Body: | What did early Christians believe about...?
(Before 400 AD)
Uninspired records of how early Christians worshipped and what doctrine
they believed!
Click to View See also Reincarnation is not taught in the Bible!
Click to View See also: Major outline: A Christian Analysis of
Reincarnation in Contemporary American Society.
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Reincarnation, New Age
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189AD Irenaeus of Lyons "We may undermine [the Hellenists'] doctrine
as to transmigration from body to body by this fact--that souls remember
nothing whatever of the events which took place in their previous states of
existence. For if they were sent forth with this object, that they should
have experience of every kind of action, they must of necessity retain a
remembrance of those things which have been previously accomplished, that
they might fill up those in which they were still deficient, and not by
always hovering, without intermission, rough the same pursuits, spend their
labor wretchedly in vain. . . . With reference to these objections, Plato .
. . attempted no kind of proof, but simply replied dogmatically that when
souls enter into this life they are caused to drink of oblivion by that
demon who watches their entrance, before they effect an entrance into the
bodies. It escaped him that he fell into another, greater perplexity. For
if the cup of oblivion, after it has been drunk, can obliterate the memory
of all the deeds that have been done, how, O Plato, do you obtain the
knowledge of this fact . . . ?" (Against Heresies 2:33:1-2).
197 AD Tertullian "Come now, if some philosopher affirms, as
Laberius holds, following an opinion of Pythagoras, that a man may have his
origin from a mule, a serpent from a woman, and with skill of speech twists
every argument to prove his view, will he not gain an acceptance for it
[among the pagans], and work in some conviction that on account of this,
they should abstain from eating animal food? May any one have the
persuasion that he should abstain, lest, by chance, in his beef he eats
some ancestor of his? But if a Christian promises the return of a man from
a man, and the very actual Gaius [resurrected] from Gaius . . . they will
not . . . grant him a hearing. If there is any ground for the moving to and
fro of human souls into different bodies, why may they not return to the
very matter they have left . . . ?" (Apology 48).
229 AD Origen "[Scripture says] 'And they asked him, "What then? Are
you Elijah?" [John 1:21] and he said, "I am not."' No one can fail to
remember in this connection what Jesus says of John: 'If you will receive
it, this is Elijah, who is to come' [Matt. 11:14]. How then does John come
to say to those who ask him, 'Are you Elijah?'--'I am not'? . . . one might
say that John did not know that he was Elijah. This will be the explanation
of those who find in our passage a support for their doctrine of
reincarnation, as if the soul clothed itself in a fresh body and did not
quite remember its former lives. . . . [H]owever, a churchman, who
repudiates the doctrine of reincarnation as a false one and does not admit
that the soul of John was ever Elijah, may appeal to the above-quoted words
of the angel, and point out that it is not the soul of Elijah that is
spoken of at John's birth, but the Spirit and power of Elijah" (Commentary
on John 6:7).
229 AD Origen "As for the spirits of the prophets, these are given
to them by God and are spoken of as being in a manner their property
(slaves), as 'The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets' [1
Cor. 14:32] and 'The Spirit of Elijah rested upon Elisha' [2 Kgs. 2:15].
Thus, it is said, there is nothing absurd in supposing that John, 'in the
Spirit and power of Elijah,' turned the hearts of the fathers to the
children and that it was on account of this Spirit that he was called
'Elijah who is to come'" (Commentary on John 6:7.).
229 AD Origen "If the doctrine [of reincarnation] was widely
current, ought not John to have hesitated to pronounce upon it, lest his
soul had actually been in Elijah? And here our churchman will appeal to
history, and will bid his antagonists [to] ask experts in the . . .
doctrines of the Hebrews if they do really entertain such a belief. For if
it should appear that they do not, then the argument based on that
supposition is shown to be quite baseless" (Commentary on John 6:7.).
229 AD Origen "Some might say, however, that Herod and some of those
of the people held the false dogma of the transmigration of souls into
bodies, in consequence of which they thought that the form John had
appeared again by a fresh birth, and had come from the dead into life as
Jesus. But the time between the birth of John and the birth of Jesus, which
was not more than six months, does not permit this false opinion to be
considered credible. And perhaps rather some such idea as this was in the
mind of Herod, that the powers which worked in John had passed over to
Jesus in consequence of which he was thought by the people to be John the
Baptist. And one might use the following line of argument: Just as because
the Spirit and the power of Elijah, and not because of his soul, it is said
about John, "This is Elijah who is to come' [Matt. 11:14] . . . so Herod
thought that the powers in John worked in his case works of baptism and
teaching--for John did not do one miracle [John 10:41]--but in Jesus [they
worked] miraculous portents" (Commentary on Matthew 10:20).
229 AD Origen "Now the Canaanitish woman, having come, worshipped
Jesus as God, saying, 'Lord, help me,' but he answered and said, 'It is not
possible to take the children's bread and cast it to the little dogs.' . .
