Will we tell them it's a false hope?

Jeffrey Long, a prominent researcher in the field of near-death experiences (NDEs), recently did an interview with Danny Jones. Long has collected a large database of NDEs at the NDERF web site. He and his collection of NDEs are often mentioned in discussions of NDEs and related phenomena. I want to comment on some significant parts of his recent interview with Jones.

What should we make of the evidence for reincarnation?

Jimmy Akin recently produced a couple of videos on the subject, here and here, primarily about modern research into reincarnation cases that suggest something paranormal is going on. He discusses the evidence for the cases and addresses the explanatory options. His own explanation seems to have a lot of merit.

Unravelling The Universe

Ben Sinclair's Unravelling The Universe is a good YouTube channel to follow on paranormal issues. He's done interviews with some of the biggest names in the field: Bruce Greyson, Stanley Krippner, Gregory Shushan, etc. There's a lot of valuable material on a lot of subjects.

All hell breaks loose

1. A putative evidence for reincarnation are cases of individuals who have corroborated memories of a past life. I haven't examined any case-studies to verify that claim, but suppose we grant the phenomenon for the sake of argument. Christians often default to demonic possession as the explanation. Suppose we consider that first. Here's one objection:

He accentuates the fact (if it is a fact) that cases of reincarnation involve personal continuity whereas cases possession involve personal discontinuity. 

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/03/possession-reincarnation.html

A problem with Almeder's objection is the basis on which he makes those classifications. It seems to be circular. Do the phenomena themselves provide evidence for that distinction, or is he applying his classifications a priori to the phenomena, where he simply assumes the continuity/discontinuity distinction? How does he know possession is inconsistent with less continuity?

There are, however, other objections to the demonic explanation. Offhand, there's no reason to assume a correlation between a particular demon and a particular decedent whose memories a living person shares. Why would a demon have such intimate knowledge of the decedent? The demon might have such knowledge if both the decedent and the living person who shares those memories are possessed by the same demon, but we'd need evidence that's the case.

2. A more direct explanation for why some people have memories of dead people (assuming, ex hypothesi, that's the case) is that the souls of damned (i.e. human souls) sometimes take possession of the living. 

Some Christians object because they don't think the damned are allowed to contact the living. But there's no theological reason to deny that possibility. The church age is a mixed up time. The saints and the damned aren't separated in this life. The realm of light makes incursions into the realm of darkness while the realm of darkness makes incursions into the realm of  light–like a lighthouse at night. 

The ability of damned souls to contact the living doesn't mean hell has a back door, if we're using "hell" in the technical sense of the final state of the damned. An absolute separation between the two groups only takes place at the day of judgment, not the moment of death.

Yoga memory

Such phenomena as instincts, child prodigies, love at first sight, and déjà vu are sometimes said to be evidence for reincarnation, but they obviously have little probative value, since it is quite possible to give convincing explanations of these phenomena that do not involve reincarnation. More serious as evidence for reincarnation is the phenomenon of yoga memory - the experience of certain people, usually children, who claim to be someone else reborn and to "remember" the previous life. Consideration of such cases was almost entirely unsystematic and anecdotal until the recent work of the medical doctor Ian Stevenson, who in several books intelligently discusses various cases of yoga memory.¹⁹

There are two issues here. The first is whether the cases Stevenson discusses can be relied upon. To my knowledge, no one accuses Stevenson of dishonesty, but criticisms of his methods and conclusions have been raised. For one thing, in the vast majority of the cases that Stevenson discusses, there was contact between the two families - the family into which the child was born and the family the child claimed via yoga memory previously to belong to - before Stevenson was ever on the scene. For another, Stevenson seems to dismiss far too easily the possibility of fraud on the part of the child. For a third, Stevenson has never even attempted to answer the objections of his several critics, and proceeds as if these critics did not exist.²⁰

The second issue is this: assuming Stevenson's cases (and other cases of yoga memory) are genuine in the sense that there was no deliberate fraud, egregious error, etc., what is the most sensible explanation of those phenomena? One explanation, of course, is reincarnation. But are there other, more plausible explanations?

