ArcaMax

Q: Some people say reincarnation is biblical and happens today, what is your take on reincarnation? – (From S)

A: You get three strikes in baseball. The great question you raise is how many strikes do you get in life?

Reincarnation is really a combination of two religious beliefs: the belief that we have an immaterial and immortal soul that lives on beyond the death of our physical body, and second that one of the options for the journey of this soul is that it enters the body of a newborn person or animal and lives on in combination with that body until that body dies. Then the soul is reincarnated again. This cycle of reincarnation may continue forever or it may cease when the soul reaches a state of spiritual purity where it either disappears or is absorbed into the mystery of God.

Reincarnation is related to but different from resurrection which is the belief that at some point after your own death, your own body and your own soul are reunited and brought back to life to witness the end of days or the messianic age.

The best argument for reincarnation is that our souls are not mortal. Our souls are like little pieces of God and so they are not made up of matter. They are made up of some aethereal substance placed in each and every one of us by God. So, it makes sense that the journey of our soul reaches beyond the grave. However, the belief in the immortality of the soul does not require the belief that the soul returns to an embodied life after the death of our body.

Another argument for reincarnation is the death of babies and children. Their deaths are not only tragic but unfair. They never had the chance to live a full life here in this existence we know. Their lives were cut short and it would seem that a loving God would give them at least a second chance to grow up and know what it means to fall in love or smell a rose or sink a very long putt.

Dr. Brian L. Weiss, M.D. has added a scientific argument for reincarnation. In his best-selling book, “Many Lives, Many Masters” Dr. Weiss shared the results of his psychotherapy practice which through hypnosis of his patients discovered (in his view) that many of our present psychiatric illnesses are the result of past-life traumas that still haunt us. One of his patients whom he called Catherine (not her real name) was filled with anxiety about drowning. Under hypnosis she recalled a previous life in 1863 when she drowned with her child. The revelation of her past life healed her of her phobias in this life. The fact that his results do not require religious beliefs has made his secular defense of reincarnation appealing to many people.

So where do the world’s religions stand on the topic of reincarnation?

The strongest support for the belief in reincarnation (called punarjanman) is a central tenet of Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Depending upon the good deeds you performed in this life your soul (atman) receives a karma which is kind of like a good person score. That score determines if you are reborn into a higher or lower level of existence. Hinduism believes that eventually a soul can achieve release from the cycle of reincarnation and rebirth which is called moksha. If you are evil, however, that cockroach you just stepped on might be the soul of the person who denied you a mortgage.

Judaism is a mixed bag on the topic of reincarnation. Orthodox Judaism believes in the resurrection of the dead in the future and some Jewish Hasidic and mystical sects also believe in reincarnation before that time. A prayer for the resurrection of the dead is a part of the daily prayers of Judaism.

The Catholic Church, following mainstream Jewish beliefs, does not believe in reincarnation. It takes the position that reincarnation, like consulting with psychics, prevents people from accepting and adjusting to the reality and finality of death.

The reason that reincarnation did not emerge as a foundational belief in the Abrahamic faiths is that the idea of the soul does not appear in the Bible. The word translated as soul in the Bible is nefesh and it really means “life”. The word for soul that emerges in the rabbinic post-biblical writings is neshama and it does mean soul as distinct from the body. Christianity and Islam emerged in that post-biblical world and so were able to integrate the belief in a postmortem existence into their theology.

So now, my dear readers, the new question for the God Squad is do you believe in reincarnation, or do you believe that this life is all we have? The world awaits your opinions, and perhaps the next world as well.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

©2025 The God Squad. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

(c) 2025 THE GOD SQUAD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.