Christianity rejects reincarnation for the following reasons:
- It is contradicted by Scripture (Hebrews 9:27).
- It is contradicted by orthodox tradition in all churches.
- It would reduce the Incarnation to a mere appearance, the crucifixion to an accident, and Christ to one among many philosophers or avatars. It would also confuse what Christ did with what creatures do: incarnation with reincarnation.
- It implies God made a mistake in designing our souls to live in bodies, that we are pure spirits in prison or angels in costume.
- It is contradicted by psychology and common sense, for its view of souls as imprisoned in alien bodies denies the natural psychosomatic unity.
- It entails a very low view of the body, as a prison, a punishment.
- It usually blames sin on the body and the body's power to confuse and darken the mind. This is passing the buck from soul to body, as well as from will to mind, and a confusion of sin with ignorance.
- The idea that we are reincarnated in order to learn lessons we failed to learn in a past earthly life is contrary to both common sense and basic psychology. I can not learn something if there is no continuity of memory. I can learn from my mistakes only if I remember them. People do not usually remember these past reincarnations.
- The supposed evidence for reincarnation, remembering things from the past lives that come out under hypnosis or past life regression can be explained-if they truly occur at all-as mental telepathy from other living beings, from the souls of dead humans in purgatory or hell, or from demons. The real possibility of the latter should make us extremely skittish about opening our souls to past life regressions.
Reincarnation cannot account for itself. Why are our souls imprisoned in bodies? Is it just punishment for evils we committed in past reincarnations? But why were those past reincarnations necessary? For the same reason. But the beginning of the process that justly imprisoned our souls in bodies in the first place-this must have antedated the series of bodies. How could we have committed evil in the state of perfect, pure, heavenly spirituality? Further, if we sinned in that paradise, it is not paradisical after all. Yet that is the state that reincarnation is supposed to lead us back to after all our embodied yearnings are over.