Suppose that telepathic communication between human minds occurs (and I myself have neither knowledge nor even any particularly firm opinion on the matter). If so, there is the possibility that those who have experienced yoga memory have learned what they know about the past person whom they claim to be identical to by telepathic communication with living humans who know those same facts about the deceased person. This may be completely unknown to the person who is having the yoga memory. Indeed, here is a crucial conundrum for reincarnation: claims based on purported yoga memory will be believable only if they can be verified; verification will normally be achieved via the testimony of people who are in a position to know the relevant facts; but that always opens the possibility that the yoga rememberer was somehow in telepathic communication with those same people. So the point is this: one great difficulty for reincarnation is the fact that the strongest evidence for it admits a variety of explanations.

(Davis, Stephen T. After We Die: Theology, Philosophy, and the Question of Life After Death, pp 26-27.)

Reflections on reincarnation

1. I rarely write about Hinduism and Buddhism because it's fairly specialized. Reincarnation is neglected in Christian apologetics because most Christian apologetics is focussed on challenges to Christianity in the West. 

2. Before addressing the specifics, I'd like to make a general observation. Not all paranormal claims are mutually consistent. Compare reincarnation with crisis apparitions. There are reports of dead relatives appearing to a loved one to warn them or give them encouragement during a crisis. But if that's true, then how can reincarnation be true? According to a standard paradigm, reincarnation involves a memory wipe. When a person is reborn, they forget their past lives. Start all over again. 

That rules out crisis apparitions. The dead relative has moved on. Been reincarnated. Started from scratch in a new body, as a baby. Immersed in a new life history. 

They don't remember their loved ones from past lives. At this point they are younger than their children. Reincarnation resets the lifecycle. Your late mother can't appear to you as your late mother. She's now a little girl. 

Reincarnation and crisis apparitions can both be false, but they can't both be true. And I think there's unambiguous evidence for crisis apparitions, whereas the evidence for reincarnation is ambiguous at best. 

3. To my knowledge, apologists for reincarnation offer three lines of empirical evidence: déjà vu, transgenerational birthmarks, and memories of a past life. 

4. Déjà vu

i) I think this is the weakest evidence. Not just weak evidence for reincarnation, but weak evidence that it's even paranormal. 

In my own life I've had déjà vu experiences. One time, sitting at a fast food joint, years ago, I suddenly had the intensive feeling that I'd done this before. I'm pretty sure that I hadn't done it before in this life. But since the establishment was built in my lifetime, it wasn't even possible for me to have been there in a past life. So whatever the explanation, it can't be reincarnation.

Likewise, I've lived in at least two consecutive locations where I had déjà vu experiences. But both of them were built in my lifetime, so that can't be chalked up to a past life. And even if they hadn't been constructed in my lifetime, what are the odds that in a past life I lived in both places–not to mention both places in succession?

iii) Moreover, the sensation I've had is more like a time loop than remembering a past life. It's not the sensation that I was in the same place in a different life, but that this life is repeating itself. 

iv) Sometimes our minds play tricks on us. That's my explanation. 

But assuming for argument's sake that déjà vu demands a paranormal explanation, telepathy is a simpler explanation. What if one person's memories occasionally leak into another person's mind? 

5. Transgenerational birthmarks

i) The claim is that babies sometimes reproduce the unique birthmark of a dead person, like an ancestor. In fact, this has become a TV trope:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReincarnationIdentifyingTrait

ii) I haven't studied the literature in sufficient depth to know if such a phenomenon actually exists. Of course, the appeal is circular. If some babies reproduce the birthmarks of a dead person, then those aren't unique birthmarks.

iii) However, let's stipulate for discussion purposes that the phenomenon exists and demands a paranormal explanation. How would reincarnation be an explanation for replicated birthmarks? On a standard paradigm of reincarnation, the soul (mind, consciousness) transfers from the dead body to a new body. A body-swap scenario. But how would that cause any physical traces? 

iv) Why would reincarnation duplicate birthmarks rather than duplicating the body? If the body is not a double, why the same birthmarks? 

