1, xxxii), where he asks: "Is

it not rational that souls should be introduced into bodies, in accordance with

their merits and previous deeds . . . ?" And in De Principiis he says that "the

soul has neither beginning nor end." St. Jerome (AD 340-420), translator of the

Latin version of the Bible known as the Vulgate, in his Letter to Demetrias (a

Roman matron), states that some Christian sects in his day taught a form of

reincarnation as an esoteric doctrine, imparting it to a few "as a traditional

truth which was not to be divulged."

Synesius (AD 370-480), Bishop of Ptolemais, also taught the concept, and in a

prayer that has survived, he says: "Father, grant that my soul may merge into

the light, and be no more thrust back into the illusion of earth." Others of

his Hymns, such as number III, contain lines clearly stating his views, and

also pleas that he may be so purified that rebirth on earth will no longer be

necessary. In a thesis on dreams, Synesius writes: "It is possible by labor and

time, and a transition into other lives, for the imaginative soul to emerge from

this dark abode." This passage reminds us of verses in the Revelation of John

(3:12), with its symbolic, initiatory language leading into: "Him that

overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no

more out."

We need at this point to recall what happened after Constantine declared

Christianity to be the state religion of the Roman empire. The church forgot

the injunction about rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's only,

and allowed itself to become entwined with the administration of Caesar's realm

-- the political arena. Its destiny became linked to the fate of the empire

itself and its rulers.

The several differences in teaching among the Christian sects of the fourth

century paralleled the provincial disturbances under the weak emperors, so that

by the time Justinian took charge in 527, he had serious problems. He worked

desperately to reunify his crumbling empire, and proceeded to do so on two

lines: the first prong of his effort was the drive of his army against the

petty states within the larger fold; the second set out to enforce a uniform

canon of belief, to be strictly adhered to. No mean theologian himself, he

launched his campaign against the beliefs of the Nestorian Christians and other

minority groups, and to do so he had to circumvent the decisions of the Council

of Chalcedon (451). He ordered Mennas, the Patriarch of Constantinople, to

convene a local or provincial synod to deal with this and meet the demands of

several churchmen who opposed certain teachings, including Origen's on the

pre-existence of souls.

The local synod accepted the bans phrased by Mennas, but this did not seem to

achieve much. Ten years later, Justinian called the fifth Council of

Constantinople, now known also as the Second Ecumenical Council -- but this is

a misnomer. It was presided over by the incumbent patriarch of Constantinople,

Eutychius, with the presence of 165 bishops. Pope Vigilius had been summoned by

the Emperor, but he opposed the council and took refuge in a church in

Constantinople. He was not present at the deliberations, nor was he

represented.

The Council drafted a series of anathemas, some say 14, others 15, mainly

directed against the doctrines of three "schools" or "heretics," the documents

relating thereto becoming known as "The Three Chapters." Only these papers were

presented to the pope for his approval. Succeeding popes, including Gregory the

Great (590-604), while dealing with the matters arising out of the Fifth

Council, made no mention of Origen's concepts. Nonetheless, Justinian enforced

the acceptance of the decision of what seems to have been merely an

extra-conciliary session. He made it appear to have ecumenical endorsement or

sanction. What concerns us here is that the clerics opposing Origen's

teachings, mainly the one dealing with the pre-existence of souls, secured an

official condemnation, which they tried to make binding.Although Gregory the

Great made no reference to Origen when he took up the affairs of the Fifth

Council, he did accept the trend toward codification of Christian belief that

had been developing during the fifth and sixth centuries, and he could even say

that he "reverenced" the conclusions of the first four Councils as much as he

did the Four Gospels!From the point of view of public teaching, the idea of

reincarnation disappeared from European thought after the provincial synod of

543 and the Fifth Council of 553 -- and this on the grounds that it conflicted

with a proper understanding of the concept of redemption.

Despite the anathemas, Origen's influence flowed down the centuries like a

steady stream, through leading Christians of the day to Maximus of Tyre

(580-662) and Johannes Scotus Erigena (810-877), the immensely erudite Irish

monk. It even reached such late figures as St. Francis of Assisi, founder of

the Franciscan Order (1182-1226), and St. Buonaventura, the 'Seraphic' doctor

(1221-1274), who became a cardinal and General of the Franciscans. No less a

theologian than St. Jerome said of Origen that he was "the greatest teacher of

the early Church after the Apostles."

Apart from Christian sects like the widespread Cathars that included the

Albigenses, Waldenses and Bomogils, isolated individuals -- such as Jacob

Boehme, the German Protestant mystic, Joseph Glanvil, chaplain of King Charles

II of England, the Rev. William Law, William R. Alger, and many modern clerics,

Catholic and Protestant -- have supported the concept of reincarnation on

logical and other grounds. Henry More (1614-1687), the noted clergyman of the

Church of England and renowned Cambridge Platonist, wrote in his long essay The

Immortality of the Soul -- a considerable study of the whole subject of the

soul, with cogent answers to critics of pre-existency. His poem A Platonick

Song of the Soul tells it beautifully:

I would sing the Prae-existencyOf humane souls, and live once o'er againBy

recollection and quick memoryAll that is past since first we all began.But all

too shallow be my wits to scanSo deep a point and mind too dull to clearSo dark

a matter, . . .

Speaking then to Plotinus in the poem, he adds:

Tell what we mortalls are, tell what of old we were. A spark or ray of the

Divinity Clouded in earthly fogs, yclad in clay,A precious drop sunk from

Aeternitie,Spilt on the ground, or rather slunk away.

As More said in his essay mentioned above, "there was never any philosopher that

held the soul spiritual and immortal but he held also that it did pre-exist."

The general opposition of some theologians in the last century is ebbing away as

their successors take a more open-minded stance upon the subject. Clergymen of

varying denominations are beginning to endorse the ancient teachings about the

pre-existence of the soul, reimbodiment in general and reincarnation in

particular. It is spoken about more widely than it has been for centuries, and

the earlier derision based upon a misunderstanding of transmigration has given

way to a more intelligent inquiry.

One of the more common arguments against the idea of rebirth is that we do not

remember our past existences. But there is a memory other than that stored up

among the cells of the brain. Skills, or facility to do or understand certain

areas of thought or activity, often evident in early childhood, surely betoken

a resumption from a past familiarity. Does it matter what the name of a

personality was, if the quality expressed through that lifetime continues into

the present, modified according to the kind and intensity of the earlier period

of self-expression? We so often think of life and death as a pair of opposites.

Whereas in reality life is a continuum, with birth and death the two doorways

into and out of our earth phase. Birth, death and rebirth -- the cycle turns

and completes itself over and over until we refine the dross in our nature into

the pure gold of spirit.

Works consulted for this article include The Ring of Return, An Anthology, by

Eva Martin; The Cathars and Reincarnation, by Arthur Guirdham; Reincarnation, A

Study of Forgotten Truth, by E. D. Walker; Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, by G.

R. S. Mead; Reincarnation in World Thought, compiled by Joseph Head and S. L.

Cranston; The Esoteric Tradition, by G. de Purucker; and Essays and Hymns of

Synesius, translated by Augustine FitzGerald.

(From Sunrise magazine, May 1973. 1973 by Theosophical University Press)

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