Part 4 — VIII. REINCARNATION IN EARLY CHRISTENDOM.

224Our soul having lost its heavenly mansion came down into the earthly body as a strange place.—Philo.

The soul leaving the body becomes that power which it has most developed. Let us fly, then, from here below, and rise to the intellectual world, that we may not fall into a purely sensible life, by allowing ourselves to follow sensible images; or into a vegetative life, by abandoning ourselves to the pleasures of physical love and gluttony: let us rise, I say, to the intellectual world, to intelligence, to God himself.—Plotinus.

The order of things is regulated by the providential government of the whole world; some powers falling down from a loftier position, others gradually sinking to earth: some falling voluntarily, others being cast down against their will: some undertaking of their own accord the service of stretching out the hand to those who fall, others being compelled to persevere for a long time in the duty which they have undertaken.—Jerome.

All that flesh doth cover

Souls by source sublime

Are but slaves sold over

To the master Time,

To work out their ransom

For the ancient crime.

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VIII.

REINCARNATION IN EARLY CHRISTENDOM.

The first centuries of Christianity found reincarnation still the prevailing creed, as in all the previous ages, but with various shades of interpretation. What these different phases of the same central thought were may be gathered from Jerome’s catalogue, after the strife between Eastern and Western ideas had been working for some centuries and the present tendency of Europe had asserted itself. Jerome writes: “As to the origin of the soul, I remember the question of the whole church: whether it be fallen from heaven, as Pythagoras and the Platonists and Origen believe; or be of the proper substance of God, as the Stoics, Manichæans and Priscillian heretics of Spain believe; or whether they are kept in a repository formerly built by God, as some ecclesiastics foolishly believe; or whether they are daily made by God and sent into bodies according to that which is written in the Gospel: ‘My Father worketh hitherto and I work;’ or whether by traduction, as Tertullian, Apollinarius, and the greater part of the Westerns believe, i. e., that as body from body so the soul is derived from the soul, subsisting by the same condition with animals.”

In the form of Gnosticism it so strongly pervaded the early church that the fourth Gospel was specially 226directed against it; but this Gospel according to John attacked it only by advocating a broader rendering of the same faith. We have seen that Origen refers to preëxistence as the general opinion. Clemens Alexandrinus (Origen’s master) taught it as a divine tradition authorized by St. Paul himself in Romans v. 12, 14, 19. Ruffinus in his letter to Anastasius says that “This opinion was common among the primitive fathers.” Later, Jerome relates that the doctrine of transmigration was taught as an esoteric one communicated to only a select few. But Nemesius emphatically declared that all the Greeks who believed in immortality believed also in metempsychosis. Delitzsch says, “It had its advocates as well in the synagogues as in the church.”

The Gnostics and Manichæans received it, with much else, from Zoroastrian predecessors. The Neo-Platonists derived it chiefly from a blending of Plato and the Orient. The Church Fathers drew it not only from these sources, but from the Jews and the pioneers of Christianity. Several of them condemn the Persian and Platonic philosophies and yet hold to reincarnation in other guises. Aside from all authority, the doctrine seems to have been rooted among the inaugurators of our era in its adaptation to their mental needs, as the best explanation of the ways of God and the nature of men.

I. The Gnostics were a school of eclectics which became conspicuous amid the chaotic vortex of all religions in Alexandria, during the first century. They sought to furnish the young Christian church with a philosophic creed, and ranked themselves as the only initiates into a mystical system of Christian truth which was too exalted for the masses. Their thought 227was an elaborate structure of Greek ideas built upon Parsee Dualism, maintaining that the world was created by some fallen spirit or principle, and that the spirits of men were enticed from a preëxistent higher stage by the Creator into the slavery of material bodies. The evils and sins of life belong only to the degraded prison-house of the spirit. The world is only an object of contempt. Virtue consists in severest asceticism. To combat their theory that Jesus was one of a vast number of beings between man and God, the fourth Gospel was written. They spread widely through the first and second centuries in many branches of belief. But most of their strength was absorbed into Manichæism, which was a more logical union of Persian with Christian and Greek ideas. In this simple faith the world is a creation not of a fallen spirit, but of the primary evil principle, while the spirit of man is the creation of God, and the conflict between flesh and spirit is that between the powers of light and darkness. The Gnostic and Manichæan notions of preëxistence perpetuated themselves in many of the medieval sects, especially the Bogomiles, Paulicians, and Priscillians. Seven adherents of the Priscillian heresy were put to death in Spain A. D. 385, as the first instance of the death penalty visited by a Christian magistrate for erroneous belief. The Italian Cathari were another sect holding this form of reincarnation, against whom the Albigensian Crusade of the elder De Montfort was sent, and the inquisition devised by St. Dominic. Still they thrived in secret and possessed a disguised hierarchy which long survived their violent persecution. Similar sects descended from them still exist among the Russian dissenters.