v) What reincarnation have to do with heredity? Why would someone be reborn in the body of a lineal descendent? Isn't reincarnation just the idea that the same soul is reembodied? But that's not a genetic or genealogical relation–as if, to be reincarnated, you must be a reincarnated ancestor. Assuming (ex hypothesi) that reincarnation is true, why can't the soul transfer to a body in a different family tree? To my knowledge, reincarnation is usually treated as independent of lineage. 

vi) It would be interesting to know if there's a history of witchcraft or necromancy in these families. If a baby has the birthmarks of a dead ancestor, is that a family curse? Was the baby hexed? Are the dead (damned) casting a malevolent influence on the living? 

6. Past life memories

i) Suppose for argument's sake that reincarnation is true. Suppose someone underwent 100 past lives. In fact, that's a conservative estimate. How would they remember 100 life histories? Wouldn't their recollection be hopelessly scrambled? How would they remember what they did in each life? Who they knew in each life? 

Memory has a sense of relative chronology. You remember childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, &c. You remember that some things happened to you before other things. 

But if you underwent 100 past lives, how could you possibly keep the timelines straight? Assuming that some people remember events before they were born, that would actually constitute prima facie evidence that reincarnation is false, since it's hard to see how you could keep all those life histories separate in your mind.

ii) An alternative explanation is that those aren't your memories. You're tapping into someone else's memories. They are invading your mind. That doesn't require all the machinery of reincarnation, so it's a simpler explanation. 

iii) To my knowledge, Hinduism has a dualist anthropology while Buddhism has a physicalist anthropology. In Buddhism, humans have no perduring soul. So how is reincarnation even possible? Who's the you that's reincarnated? Weren't you extinguished at the moment of death? A new brain and body won't be you, but a blank slate. 

The logistics of reincarnation

Recently I was considering some additional, internal problems with reincarnation:

i) If accounting for how some people allegedly remember past lives is a problem, then there's the opposite problem of accounting for why most folks have no recollection of former lives. That vastly outnumbers the people who say they remember a past life. So that poses a dilemma for the reincarnational explanation. 

ii) Reincarnation poses daunting logistical problems. Consider the timing. On the one hand, new bodies only become available for souls to reincarnate at the moment of conception. Conversely, souls only become available when the host dies. 

Since the timing of when people die and when people are conceived is random, how is it possible to coordinate the transfer of preexisting souls to new bodies? If reincarnation is true, wouldn't there be shortages in either direction? Bodiless souls and soulless bodies? Souls waiting for a body to become available and bodies waiting for a soul to become available? 

What's the mechanism that synchronizes death and conception so that a soul is freed up at the moment of death at the same time a couple in some part of the world succeeds in fertilizing an ovum? 

In theory, reincarnation could happen between conception and birth. But there's still going to be a logjam or bottleneck since there's no correspondence between when someone happens to die and when a baby happens to be conceived. Those are causally and chronologically independent events.

And what about preemies? Moreover, we keep pushing back viability. So the window for souls to reincarnate a new body is narrowing.  

Birthmarks and reincarnation

One primary putative evidence for reincarnation is the recurrence of birthmarks that correspond to the decedent. For instance, Ian Stevenson, a leading apologist for reincarnation, stresses that line of evidence. With that in mind, here's an interesting story:

Meet baby MilliAnna, the fourth generation of women in her family to be born with a wild streak of white hair. 

The 18-month-old, from Ridgeland, South Carolina, was born with a unique birthmark that leaves a patch of her dark hair bleached white — just like the previous three generations of women that came before her. 

The trait was passed down from her great-grandmother Jaonne, 59, to her grandmother Jennifer, 41, to her mother Brianna, 23. Now, MilliAnna is the latest to be born with the extraordinary hair. 

http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/19740-baby-takes-after-3-generations-of-women-to-be-born-with-streak-of-white-hair

By reincarnationist logic, this means the same decedent simultaneously transmigrated in four living individuals! How one person can be reincarnated as four coexistent people poses quite a metaphysical conundrum for personal identity. Put another way, this goes to show that sharing a distinctive birthmark is unreliable evidence for metempsychosis. 