. [O]thers, then, who are strangers to the doctrine of the Church, assume
that souls pass from the bodies of men into the bodies of dogs, according
to their varying degree of wickedness; but we . . . do not find this at all
in the divine Scripture" (Commentary on Matthew 11:16).
229 AD Origen "In this place [when Jesus said Elijah was come and
referred to John the Baptist] it does not appear to me that by Elijah the
soul is spoken of, lest I fall into the doctrine of transmigration ,which
is foreign to the Church of God, and not handed down by the apostles, nor
anywhere set forth in the Scriptures" ... "But if . . . the Greeks, who
introduce the doctrine of transmigration, laying down things in harmony
with it, do not acknowledge that the world is coming to corruption, it is
fitting that when they have looked the Scriptures straight in the face
which plainly declare that the world will perish, they should either
disbelieve them or invent a series of arguments in regard to the
interpretation of things concerning the consummation, which, even if they
wish, they will not be able to do" (Commentary on Matthew 13:1).
305 AD Arnobius "[M]an's real death [is] when souls which know not
God shall be consumed in long-protracted torment with raging fire, into
which certain fiercely cruel beings shall cast them . . . Wherefore, there
is no reason that [one] should mislead us, should hold our vain hopes to
us, which some men say is unheard of till now, and carried away by an
extravagant opinion of themselves, that souls are immortal, next in point
of rank to the God and ruler of the world, descended from that Parent and
Sire . . . [And] while we are moving swiftly down toward our mortal bodies,
causes pursue us from the world's circles, through the working of which we
become bad--aye, most wicked . . . [and] that the souls of wicked men, on
leaving their human bodies, pass into cattle and other creatures" (Against
the Pagans 2:14-15).
317 AD Lactantius "What of Pythagoras, who was first called a
philosopher, who judged that souls were indeed immortal, but that they
passed into other bodies, either of cattle or of birds or of beasts? Would
it not have been better that they should be destroyed, together with their
bodies, than thus to be condemned to pass into the bodies of other animals?
Would it not be better not to exist at all than, after having had the form
of a man, to live as a swine or a dog? And the foolish man, to gain credit
for his saying, said that he himself had been Euphorbus in the Trojan war,
and that when he had been slain he passed into other figures of animals,
and at last became Pythagoras. O happy man!--to whom alone so great a
memory was given! Or rather unhappy, who when changed into a sheep was not
permitted to be ignorant of what he was! And [I] would to Heaven that he
alone had been thus senseless!" (Epitome of the Divine Institutes 36).
379 AD Gregory of Nyssa "[I]f one should search carefully, he will
find that their doctrine is of necessity brought down to this. They tell us
that one of their sages said that he, being one and the same person, was
born a man, and afterward assumed the form of a woman, and flew about with
the birds, and grew as a bush, and obtained the life of an aquatic
creature--and he who said these things of himself did not, so far as I can
judge, go far from the truth, for such doctrines as this--of saying that
one should passed through many changes--are really fitting for the chatter
of frogs or jackdaws or the stupidity of fishes or the insensibility of
trees" (The Making of Man 28:3).
380 AD Ambrose of Milan "It is a cause for wonder that though they
[the heathen] . . . say that souls pass and migrate into other bodies . . .
But let those who have not been taught doubt [the resurrection]. For us who
have read the Law, the Prophets, the Apostles, and the Gospel, it is not
lawful to doubt" (Belief in the Resurrection 65-66).
380 AD Ambrose of Milan "But is their opinion preferable who say
that our souls, when they have passed out of these bodies, migrate into the
bodies of beasts or of various other living creatures? . . . For what is so
like a marvel as to believe that men could have been changed into the forms
of beasts? How much greater a marvel, however, would it be that the soul
which rules man should take on itself the nature of a beast so opposed to
that of man, and being capable of reason should be able to pass over to an
irrational animal, than that the form of the body should have been
changed?" (Belief in the Resurrection, 127).
391 AD John Chrysostom "As for doctrines on the soul, there is
nothing excessively shameful that they [the disciples of Plato and
Pythagoras] have left unsaid, asserting that the souls of men become flies
and gnats and bushes and that God himself is a [similar] soul, with some
other the like indecencies . . . At one time he says that the soul is of
the substance of God; at another, after having exalted it thus immoderately
and impiously, he exceeds again in a different way, and treats it with
insult, making it pass into swine and asses and other animals of yet less
esteem than these" (Homilies on John 2:3, 6).
393 AD Basil the Great "[A]void the nonsense of those arrogant
philosophers who do not blush to liken their soul to that of a dog, who say
that they have been formerly themselves women, shrubs, or fish. Have they
ever been fish? I do not know, but I do not fear to affirm that in their
writings they show less sense than fish" (The Six Days Work 8:2).
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