228II. Contemporary with the Alexandrian Gnostics arose the philosophical school of the Neo-Platonists which gathered into one the doctrines of Pythagoras, Plato, and Buddhism,^[42] and constructed a theology which might make headway against Christianity by satisfying in a rational way the longings which the new religion addressed. They too disclosed the reality and nearness of a spiritual world, a reconciliation with God, and the pathway for returning to Him. The distinguishing principle of Neo-Platonism is emanation, which took the place of creation. From the eternal Intelligence proceeds the multiplicity of souls which comprise the intelligible world, and of which the worldsoul is the highest and all-embracing source. They insisted upon the distinct individuality of each soul, and earnestly combated the charge of Pantheism. Souls who have descended into the delusion of matter did so from pride and a desire of false independence. They now forget their former estate and the Father whom they have deserted. The mission of men, in the dying words of Plotinus, is “to bring the divine within them into harmony with that which is divine in the universe.” The Neo-Platonists fought Gnosticism as fiercely as Christianity. Plotinus, by far the best of their writers, as well as the oldest whose works are preserved, devotes a whole book of his Enneads to the refutation of the doctrines of Valentinus, the brightest of the Gnostics. Contrary to the latter’s thought, that men are fallen into the miry pit of matter which is wholly bad, Plotinus claims that the world of matter, although the least divine part of the universe because remotest from the One, is still good and the best place for man’s development. From its former life he insists the soul has not fallen and cannot, 229but has descended into the lower stage of existence through innate weakness of intellect in order to be prepared for a higher exaltation.

The most important of this group of thinkers were Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, and Porphyry in the third century, Jamblichus in the fourth, Hierocles and Proclus in the fifth, and Damascius in the sixth. It flourished with energy for over three hundred years, and as its ideas were largely appropriated by Christian theologians and philosophers, beginning with Origen, it has never ceased to be felt through Christendom. Giordano Bruno, the martyr of the Italian reformation, popularized it, and handed it over to later philosophers. The philosophy of Emerson is substantially a revival of Plotinus. Coleridge is also strongly influenced by him.

As Plotinus is in some respects the most interesting of all the older writers, and taught reincarnation in a form thoroughly rational and supremely helpful, meeting Western needs in this regard more directly than any other philosopher, we quote at some length from his scarce essay on “The Descent of the Soul.”

“When any particular soul acts in discord from the One, flying from the whole and apostasizing from thence by a certain disagreement, no longer beholding an intelligible nature, from its partial blindness, in this case it becomes deserted and solitary, impotent and distracted with care; for it now directs its mental eye to a part, and by a separation from that which is universal, attaches itself as a slave to one particular nature. It thus degenerates from the whole and governs particulars with anxiety and fatigue, assiduously cultivating externals and becoming not only present with body, but profoundly entering into its dark 230abodes. Hence, too, by such conduct the wings of the soul are said to suffer a defluxion and she becomes fettered with the bonds of body, after deserting the safe and innoxious habit of governing a better nature which flourishes with universal soul. The soul, therefore, falling from on high, suffers captivity, is loaded with fetters, and employs the energies of sense; because in this case her intellectual longing is impeded from the first. She is reported also to be buried and to be concealed in a cave; but when she converts herself to intelligence she then breaks her fetters and ascends on high, receiving first of all from reminiscence the ability of contemplating real beings; at the same time possessing something supereminent and ever abiding in the intelligible world. Souls therefore are necessarily of an amphibious nature, and alternately experience a superior and inferior condition of being; such as are able to enjoy a more intimate converse with Intellect abiding for a longer period in the higher world, and such to whom the contrary happens, either through nature or fortune, continuing longer connected with these inferior concerns.”...

“Thus, the soul, though of divine origin, and proceeding from the regions on high, becomes merged in the dark receptacle of the body, and being naturally a posterior god, it descends hither through a certain voluntary inclination, for the sake of power and of adorning inferior concerns. By this means it receives a knowledge of its latent powers, and exhibits a variety of operations peculiar to its nature, which by perpetually abiding in an incorporeal habit, and never proceeding into energy, would have been bestowed in vain. Besides the soul would have been ignorant of what she possessed, her powers always remaining dormant 231and concealed: since energy everywhere exhibits capacity, which would otherwise be entirely occult and obscure, and without existence, because not endued with one substantial and true. But now indeed every one admires the intellectual powers of the soul, through the variety of her external effects.”...