Indeed, I daresay it's statistically inevitable that in a world with billions of humans, some unrelated people will share common birthmarks. That's a natural, predictable coincidence. 

Incarnation and reincarnation

In traditional Christology, the Incarnation survives the death of Christ. That's because traditional Christology has a dualistic anthropology. The Incarnation involves the union of the Eternal Son with a human body and soul. To take a classic formulation: "he created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls" (WCF 4.2).

So even in death, the hypostatic union remains intact inasmuch as the Son remains united to a human soul. 

However, if annihilationism is true, then the death of Christ dissolves the hypostatic union. Annihilationism is logically grounded in physicalism. Consciousness or personality can't survive brain death, for the mind is generated by the brain. Conversely, immortality is indexed to the resurrection of the body. There is no intermediate state.

In that event, the Resurrection requires a reincarnation. The Incarnation happens twice: at conception, then again on the first Easter Sunday. 

Whether that's orthodox raises an interesting question. It's strikingly similar to Buddhism, with its no-soul (anatta) version of reincarnation. 

The sustainability paradox

http://bnonn.thinkingmatters.org.nz/thorny-problems-with-karma-5/

The bootstrap paradox

http://bnonn.thinkingmatters.org.nz/thorny-problems-with-karma-4/

Karma and free will

From the IEP:

Another difficulty for the karma/rebirth solution has to do with free will. An initial advantage of this solution to the problem of evil is that real moral agency is preserved. In fact, moral agency is central to the karma/rebirth solution: our moral decisions self-determine our future experiences, making us responsible for our own destiny. Upon further reflection, the view seems to run contrary to free moral agency. Consider the example of a man contemplating the rape and murder of a woman. Suppose he has done so before, and has thus far not been caught. He is considering redirecting his life by turning himself in to the authorities and receiving the consequences of his actions. But just as he is pondering this option, a woman strolls by and his mad passions for rape and murder begin to burn within him. He now has the choice to continue down the path of destruction or put a stop to it. If he decides to attack the woman and does so, then on the karmic account the woman was not completely innocent after all; she is paying the price for her former evil actions. In that case, the rapist is not truly free to act as he does, for he is simply following mechanistically the effects of karmic justice. He is merely the instrumental means for meting out the justice requisite for this woman’s previous moral failings. If, however, the woman does not deserve such moral recompense, then karmic justice will ensure that she does not receive it. In that case, the rapist will be unable to engage in the attack.

The problem that arises has to do with locating the moral freedom in this system. If the rapist is deterministically carrying out justice on his victim, then it seems that he is not truly a free moral agent after all. He is simply a cog in the karmic justice machine. It is disconcerting to affirm a moral system in which we understand raped and murdered victims to be themselves morally culpable for such acts of brutality against them. On the other hand, suppose the rapist really is free to attack the woman. If she was not deserving of such an act, this would be a serious violation of the law of karma whereby suffering occurs only because of one’s previous evil actions. If in attempting to justify such actions, the defender of the karmic system replied that the woman would in a future life receive a reward for such a morally gratuitous act, this does not appear to be consistent with karma, for this would run counter to the central principle of karma in which evil and suffering are the effects of one's previous deeds.

(Source)

Is Hitler a rock?

Karma and reincarnation are central to religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. At least in some of their incarnations.

Let's say karma and reincarnation are true. As I understand it, one can be reincarnated higher up or lower down the karmic chain primarily depending on one's moral actions in this life, or failure thereof. Karma is largely based on conduct.

However, for religions that accept reincarnation into inorganic objects and suchlike, what happens if one ends up reincarnated as a rock or mineral or some other object that can't think or feel or experience? An object which can't act let alone act morally or immorally? Is this a karmic dead end? Karmic hell? Is Hitler a rock?

