How and Why Reincarnationism Fell Into Disfavour

Abstract

If some form or forms of reincarnationism could seem so worthy of consideration in the eyes of even some Christians in early times, for which we have seen some evidence, why did the notion fade so completely from the centre of the Christian scene? The question, inevitable by any reckoning, becomes perhaps even more pressing when we find, as we do, how conspicuous is the role it has played in Judaism during the Christian era. For Christianity, unlike Hinduism and Buddhism, has a common ancestry with Judaism, so that if reincarnationism in any form were fundamentally alien to Christianity, one might reasonably expect it to be also alien to Judaism, as would certainly be, for instance, a denial of the unity of God or of his righteousness or fatherly care. We find, however, the opposite: while both Judaism and Christianity have remained faithful, each in its own way, to these basic biblical teachings, reincarnation has prospered in Jewish thought. Josephus and Philo in the first century both seem to approve it;¹ in the kabbalistic tradition, which has very ancient roots and flourished in the Middle Ages, it is a fundamental belief; and in hasidic Judaism, which has kabbalistic connections, it is an almost universal belief, expressed throughout that highly influential movement, for instance, in Yiddish literature, in the Dybbuk and in the writings of Sholem Asch. Is there then some element peculiar to Christian thought that absolutely excludes it? If not, why has it been lost to the mainstream of Christian tradition?

Yet each man kills the thing he loves. Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol