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T h e F a t h e r s K n o w B e s t
Reincarnation
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This Rock
Volume 6, Number 4
 April 1995 
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NEW Agers claim the early Church believed in reincarnation. Shirley MacLaine records being taught that "the theory of reincarnation is recorded in the Bible. But the proper interpretations were struck from it during an Ecumenical Council meeting of the Catholic Church in Constantinople sometime around 553 A.D., called the Council of Nicaea" (Out on a Limb, 234-5).
Not only was there not a council held in Nicaea in 553, but the two ecumenical Councils of Nicaea (325 and 787) took place in the city of Nicaea, not in Constantinople (hence their names), and neither dealt with reincarnation. What did take place in 553 was the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople. Its records show it also did not deal with reincarnation (nor has any ecumenical council).
The closest Constantinople II came was, in one sentence, to condemn Origin, an early Church writer who believed souls exist in heaven before coming to earth to be born. New Agers confuse this belief with reincarnation and claim Origin was a reincarnationist. Actually, he was one of the most prolific early writers against reincarnation. Because he is misused by New Agers, we give several quotations from him, along with other quotations, all from before the doctrine was supposedly "taken out of the Bible."
Irenaeus
"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. 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 always hovering, without intermission, through the same pursuits, spend their labor wretchedly in vain" (Against Heresies 2:33:1 [A.D. 189]).
"With reference to these objections, Plato, that ancient Athenian, who was the first to introduce this opinion, when he could not set them aside, invented the [notion of] a cup of oblivion, imagining that in this way he would escape this sort of difficulty. He 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. 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, since your soul is now in the body, that before it entered the body it was made to drink by the demon a drug which caused oblivion?" (ibid. 2:33:2).
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 anyone 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, the cry of the people will be to have him stoned; they will not even so much as 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, seeing this is to be restored, to be that which they had been?" (Apology 48 [A.D. 197]).
"[W]hat is greatly worthier of belief [is] that a man will come back from a man--any given person from any given person, still retaining his humanity, so that the soul, with its qualities unchanged, may be restored to the same condition , though not to the same outward framework. Assuredly, as the reason why restoration takes place at all is the appointed judgment, every man must come forth the very same who had once existed that he may receive at God's hands a judgment. . . . And therefore the body too will appear, for . . . it is not right that souls should have all the wrath of God to bear; they did not sin without the body, within which all was done by them" (ibid.)
Origin
"[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. . . . Another, 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 [A.D. 229]).
"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, 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'" (ibid.).
"If the doctrine 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. If it should appear that they do not, then the argument based on that supposition is shown to be quite baseless" (ibid.).
"Some might say 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 of John had appeared again by a fresh birth and had come from the dead into life as Jesus [Luke 9:7-9]. 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. 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. 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], the spirit in Elijah and the power in him have gone over to John--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 [A.D. 249]).
"The Canaanitish woman . . . worshiped Jesus as God, saying, 'Lord, help me,' but he answered . . . 'It is not possible to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs.' [Matt. 15:26] . . . [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" (ibid. 11:16).
"In this place [when Jesus said Elijah had 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" (ibid. 13:1).
"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" (ibid.).
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 . . . that the souls of wicked men, on leaving their human bodies, pass into cattle and other creatures" (Against the Heathen 2:14-15 [A.D. 305]).
Lactantius
"[Pythagoreans and Stoics] asserted that the soul is not born with the body, but rather introduced into it, and that it migrates from one body to another. They did not consider that it was possible for the soul to survive the body unless it should appear to have existed previously to the body. There is therefore an equal and almost similar error on both sides [of the pagans]. No one saw that which is most true--that the soul is both created and does not die--because they were ignorant of why that came to pass or what was the nature of man" (Divine Institutes 3:18 [A.D. 307]).
"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, after having had the form of a man, than to live as a swine or a dog? 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] wish to heaven that he alone had been thus senseless! He found also some to believe him, and some indeed among the learned, to whom the inheritance of folly passed" (Epitome of the Divine Institutes 36 [A.D. 317]).
Gregory of Nyssa
"Those who stand by the [pre-existence of souls] do not seem to me to be clear from the fabulous doctrines of the heathen which they hold on the subject of successive incorporation, for if 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 soul passed through many changes are really fitting for the chatter of frogs or jackdaws or the stupidity of fishes or the insensibility of trees" (On the Making of Man 28:3 [A.D. 379]).
"'As for the thinkers,' the Teacher [Basil the Great's sister] went on . . . 'some indeed make human nature vile in their comprehensiveness, maintaining that a soul becomes alternately that ofa man and of something irrational, that it transmigrates into various bodies, changing at a pleasure from a man into a fowl, fish, or beast, and then returning to human kind. While some extend this absurdity even to trees and shrubs, so that they consider their wooden life as corresponding and akin to humanity, others of them hold only this much--that the soul exchanges one man for another man, so that the life of humanity is continued always by means of the same souls which, being exactly the same in number, are being born perpetually, first in one generation, then in another. As for ourselves, we take our stand upon the tenets of the Church and assert that it will be well to accept only so much of these speculations as is sufficient to show that those who indulge in them are to a certain extent in accord with the doctrine of the resurrection'" (On the Soul and the Resurrection [A.D. 379]).
Ambrose
It is a cause for wonder that though [the heathen] do not believe in the resurrection, yet in their kindly care they make provision that the human race should not perish, and so say that souls pass and migrate into other bodies, that the world may not pass away. But let them say which is the most difficult--for souls to migrate or to return, come back to that which is their own or seek for fresh dwelling places? 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" (On Belief in the Resurrection 65-66 [A.D. 380]).
"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? . . . 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 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 [in the resurrection] the form of the body should have been changed?" (ibid. 127).
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" (Homilies on John 2:3 [A.D. 391]).
"[T]he doctrines of the philosopher, if you strip them of their flowery diction, you will see to be full of much abomination, especially when he philosophizes on the soul, which he both honors and speaks ill of without measure. This is the snare of the devil, never to keep due proportion, but by excess on either hand to lead aside those who are entangled by it into evil speaking. 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" (ibid. 2:6).
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" (Hexaemeron 8:2 [A.D. 393]).
Socrates Scholasticus
"[The Emperor Jovinian] even supposed, in accordance with the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato on the exchange of bodies, that he was possessed of Alexander [the Great]'s soul, or rather that he himself was Alexander in another body. This ridiculous fancy deluded him and caused him to reject the negotiations for peace proposed by the king of the Persians" (Ecclesiastical History 3:21 [A.D. 439]).
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