Hare Krishna commits hara-kiri

I'm going to comment on a recent post by Michael Sudduth:

http://michaelsudduth.com/interview-on-postmortem-survival/

I’d say that my curiosity in survival-related questions began when I was around eight years old.  After having recurrent apparitional experiences in the house I lived in with my parents at the time, I began wondering whether there were real things that I could not normally see but which became visible under certain conditions.  And seeing as I recognized some of the apparitions as deceased members of my family or friends of the family, the experiences prompted the question, is death really the end of our existence?  I never said anything about these experiences to my parents, but I remember feeling encouraged when a couple of years later my grandmother shared with me an apparitional experience she had of my grandfather shortly after his death.  And I recall, on another occasion, overhearing another family member secretly discussing her apparitional experience of my grandfather. In my teenage years I had a variety of paranormal experiences over a two-year period.  Given my prior experiences, I decided to document the experiences in a journal I kept at the time.  I was also inspired by the 1972 television series the Sixth Sense to explore these experiences through various readings in parapsychology.  Interestingly enough, during this time my mother reported an apparitional experience of my grandfather a few days before the death of my grandmother.  Although my mother had no knowledge of my grandmother’s experience several years earlier, her description of the apparition was remarkably similar to what my grandmother had described. In 2002 I left Saint Michael’s College and moved into a historic home in Windsor, Connecticut. There my ex-wife and I had a large number of paranormal experiences, which I documented in written form.  After moving out of the house in 2004, I conducted some interviews with prior occupants of the home and learned that they had similar experiences.  I became very fascinated with the nature of these shared experiences, seemingly tied to a particular physical location, and their possible implications for postmortem survival.   I’ve had the added benefit of participating in a number of paranormal investigations and developing friendships with various mediums over the past eight years.  So my thinking on this topic has been shaped by a wide-range of first-hand experiences, as well as my research and training as a philosopher.

The interview indicates that his experience of the paranormal goes back to childhood. It predates his teenage dabbling with a Ouija board. So this may be a family curse that's been passed down from one generation to the next. And befriending mediums invites further self-delusion. 

Although I was greatly impressed with Price’s reflections on the empirical approach to survival, my conservative Christian views at the time, together with my focus on other topics in graduate school, dissuaded me from a further exploration. On my current view, I think there is a legitimate debate about what exactly paranormal phenomena establish about the reality and nature of postmortem survival.  That’s an issue at the center of my present work.  I am a Vedantin philosopher, so I certainly accept the idea of survival, at least broadly understood as the postmortem persistence of consciousness. 
Well, let me begin with some important caveats and clarifications. Unlike many other philosophers, I don’t object to the survival hypothesis itself, nor do I deny that people can be epistemically justified in believing in survival.  I’ve already stated that I subscribe to the eastern philosophical and spiritual tradition of Vedanta.  So I don’t believe that what I essentially am shares in the limits or destiny of my body or individual mind.  I am a survivalist. 

On the one hand, he doesn't hesitate to promote positions which contradict Christian theology. On the other hand, he can't bring himself to take a position that contradicts Hare Krishna. 

I'd like to make a few general observations about the interview:

i) I think his analysis suffers from reductionism. He seems to be seeking a single causal explanation for all the phenomena in question. But what if there's more than one cause? On the face of it, there are potentially three different parties to one or another of these transactions: ghosts, demons, the medium. So perhaps the correct explanation varies. In some cases a ghost might be the best explanation. In other cases a demon. In still other cases, the medium might be psychic.

I'd add that the demonic explanation and the psychic explanation are not mutually exclusive. A medium might be demonically empowered thru possession. 

ii) We need to draw some theoretical distinctions in terms of apparitions. In principle, there are two or three distinctions:

a) The dead initiating contact with the living. 

b) The living initiating contact with the dead. A medium opens a two-way channel. Whether the dead respond might be voluntary.

c) Summoning the dead. The dead are compelled to appear. Classic sorcery. 

I'm not vouching for the reality of these distinctions. Just drawing them for conceptual clarity. Having a bigger toolbox helps us classify and assess the evidence. Likewise, I'm discussing what's possible, not permissible. 

iii) Both (b) and (c) would be cases of necromancy. A Biblically forbidden activity.

iv) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that it's possible to summon the dead or initiate contact with the dead, what class of decedents would be available? Departed saints? Or the damned? 