“Through an abundance of desire the soul becomes profoundly merged into matter, and no longer totally abides with the universal soul. Yet our souls are able alternately to rise from hence carrying back with them an experience of what they have known and suffered in their fallen state; from whence they will learn how blessed it is to abide in the intelligible world, and by a comparison, as it were, of contraries, will more plainly perceive the excellence of a superior state. For the experience of evil produces a clearer knowledge of good. This is accomplished in our souls according to the circulations of time, in which a conversion takes place from subordinate to more exalted natures.

“Indeed, if it were proper to speak clearly what appears to me to be the truth, contrary to the opinions of others, the whole of our soul also does not enter into the body, but something belonging to it always abides in the intelligible, and something different from this in the sensible world: and that which abides in the sensible world, if it conquers, or rather if it is vanquished and disturbed, does not permit us to perceive that which the supreme part of the soul contemplates; for that which is understood then arrives at our nature when it descends within the limits of sensible inspection. For every soul possesses something which inclines downwards to body, and something which tends upwards toward intellect; and the soul, 232indeed, which is universal and of the universe, by its part which is inclined towards body, governs the whole without labor and fatigue, transcending that which it governs.

“But souls which are particular and of a part are too much occupied by sense, and by a perception of many things happening contrary to nature are surrounded by a multitude of foreign concerns. It is likewise subject to a variety of affections, and is ensnared by the allurements of pleasure. But the superior part of the soul is never influenced by fraudulent delights, and lives a life always uniform and divine.”

III. Many of the orthodox Church Fathers welcomed reincarnation as a ready explanation of the fall of man and the mystery of life, and distinctly preached it as the only means of reconciling the existence of suffering with a merciful God. It was an essential part of the church philosophy for many centuries in the rank and file of Christian thought, being stamped with the authority of the leading thinkers of Christendom, and then gradually was frowned upon as the Western influences predominated, until it became heresy and at length survived only in a few scattered sects.

Justin Martyr expressly speaks of the soul inhabiting more than once the human body, and denies that on taking a second time the embodied form it can remember previous experiences. Afterwards, he says, souls which have become unworthy to see God in human guise, are joined to the bodies of wild beasts. Thus he openly defends the grosser phase of metempsychosis.

Clemens Alexandrinus is declared by a contemporary to have written “wonderful stories about metempsychosis and many worlds before Adam.”

233Arnobius, also, is known to have frankly avowed this doctrine.

Noblest of all the church advocates of this opinion was Origen. He regarded the earthly history of the human race as one epoch in an historical series of changeful decay and restoration, extending backward and forward into æons; and our temporal human body as the place of purification for our spirits exiled from a happier existence on account of sin. He taught that souls were all originally created by God minds of the same kind and condition, that is of the same essence as the infinite Mind, and that they exercised their freedom of will, some wisely and well, others with abuse in different degrees, producing the divergences now apparent in mankind. From that old experience some souls have retained more than others of the pristine condition. The lapsed souls God clothed with bodies and sent into this world, both to expiate their temerity and to prepare themselves for a better future. The variety of their offenses caused the diversity of their terrestrial conditions. In these bodies, each enjoys that lot which most exactly suited his previous habits. On these the whole earthly circumstances of man, internal and external, even his whole life from birth, depend. In this way alone he thought the justice of God could be defended. But when men keep themselves free from contagion in bodily existence and restrain the turbulent movements of sense and imagination, being gradually purified from the body they ascend on high and are at last changed into minds, of which the earthly souls are corruptions. In his own words, “Here is the cause of the diversing among rational creatures, not in the will or decision of the creature, but in the freedom of 234individual liberty. For God justly disposing of his creatures according to their desert united the diversities of minds in one congruous world, that he might, as it were, adorn his mansion (in which ought to be not only vases of gold and silver, but of wood also and clay, and some to honor and some to dishonor) with these diverse vases, minds, or souls. To these causes the world owes its diversity, while Divine Providence disposes each according to his tendency, mind, and disposition.”

“If from unknown reasons the soul be already not exactly worthy of being born in an irrational body, nor yet exactly in one purely rational, it is furnished with a monstrous body, so that reason cannot be fully developed by one thus born, the nature of the body being fashioned either of a higher or lower body according to the scope of the reason.”

