In the penultimate year of his
life, William Q. Judge was preoccupied with the question of reincarnation and
Christianity, penning two articles on the topic. He explored the notion
of reincarnation in the Kabbalah and the case of Origen. He was a pioneer on
this question, and in his various writings on the topic, presented most of the basic arguments and biblical quotations
that are used today.
All this
is to be had in mind in reading Jeremiah,
"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest out
of the womb I sanctified thee"; or in Romans
ix, v, 11, 13, after telling that Jacob and Esau being not yet born,
"Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated"; or the ideas of the
people that "Elias was yet to first come"; or that some of the
prophets were there in Jesus or John; or when Jesus asked the disciples
"Whom do men think that I am?" There cannot be the slightest doubt,
then, that among the Jews for ages and down to the time of Jesus the ideas
above outlined prevailed universally. Let us now come to the New Testament.
St. Matthew relates in the
eleventh chapter the talk
of Jesus on the subject of John, who is declared by him to be the greatest of
all, ending in the 14th verse, thus:
And if ye will receive it, this
is Elias which was for to come.
Here he
took the doctrine for granted, and the "if" referred not to any
possible doubts on that, but simply as to whether they would accept his
designation of John as Elias. In the 17th
chapter he once more takes up the subject thus:
10. And his disciples asked him
saying, Why, then, say the scribes that Elias must first come? And Jesus
answered and said unto them; Elias truly shall first come and restore all
things. But I say unto you that Elias is come already, and they knew him not
but have done to him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of Man
suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John
the Baptist.
The
statement is repeated in Mark, chapter
ix, v. 13, omitting the name of John. It is nowhere denied. It is not among
any of the cases in which the different Gospels contradict each other; it is in
no way doubtful. It is not only a reference to the doctrine of reincarnation,
but is also a clear enunciation of it. It goes much further than the case of
the man who was born blind, when Jesus heard the doctrine referred to, but did
not deny it nor condemn it in any way, merely saying that the cause in that
case was not for sin formerly committed, but for some extraordinary purpose,
such as the case of the supposed dead man when he said that the man was not
dead but was to be used to show his power over disease. In the latter one he
perceived there was one so far gone to death that no ordinary person could cure
him, and in the blind man's case the incident was like it. If he thought the
doctrine pernicious, as it must be if untrue, he would have condemned it at the
first coming up, but not only did he fail to do so, he distinctly himself
brought it up in the case of John, and again when asking what were the popular
notions as to himself under the prevailing doctrines as above shown. Matthew xvi, v. 13, will do as an
example, as the different writers do not disagree, thus:
When Jesus came into the coasts
of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, Whom do men say that I am? And
they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others
Jeremias or one of the prophets.
This was
a deliberate bringing-up of the old doctrine, to which the disciples replied,
as all Jews would, without any dispute of the matter of reincarnation; and the
reply of Jesus was not a confutation of the notion, but a distinguishing of
himself from the common lot of sages and prophets by showing himself to be an
incarnation of God and not a reincarnation of any saint or sage. He did not
bring it up to dispute and condemn as he would and did do in other matters; but
to the very contrary he evidently referred to it so as to use it for showing
himself as an incarnate God. And following his example the disciples never
disputed on that; they were all aware of it; St. Paul must have held it when
speaking of Esau and Jacob; St. John could have meant nothing but that in Revelations, chap. iii, v. 12.
Him that overcometh will I make a
pillar in the temple of my God and he shall go no more out.
The Path, February, 1894
The issue
of Lucifer for February has valuable contributions under "Notes and
Queries" on this subject, and from that I extract something. Beausobre[1]
says:
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.
Franck's 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:
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...
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.
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."
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.
The Path, May, 1894
[1] Isaac de Beausobre (8 March 1659
– 5 June 1738) was a French Protestant churchman, now best known for his two-volume
history of Manichaeism, Histoire Critique de Manichée et
du Manichéisme .
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