Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00418)

Sunday, January 27, 2002

Reincarnation as a Christian tenet is being mentioned.

Here is a good article about that

Dallas


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CHRISTIAN FATHERS ON REINCARNATION

OUR brother George R. S. Mead, the General Secretary of the
European Section T.S., has held that whether or not Origen, the
greatest of the Fathers, believed in reincarnation, the Christian
Church never formally anathematized the doctrine. If this
position is sound there will yet be an opportunity for the Roman
Church to declare the doctrine by holding that the anathema
pronounced was against a species of incarnation or of
metempsychosis not very clearly defined except as a pre-existence
of the soul as opposed to a special creation for each new body.
This declaration can only be made by placing the future lives of
the soul on some other planet after leaving this one. That would
be reincarnation, but not as we understand it.[PARA]The issue of
Lucifer for February has valuable contributions under "Notes and
Queries" on this subject, and from that I extract something.
Beausobre says:[PARA]It is a very ancient and general belief that
souls are pure and heavenly substances which exist before their
bodies and come down from heaven to clothe and animate them. . .
. I only quote it to show that his nation (Jews) believed for a
long time back in the pre-existence of souls. . . . All the most
learned Greek fathers held this opinion, and a considerable
portion of the Latin fathers followed them herein. . . . It has
been held by several Christian philosophers. It was received into
the Church until the fourth century without being obnoxious to
the charge of heresy.[PARA]Beausobre, however, calls the belief
an "error." It would be interesting to know whether it is not the
fact that at about the fourth century the monks and bishops were
ignorant men who would be more likely to take up a narrow dogma
necessary for preservation of their power than to hold the
broader and grander one of pre-existence. Origen died about A.D.
254. He was so great and learned that even in his lifetime other
men forged his name to their own writings. But while he was still
living uneducated monks were flocking into the ranks of the
priesthood. They obtained enough strength to compel Jerome to
turn against Origen, although previously holding similar views.
It was not learning, then, nor spiritual knowledge that brought
about the subsequent condemnation of Origen, but rather bigotry
and unspiritual ignorance. Origen distinctly held as a
fundamental idea "the original and indestructible unity of God
and all spiritual essences." This is precisely the doctrine of
the Isovasya Upanishad, which says:[PARA]When to a man who
understands, the Self has become all things, what sorrow, what
trouble can there be to him who once beheld that
unity?[PARA]Francks Kabbala is referred to in these answers as
saying that Origen taught transmigration as a necessary doctrine
for the explaining of the vicissitudes of life and the
inequalities of birth. But the next quotation throws doubt again
into the question, closing, however, thus:[PARA]When the soul
comes into the world it leaves the body which had been necessary
to it in the mothers womb, it leaves, I repeat, the body which
covered it, and puts on another body fit for the life we lead on
earth. . . . But as we do not believe in metempsychosis, nor that
the soul can ever be debased so as to enter into the bodies of
brute animals...[PARA]There are several ways of looking at this.
It may be charged that some one interpolated the italicized
words; or that Origen was referring to transmigrating back to
animals; or, lastly, that he and his learned friends had a theory
about incarnation and reincarnation not clearly given. My opinion
is that he wrote as above simply as to retrograde rebirth, and
that he held the very identical doctrine as to reincarnation
found in Isis Unveiled and which caused it to be charged that
H.P.B. did not know or teach reincarnation in 1877. Of course I
cannot produce a quotation. But how could such a voluminous
writer and deep thinker as Origen hold to the doctrines of unity
with God, of the final restoration of all souls to pristine
purity, and of pre-existence, without also having a reincarnation
doctrine? There are many indications and statements that there
was an esoteric teaching on these subjects, just as it is evident
that Jesus had his private teaching for the select disciples. For
that reason Origen might teach pre-existence but hold back the
other. He says, according to Franck, that the question was not of
metempsychosis according to Plato, "but of an entirely different
theory which is of a far more elevated nature." It might have
been this.[PARA]The soul, considered as spirit and not animal
soul, is pure, of the essence of God, and desirous of immortality
through a person; the person may fail and not be united to the
soul; another and another person is selected; each one, if a
failure in respect to union with the Self, passes into the sum of
experience; but finally a personal birth is found wherein all
former experiences are united and union gained. From
thenceforward there is no more falling back, for immortality
through a person has been attained. Prior to this great event the
soul existed, and hence the doctrine of pre-existence. For all of
the personal births the soul was the God, the Higher Self of
each, the luminous one, the Augoeides; existing thus from all
time, it might be the cause of rebirths but not itself be
reincarnated, as it merely overshadowed each birth without being
wholly in the flesh. Such a doctrine, extremely mystical and
providing for each a personal God with a great possibility held
out through reunion, could well be called by Origen "a different
theory" from metempsychosis and "of more elevated
character."[PARA]When once more the modern Christian Church
admits that its founders believed in pre-existence and that Jesus
did not condemn reincarnation, a long step will have been taken
toward uprooting many intolerant and illogical doctrines now
held.[PARA]WILLIAM Q. JUDGE[PARA]Path, May, 1894[PARA][PARA]