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    May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation?
    May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation?
    May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation?
    Ebook69 pages1 hour

    May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation?

    By Abbot George Burke (Swami Nirmalananda Giri)

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    About this ebook

    A growing number of people are open to the subject of past lives, and the belief in rebirth—reincarnation, metemphsychosis, or transmigration—is becoming commonplace. But it often thought that belief in reincarnation and Christianity are incompatible. But is this really true? May a Christian believe in reincarnation? The answer may surprise you.

    Reincarnation–also known as the transmigration of souls–is not just some exotic idea of non-Christian mysticism. Nor is it an exclusively Hindu-Buddhist teaching. In orthodox Jewish and early Christian writings, as well as the Holy Scriptures, we find reincarnation as a fully developed belief, although today it is commonly ignored. But from the beginning it has been an integral part of Orthodox Judaism, and therefore as Orthodox Jews, Jesus and his Apostles would have believed in rebirth.

    This historical study of reincarnation in both Judaism and Christianity cites many authorities of both traditions, including many Christian saints and Fathers of the Church, as well as both Old and New Testaments. In our opinion the testimony of orthodox Judaism, ancient Christianity, and the Bible is sufficient to answer the question: May a Christian believe in reincarnation?

    Included in this second edition is Annie Besant’s article on various scientific, moral, and historical aspects of reincarnation from a Christian perspective.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbbot George Burke (Swami Nirmalananda Giri)
    Release dateFeb 8, 2016
    ISBN9781311329899
    May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation?

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    • 5/5
      Makes a great case with solid diverse references. Especially the first half.

    Book preview

    May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation? - Abbot George Burke (Swami Nirmalananda Giri)

    MACBR-cover-besant-2-2016.jpg

    Published by

    Light of the Spirit Press

    Light of the Spirit Monastery

    P. O. Box 1370

    Cedar Crest, New Mexico 87008

    www.OCOY.org

    Copyright © 2014 Light of the Spirit Monastery.

    All rights reserved.

    Contents

    image.jpg

    Preface

    May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation?

    Necessity for Reincarnation

    Did you enjoy reading May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation?

    About the Author

    More from Light of the Spirit Press

    Preface

    image-2.jpg

    How this study came about

    You might find the history of this study interesting and amusing.

    Quite some time ago we became very good friends with an Eastern Orthodox archpriest who not only believed in reincarnation, but had engaged for years in research into methods of past-life recall. One afternoon he phoned and told me that several guests were coming from an Orthodox seminary to visit him and he planned to bring up the compatibility of reincarnation with Christianity. The reason for his call was to ask if the monks and I could research the subject of reincarnation in early Christianity to give him material to prove that Christians could believe in reincarnation. Certainly we would! For the next few days several of us went through our library and finally reported back to our friend that we had a lot of material for him to use.

    Then he revealed to us that what brought this on was the discovery of a small boy in our state that remembered being his own uncle! And the priest had been asked by the local television station to comment on this at the end of their broadcast of the story. Were we ever excited. An Eastern Orthodox priest advocating reincarnation on television! So we delivered the material and awaited the broadcast.

    The segment on the boy was very well done and very believable. Then suddenly there on the screen we saw our priest friend in full vestments standing at the front of his church. This was it!

    No, it wasn’t.

    He began a tirade (no other word for it) about how Christians cannot believe in reincarnation and how incompatible the belief is with Christianity.

    For us, the bottom dropped out. But when life hands you lemons, make lemonade, so I just worked all that researched material into a small book I named May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation? But the story was not finished.

    I was working on one of the first PCs, a Franklin Ace with a floppy disk and a primitive dot matrix printer. Nobody had told me to save my work every day, so I did not. Nor had anyone told me to make a hard copy on the printer each day. So no hard copy.

    Finally I felt I was done, so I did a save. The computer spewed everything over the disk and I had gibberish.

    More lemons called for more lemonade, so I wrote the whole thing again, and it turned out better. But I still did not save or make a hard copy, and when I saved at the end…. It was the end. The same disaster happened.

    It took a while to take it in, but–well, you know: lemons. So I wrote it a third time, and yes it was actually better. But the third time was not a charm: it was the same destruction. I did not make lemonade, I cried. Really. And then consoling myself with the idea (but no proof) that the third version had also been an improvement, I wrote it for a fourth time. No, I did not save. No, I did not make a printout.

    I saved. The computer made the usual hash. Then a cynical thought came to me: What if this computer was lying to me? What if the text was not scattered all over the disk like the directory showed? What if it would print out?

    It did. So now you have the book. The lemonade come from some very sour lemons, but I hope you will find it sweet.

    May a Christian Believe in Reincarnation?

    image-3.jpg

    Our purpose in this brief study is to determine if, in good conscience, a Christian may believe in reincarnation. In ancient orthodox Jewish and Christian writings, as well as the Holy Scriptures, we can find reincarnation–also known as the transmigration of souls–as a fully developed belief. Consequently as Orthodox Jews Jesus and the Apostles would have been familiar with the belief in rebirth.

    My favorite comment on the subject of reincarnation is that given by the Roman Catholic Capuchin stigmatist Saint Padre Pio. When one of his spiritual daughters was told on for believing in reincarnation, he told her accusers very firmly: It does not matter what you believe about reincarnation. The only thing that matters is this: Are you seeking for God now?

    A Catholic cardinal speaks

    Just what do we mean by reincarnation? Cardinal Mercier (1851-1926) of the Roman Catholic Church, an eminent scholar and theologian of the conservative Christian Tradition, in his book Psychologie gives this definition of three views of reincarnation:

    "Under the term Wiedermenschwerdung, metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, a

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