“I think this is a question how it happens that the human mind is influenced now by the good now by the evil. The causes of this I suspect to be more ancient than this corporeal birth.”

“If our course be not marked out according to our works before this life, how is it true that it is not unjust in God that the elder should serve the younger and be hated, before he had done things deserving of servitude and of hatred.”

“By the fall and by the cooling from a life of the Spirit came that which is now the soul, which is also capable of a return to her original condition, of which I think the prophet speaks in this: ‘Return unto thy rest, O my soul.’ So that the whole is this—how the mind becomes a soul and how the soul rectified becomes a mind.”

Concerning preëxistence in the Bible, Origen writes, 235in his “De Principiis”: “The Holy Scriptures have called the creation of the world by a new and peculiar name, terming it καταβολή, which has been very improperly translated into Latin by ‘constitutio’; for in Greek καταβολή; signifies rather ‘dejicere,’ i. e., to cast downwards,—a word which has been improperly translated into Latin by the phrase ‘constitutio mundi,’ as where the Saviour says, ‘And there will be tribulation in those days, such as was not since the beginning of the world;’^[43] in which passage καταβολή is rendered by beginning (constitutio). The Apostle also has employed the language, saying, ‘Who hath chosen us before the foundation of the world;’^[44] and this foundation he calls καταβολή, to be understood in the same sense as before. It seems worth while, then, to inquire what is meant by this new term; and I am, indeed, of the opinion that as the end and consummation of the saints will be in those (ages) which are not seen, and are eternal, we must conclude that rational creatures had also a similar beginning. And if they had a beginning such as the end for which they hope, they existed undoubtedly from the very beginning in those (ages) which are not seen, and are eternal. And if this is so, then there has been a descent from a higher to a lower condition, on the part not only of those souls who have deserved the change by the variety of their movements, but also on that of those who, in order to serve the whole world, were brought down from those higher and invisible spheres to these lower and visible ones, although against their will. From this it follows that by the use of the word καταβολή, a descent from a higher to a lower condition, shared by all in common, would seem to be pointed out. The 236hope of freedom is entertained by the whole of creation—of being liberated from the corruption of slavery—when the sons of God, who either fell away or were scattered abroad, shall be gathered into one, and when they shall have fulfilled their duties in this world.”

Many contemporaneous and subsequent writers censured Origen for this opinion, but his doctrine was maintained by a large number of strong followers and independent thinkers.

Even in Jerome and Augustine certain passages indicate that they held this theory in part. In his Epistle to Avitus, Jerome agrees with Origen as to the interpretation of the passage above mentioned by Origen, “Who hath chosen us before the foundation of the world.” He says “a divine habitation, and a true rest above, I think, is to be understood, where rational creatures dwelt, and where, before their descent to a lower position, and removal from invisible to visible (worlds), and fall to earth, and need of gross bodies, they enjoyed a former blessedness. Whence God the Creator made for them bodies suitable to their humble position, and created this visible world and sent into the world ministers for their salvation.”

The Latin Fathers Nemesius, Synesius, and Hilarius boldly defend preëxistence, though taking exception to Origen’s form of it. Of Synesius, most familiar to English readers as the convent patriarch in “Hypatia,” it is known that when the citizens of Ptolemais invited him to their bishopric, he declined that dignity for the reason that he cherished certain opinions which they might not approve, as after mature reflection they had struck deep roots in his mind. Foremost among these he mentioned the doctrine of 237preëxistence. Vestiges of this belief are discerned in his writings; for example, in the Greek hymn paraphrased as follows:—

Eternal Mind, thy seedling spark

Through this thin vase of clay

Athwart the waves of chaos dark

Emits a timorous ray!

This mind-enfolding soul is sown

Incarnate germ in earth.

In pity, blessed Lord, then own

What claims in Thee its birth.

Far forth from Thee, Thou central fire,

To earth’s sad bondage cast,

Let not the trembling spark expire,

Absorb Thine own at last.

Another of this group, Prudentius, entertained nearly the same idea as that of Origen concerning the soul’s descent from higher seats to earth, as appears in one of his hymns:—

O Saviour, bid my soul, thy trembling spouse,

Return at last to Thee believing.

Bind, bind anew those all unearthly vows

She broke on high and wandered grieving.

Although Origen’s teaching was condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 551, it permanently colored the stream of Christian theology, not only in many scholastics and medieval heterodoxies, but through all the later course of religious thought, in many isolated individuals and groups.

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