Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Reincarnation and Christianity Message-ID: Date: 20 Mar 91 08:44:23 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 47 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , emory!dragon!cms@gatech.edu writes: > In article , sucram@cat.de (Marcus Halbe) writes: > > We're having a controversial discussion here in Germany whether > > there has been the concept of cyclic reincarnation of the soul > > through several physical bodies at sometime in christianity. > I know of at least one professor at my university who sincerely > believes in reincarnation today; he is a self-professed Christian. I > had a conversation with him about this once, and he said that early > Christianity had a strong belief in reincarnation and he has simply > gone back to the primitive church. I seem to recall that his theory > is based on some kind of gnosticism but I'm not sure. I think he As far as I know, there is NO evidence of a belief in reincarination by any early Christian group, gnostic or otherwise. People who make this claim seem to me to be confusing it with a rather different kind of belief about souls that *was* moderately common (especially in the gnosticizing groups, but also in heavily neo-platonic circles within orthodoxy -- Origen is a principle figure often cited in this context.) Some idea of reincarnation was known to the Greeks, and the Pythagorean school seems to have held this as a doctrine (called "metempsychosis" -- "transfer of souls"). There was also a rather DIFFERENT notion, stemming from Platonic philosophy (and not inconceivably *influenced* by Pytha- goreanism) that each soul is pre-existent from eternity and becomes incarnate in a human being. Neo-platonism tended to emphasize this as a *separation* between the material and spiritual, a severe tribulation for the soul. This dualistic aspect was made much of, with lots of mythical machinery, by the gnostics, and despite some sympathy with the doctrine by some early fathers, pre-existence of souls was eventually anathematized as heterodox (mostly, because of its dualism and because of its suggestion that souls were coeternal with God and thus were not created -- contradicting the credal statements about Creation.) Literally ALL of the evidence that I have seen cited by advocates of reincarnation is a MISREADING of the neo-platonic evidence as if it were neo-pythagorean. This shows either ignorance of the ideas of the time, or a wilful "forcing" of the data to "fit" their own idee fixe. -- Michael L. Siemon "O stand, stand at the window, m.siemon@ATT.COM As the tears scald and start; ...!att!attunix!mls You shall love your crooked neighbor standard disclaimer With your crooked heart."