Was reincarnation part of the early Christian church?
score:16
I'll ignore the additional questions and focus on the headline / question #1.
When it comes to the basic historical facts (as opposed to the interpretation of theological fragments) there isn't actually a whole lot of disagreement between the quoted sources. The Catholic.com piece says that Origen was against reincarnation, while the other articles say it's more complicated. The Catholic.com piece doesn't mention Valentinus or Basilides of Alexandria at all, but that's who Jensen (in the Utah Historical Review) states most unequivocally supported reincarnation.
In an essay in the book A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics” (2005, edited by Antti Marjanen & Petri Luomanen) there's a paragraph (with extensive footnotes you may dig further into) regarding Basilides' possible acceptance of reincarnation, which largely comes to us from Origen.
There are fragments from Basilides’ writings which suggest that he taught a doctrine of reincarnation, or metempsychosis. One such fragment is found in Origen’s Commentary on Romans, where he reports that Basilides interprets Paul’s statement in Romans 7:9, “I died,” to refer to reincarnation. Origen quotes Basilides as saying, “The Apostle explicitly said, ‘I lived once without the Law’ (Rom 7:9), that is, before I came into this body, I lived in the sort of body that is not under the Law, such as a beast or a bird.” Some doubt has been cast upon Origen’s quotation, notably by Pierre Nautin, who argues that Origen’s statement here, and also in his Commentary on Matthew, is dependent on Clement, not on Basilides, whose works Origen never read. Nautin also doubts Clement’s attribution to Basilides of the doctrine of reincarnation, and asserts that Basilides taught no such thing. On balance, I do not see any reason to doubt that a Platonizing theologian like Basilides, along with a number of other Gnostic teachers, taught the doctrine of reincarnation.
In sum, while we have only indirect evidence, it is very possible that reincarnation was discussed by certain early Christian Neoplatonists. From that we might speculate that certain Gnostic subcurrents of early Christianty (particularly followers of Valentinus) may have accepted such ideas. To claim that any such generalized belief in reincarnation among early Christians is a matter of historical fact would be false.
Upvote:2
Putting is simple terms, such a thing was never a dogma is the Church history. In general, the Christian belief accept the idea of eternal life, in Heaven or in Hell.
This can be seeing in the Niscene Constantinopolitan Creed, which was made during the Council of Nicaea during the IV century. Here is a small passage :
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
The "ressurection of the dead" is a dogma which says that after the consummation of the times our bodies will be resurrected and will be united to our souls in Heaven or in Hell.
More over, in the Bible we can clearly see the the everlasting idea of afterlife. Here are somepassages that talk about Hell being forever, for example:
Matthew 13:41-42
The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears ought to hear.
Matthew 25:41
- Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
To summarize, there is no tradition of reincarnation in Christianism, the closest we have to that is some books written centuries after the events of the New Testament by people who were not even in comunion with the Church.
Moreover, in respect to the answer of Brian, the passage is his article does not make much sense, Saint Paul was clearly using a methaphor, nothing as distant as saying something like "I am scared to death of spiders" (this sentece makes more sense in portuguese, by the way)
Post Scriptium : I recommend you to read the whole passages I quoted, because they seem a bit decontextualized
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