What Does The Bible Say About Reincarnation?

My past several posts have explored the Christian teaching about the resurrection of the body and the promise of eternal life. One opposing view that I have not explored in any great depth is reincarnation, the idea that after death an individual survives and later enters a new body, not necessarily human. In April, 2010 I wrote The Mystery of a Butterfly,

Recently, I received an unpublished essay by an author struggling with the sudden death of his first wife while they were on vacation in Mexico many years earlier. He honored her request to be cremated at once and now struggled with the mystery of what happened and its meaning in his own life.  What had become of the molecules and atoms that once comprised her body? 

I will not attempt to emulate the beauty and profundity of that author's writing—he is a newspaper man with a working knowledge of modern scientific theories. He is also a Christian with a deep faith.

His questions:

• Is this universe all a matter of chance? 

• Or is there an omnipotent, all-knowing Creator who has designed it all? 

• What hope lies beyond death? 

• Is there some kind of parallel universe to which the dead go? 

• How does the promise of resurrection differ from reincarnation and the recycling of matter?

• Why do these mysteries demand humility?

Bob Schwarz was the author of that unpublished essay,  Tiger Behind Me, River Ahead. He permitted me to publish it in a series of three blogs in May, 2010. Check out,

DEATH, PARTICLE PHYSICS AND OTHER IMAGININGS ON MY PATIO

I now  had to believe that God very likely created just one building block for everything in this universe and that He is that building block or creation itself. He did name Himself  in front of Moses, "I AM."  Recalling that the Holy Grail for physicists today is a uniform theory that would explain how our universe works with the four fundamental forces of nature—the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity—I became audacious with another wish: that  physicists  poke around with an equation  even more straightforward than E = mc2 . Let them try: G = R—God Equals Reality. 

To follow Bob's other writings go to his blog: Exodus Trekkers. I especially recommend his comments about his brother Lester, A Trek From Bondage To Freedom.

If the misguided teaching about reincarnation troubles you or someone you know I further commend the following to your careful study: What does the Bible say about reincarnation? | Bible.org

Christianity rejects reincarnation for ten reasons. 

1. It is contradicted by Scripture (Heb 9:27) 

2. It is contradicted by orthodox tradition in all churches.  

3. It would reduce the Incarnation (referring to Christ’s incarnation) to a mere appearance, the crucifixion to an accident, and Christ to one among many philosophers or avatars. It would also confuse what Christ did with what creatures do: incarnation with reincarnation. 

4. It implies that God made a mistake in designing our souls to live in bodies, that we are really pure spirits in prison or angels in costume. 

5. It is contradicted by psychology and common sense, for its view of souls as imprisoned in alien bodies denies the natural psychosomatic unity.

6. It entails a very low view of the body, as a prison, a punishment.

7. It usually blames sin on the body and the body’s power to confuse and darken the mind. This is passing the buck from soul to body, as well as from will to mind, and a confusion of sin with ignorance. 

8. The idea that we are reincarnated in order to learn lessons we failed to learn in a past earthly life is contrary to both common sense and basic educational psychology. I cannot learn something if there is no continuity of memory. I can learn from my mistakes only if I remember them. People do not usually remember these past “reincarnations.” 

9. The supposed evidence for reincarnation, rememberings from past lives that come out under hypnosis or “past life regression” can be explained—if they truly occur at all—as mental telepathy from other living beings, from the souls of dead humans in purgatory or hell, or from demons. The real possibility of the latter should make us extremely skittish about opening our souls to “past life regressions.” 

10. Reincarnation cannot account for itself. Why are our souls imprisoned in bodies? Is it the just punishment for evils we committed in past reincarnations? But why were those past reincarnations necessary? For the same reason. But the beginning of the process that justly imprisoned our souls in bodies in the first place—this must have antedated the series of bodies. How could we have committed evil in the state of perfect, pure, heavenly spirituality? Further, if we sinned in that paradise, it is not paradisical after all. Yet that is the state that reincarnation is supposed to lead us back to after all our embodied yearnings are over.

The Bible.org site also quotes from The Bible Has the Answer by Henry M. Morris and Martin E. Clark

Further, reincarnation schemes make men’s spiritual advancement contingent upon his mortal efforts, attempting to make merit outweigh demerit. Christianity shows, however, that salvation cannot be earned by sinful man, but rather, it is merited by Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death and resurrection for all who believe. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). 

Also, many theories of reincarnation hold that man’s spiritual, physical, and moral conditions are determined by a former life and therefore not under his control. Physically, this has led to a passive, pessimistic acceptance of untold misery that was actually unnecessary. Spiritually, it is even more devastating. The Bible reveals that no one is bound in his sins against his will, and though born under Adam’s curse, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Through God’s forgiving grace, “though your sins be as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool” (Isaiah 1:18). Consequently, the Christian does not worry about his merit outweighing his demerit, for his sins have been forgiven, God having promised, “I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). 

Finally, some people attempt to equate reincarnation with the Christian doctrine of resurrection, but in doing so, violate the meanings of both reincarnation and resurrection. Reincarnation advances a future life on earth, bound by similar constraints and physical laws, while the resurrection speaks of that time when earthly bodies with all their accoutrements will be transformed and fitted for their eternal estate (John 5:29). Reincarnation holds that matter is essentially evil, while resurrection demonstrates that there is no moral dualism between matter and spirit. Reincarnation posits a future life in a different body (or even a different order of physical life), while resurrection promises that one’s own body will take on a new, incorruptible, glorified form. Describing the resurrection, Paul stated, “It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body . . . it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42, 44).