Belief in Reincarnation and Some Unresolved Questions in Catholic Eschatology
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2017, Vol 8, Issue 9
Abstract
Mainstream Christianity has always rejected reincarnation teaching in all its varieties, e.g., Greco-Roman, Albigensian, Hindu, Buddhist, New Age, etc. as being incompatible with the biblical understanding of the uniqueness, dignity, and value of the human person, a teaching that is ultimately rooted in the radical understanding of divine mercy and love toward every human being proclaimed by Jesus himself. Nevertheless, there are two strong arguments advanced by reincarnationists against the teaching of one earthly life. The first argument regards reincarnation as a more reasonable expression of divine mercy and love than the disproportionate and unfair infliction of eternal punishment by God upon a human being for a single morally corrupt lifetime. The second argument finds reincarnation to be necessary for the continued exercise of creaturely freedom required for true moral and spiritual maturation. Catholic teaching, by contrast, asserts that a single earthly life followed by purgatory is sufficient for the perfection and completion of the human person. However, in both the satisfaction and sanctification models of purgatory the human person is entirely passive, not actively contributing to its own completion. Such an approach would seem to devalue free human participation in the process of perfection.
Authors and Affiliations
Bradley Malkovsky
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25767
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8090176
- Views 348
- Downloads 10
Social Dynamics, Transnational Flows and Public Incidence of Religion in the Frontier in Latin America
In Latin America, the region known as the Triple Frontier is known for its qualitative religious diversification. Different expressions of believing and feeling abound in the neighborhoods and streets of the border tow...
Hermeneutic and Teleology in Ethics across Denominations—Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth
This study arises from the context of current debates in the Catholic Church on the place of rule and law in moral reasoning. I suggest that ethics may be best served by approaches that place the human subject in a tel...
Drugs and Religion: Contributions to the Debate on the Science–Religion Interface
In this article, we present the results of our research, which aims to comprehend how the relationship between religion and the use of drugs operates in various contexts, but especially in the context of a prohibitioni...
Teaching Widowed Women, Community, and Devotion in Quattrocento Florence with Lucrezia Tornabuoni and Antonia Tanini Pulci
In the Middle Ages and the early modern period, a woman’s social identity changed when her husband died. She became both a symbol of his loss, and a living monument to his legacy—an ambassador between the living and th...
Relational Inquiry—Attending to the Spirit of Nursing Students
The impetus for this paper came from our experiences as learner-teachers of re-considering the epistemological and ontological roots of our undergraduate-nursing curriculum. It began as an earnest dialogue regarding pa...