Since Scripture forbids necromancy, it seems antecedently unlikely that God would make departed saints available to mediums. However, we have the counterexample of the medium summoning Saul (1 Sam 28). That, however, may be quite exceptional. Saul's attempt to contact Samuel backfires. For Samuel uses the occasion to denounce Saul. The exercise seals the fate of the apostate king. God may have allowed Saul to appear for that express purpose. That would also explain why the medium seemed to be surprised. Perhaps wasn't expecting Samuel to actually appear. 

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that necromancy is sometimes successful, it seems more likely that only the damned would be accessible. Admittedly, that's speculative. 

v) But what about (a)? Is it permissible for departed saints to appear to the living? That's hard to say. 

There are credible reports of apparitions of the dead. That, of itself, doesn't necessarily establish the identity of the apparition. It appears to be the decedent. But at least in some cases, appearances might be deceptive. 

vi) As a Christian, I'm not ashamed to admit that I discount reincarnation on theological grounds. 

vii) In addition, reincarnation isn't clearly the simplest overall explanation for certain phenomena. That's because simplicity involves more than one variable. For instance, even if reincarnation is the simplest discrete explanation for certain phenomena, that must be counterbalanced by the fact that reincarnation is metaphysically cumbersome. It would require elaborate offstage machinery to pull that off. So the explanatory simplicity of reincarnation is deceptive. 

viii) I've also analyzed prima facie evidence for reincarnation on several occasions:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/03/deja-vu.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/03/reincarnation-or-retrocognition.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/03/possession-reincarnation.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/03/stigmata-reincarnation.html

What Should Christians Make Of Non-Christian Miracles?

Somebody with the screen name Hassan Abdillah recently posted some comments about non-Christian miracles in an old thread. He said something to the effect that if Christians attribute non-Christian miracles to demons, couldn't the same explanation be applied to Christian miracles?

A choo-choo without a driver

http://bnonn.thinkingmatters.org.nz/thorny-problems-with-karma-1/

http://bnonn.thinkingmatters.org.nz/thorny-problems-with-karma-2/

Déjà vu

Déjà vu is a widely reported experience. I don’t know if there’s any good sociological data on the frequency of the experience in the general population, as well as whether there are demographic differences.

There are different theories of déjà vu. A popular paranormal explanation for déjà vu is reincarnation. I have several objections to that explanation:

i) As a Christian, I’d rule that out on theological grounds. And there are alternative explanations.

ii) To say we’re remembering a place we saw in a past life assumes the place hasn’t changed significantly with the passage of time. But if we’ve undergone reincarnation for centuries or millennia, then surely the locations would look quite different. Indeed, in many cases, the locations (as we knew them) would be long gone.

iii) Déjà vu experiences are varied. In some cases they feel like we’re seeing a familiar place we haven’t been to before in this life. But in other cases they feel like a repetition (or turning back the clock) to an experience we had in this life. Even if reincarnation could explain the former type of déjà vu experience, it fails to explain the latter.

Moreover, how many people who experience déjà vu experience something that’s clearly set in a time before them were born, with datable artifacts?

There are other paranormal theories:

i) One theory postulates a link between déjà vu and out-of-body experiences (or “astral travel”).

ii) Another theory postulates a link between déjà vu and precognitive dreams.

Then there’s a “scientific” explanation: A popular explanation is that déjà vu is a temporary neurological anomaly or aberration. Of course I’m no expert, but given the reported frequency of déjà vu experiences, it seems odd to classify something that prevalent as anomalous or aberrational. Seems like that’s more of a default “scientific” explanation on the assumption that more outré explanations are too paranormal.  

Reincarnation or retrocognition?

I’ve already argued that alleged evidence of reincarnation can be accounted for by possession (where the living are possessed by the dead). But I’d like to draw attention to yet another alternative explanation.

Parapsychology has always taken an avid interest in precognition. There is, however, a parallel phenomenon which, from what I can tell, has not received the same amount of attention, and that is retrocognition.

The most celebrated case is the “timeslip” reported by Annie Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain. But there are other recorded cases.

Assuming, for the same of argument, that this is a genuine phenomenon, then it would undercut the alleged evidence for reincarnation. As one writer explains:

Another method which has been used to induce retrocognition is regression under hypnosis, first explored by Colonel Albert de Rochas around the turn of the century. Subjects could relive what appeared to be episodes in their past lives, he found, though it was rarely possible to verify the episodes, or the lives, historically. Could the explanation be that these were not ‘past lives’ which were being relived, but instances of retrocognition, displaying the confusion familiar in dream precognition? The bulk of the work done with hypnotically regressed subjects, however, has been done in connection with reincarnation, rather than retrocognition, which has largely been ignored by parapsychologists, B. Inglis, The Paranormal: An Encyclopedia of Psychic Phenomena (Paladin 1986), 104.

One might object that this argument is only as good as the alleged evidence for retrocognition. But that argument cuts both ways since we could say exactly the same thing about reincarnation.

Reincarnation And The Church Fathers

See here.

Does Scripture teach reincarnation?

Absurd as it may seem, there are actually some folks out there who pretend that Scripture teaches reincarnation. Robert Almeder tries to make just such a case:

“There are basically four New Testament texts that Geddes MacGregor (and others) cited in favor of reincarnation. The first is from the gospel of John [Jn 9:1-3], and it concerns the man born blind whom Jesus cured,” Death and Personal Survival, 67.

“Commentators have noted that the disciples apparently thought there were only two possible explanations for blindness: either the man preexisted his body and was being punished for sin in that earlier existence, or the parents sinned and the punishment was passed on to the offspring…Jesus does not deny the doctrine of reincarnation that his disciples apparently accept,” ibid. 67.

i) He doesn’t cite any commentators who present these two exegetical options. Needless to say, if you actually consult standard commentaries on John, none of them offers reincarnation as an exegetical option.

ii) Having told the reader that there are only two possible explanations, Almeder then proceeds to totally ignore one of the possible explanations (hereditary guilt) which he himself presented.

iii) The disciples either had in mind prenatal sin or hereditary guilt. Neither explanation has anything in common with reincarnation.

iv) Even more to the point, Jesus explicitly rejects their interpretation of the event.

“The second text–also from John [Jn 3:3-7]–is stronger in that it reveals that Jesus actually taught reincarnation,” ibid. 67.

i) This is willfully obtuse. Nicodemus takes Jesus literally. Jesus corrects his misinterpretation. He explains his figurative usage to Nicodemus. He’s using birth or rebirth as a spiritual metaphor.

ii) Moreover, there’s a play on words: it can either mean “born again” or “born from above.” That double entendre reinforces the figurative connotation.

“The third text is from Matthew [16:13-14, par. Mk 8:27-28; Lk 9:18-19]. Clearly, the disciples are saying that some people believe Jesus is the reincarnation of John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. But Jesus does not correct them and insist that the doctrine of reincarnation is false; rather, he makes the point that he existed before all the prophets,” ibid. 68.

i) To the contrary, the point of eliciting these popular opinions, superstitions, and rumors is to contrast popular opinion with the true identity of Jesus. Jesus is none of the above. Rather, he’s the Son of God.

ii) Since Jesus and John the Baptist were contemporaries, it would be physically impossible for Jesus to be the reincarnation of John the Baptist.

iii) Even in theory, reincarnation is hardly the only way in which a person could return from the dead. It might take the form of an apparition (e.g. Samuel; Moses & Elijah at the Transfiguration). It might take the form of a bodily resurrection (e.g. Mt 27:52-53). Different modalities are possible. Different from reincarnation.

“Finally, also in Matthew [11:7-15]…Jesus asserts that Elijah has returned in the person of John the Baptist,” ibid. 68.

i) This is typological. Elijah prefigures John the Baptist.

ii) And if we equate typology with reincarnation, then that generates some odd consequences since types include inanimate objects as well as people. In what sense is the temple reincarnated? Does it have a soul? Is the temple reborn?

Almeder clearly began with a precommitment to reincarnation, and then attempted to superimpose that alien outlook onto the text of Scripture.