Reincarnation is another term that NDE patients mistakenly use. Reincarnation is not a part of Catholic theology.
Reincarnation being the serial migration of a soul from body to body. “Reincarnation” is a mistakenly used term, which is simply grasped onto by NDE patients. What NDE patients seem to be actually referring to is the repeated incarnation of a particular human, from Christ.EE
It is a matter of a human person rejoining Christ after his death; this person is now, no longer his own person, but a member of the person of Christ. Christ is now all who constitute EE As for terminology: partial incarnation = creation by Christ, from his own person. It is a Catholic understanding that the human soul is created directly by Christ, and from his own person, thus “partial incarnation” is used. The body of course is not created by Christ alone, and Christ also withholds some spiritual attributes such as divinity and eternity. For a complete list, think of a model being having unlimited powers. Most of these powers do not exist in a human, thus any degree of direct incarnation from Christ that we have is only a partial incarnation.
In the creation of a human it would be most accurate to use both terms: partial incarnation (of the soul) and creation (of the body), but this would add unnecessary complexity. Additionally, the phrase “repeated partial incarnation”, stresses that it is not a matter of human souls taking on new bodies, but the single person of Christ, making partial incarnations from his own person. It is allowed within Catholic theology that Christ incorporate an individual into his own person, as a member of his body, then at his decision, give this member existence again as a free and separate human person. God has both the ability and the authority to do this, and NDE’s suggest that Christ does just this. This idea of Christ adopting people into his own divine person is the existing Catholic idea of divine union, or spiritual marriage, spoken of by the saints, and is the intended destiny of everyone.
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the body of Christ. Each member of Christ would be called a person, but every member of Christ is a member of the single person of Christ, they have all traded in their very person for a better one, that of Christ. These former human persons are now divine members of their new person of Christ.
There is no bank of souls in Heaven, but there are many members of Christ. These members are individual humans who are adopted into the very person of Christ. Do not think of an enormous Jesus, with other humans sprouting from him, Christ is now a single person who is a community. The linkage between members is not a so much a physical one, but spiritual. Bread, wine, humans and ultimately all of creation will become members of Christ.
The NDE idea termed “reincarnation” is really the original, ongoing, partial and repeated incarnation of dimensions of Christ. These dimensions of Christ become individual human persons at their creation. At death, a person may rejoin the body of Christ, to again become a dimension of Christ. This dimension of Christ may (at Christ’s decision) be given creation again. This is not a human soul reincarnating,
but Christ making repeated incarnation. FF
This is not a matter of a human soul migrating from body to body, any human soul has its existence as a dimension of the single person Christ prior to its incarnation, and then again upon reunion with Christ.
FF When Christ incarnates directly, Jesus results. When Christ incarnates indirectly by giving form to nothing, creation results. Creation results when Christ donates selected attributes to give form to a core of nothing. This new creation operates with a core of nothing rather than its previous absolute core. Concerning the third sentence of the paragraph, we may actually become divine members of Christ in this life, (2Pet 1:4; CCC 398).
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In Romans 12:5 we read, “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.”
This principle gives increased possibility to the NDE idea of past lives and repeated incarnation. NDE’s do speak of past lives, and from this article we see that a past life, does not demand reincarnation, but it would require a particular member of Heavenly Christ, to undergo creation again. He would leave the eternity of the person of Christ and enter into creation once again, not from a bank of souls, but from Christ, the Son of God.
The body of Christ in Heaven is the single person of Christ who has lived, is living, and will live a life on earth.
Individual members of Christ who make NDE visits to Heaven are given a glimpse of these past lives.GG
Persons having an NDE usually do not have study in the theology of the body of Christ, and they use labels such as
“reincarnation of persons”, rather than “repeated partial incarnation of Christ. ”HH There is a vital difference. In the case of reincarnation, a human soul serially inhabits bodies.
GG Pope Benedict XVI repeatedly made statements that Heaven is the person of Christ. From his Mass homily at Monte Cassino, May 24, 2009, “…this word Heaven does not indicate a place above the stars but something far more daring and sublime: it indicates Christ himself…”
From his book “Dogma and Preaching”, under the article of “The Meaning of Christ’s Ascension”, “…we go to heaven to the extent that we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him. Heaven is a person: Jesus himself is what we call heaven."
This type of mystical teaching, expands the limits of conventional teaching into areas which are not easily known by our human minds. Such expansion is expected by the Church and is often confirmed by the mystic saints. The Churches greatest theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, once had a vision of the totality of God, after which he declared all his writings were like a “pile of straw” when compared to ultimate reality. Standard theology is beyond reason for the reasonable, and mysticism is often beyond belief for the religious, and all this is a very small sampling of the ever expanding God.
HH A human or a rock are each a partial incarnation of Christ. A human has all those things proper to a human, but does not have all the attributes of 44
In the second case, the single person of Christ (made of many individual members, having human faculties of awareness, free will, etc.), incarnates some of his dimensions as human persons (or angelic persons for that matter). This is how people are created, and they may return at death, or even in this life, to again become the single divine person of Christ, who we call the body of Christ.
Christ goes forth as free human persons and returns to become Christ again. If one of his human dimensions remains imperfect after some time on the proving ground of earth, he may incarnate it again. This takes on the appearance of reincarnation, but it is actually the ongoing incarnation of dimensions of Christ.II
Human persons are not reincarnated,
Christ. Christ may form a human directly, or assign the task to the many orders of Heaven, but the created human, and the created Heavenly workers all ultimately come from Christ. When Christ made the first creation, he could not grab onto some existing substance and form it into a rock or a human…nothing else existed, only God. Creation was necessarily a direct, but partial incarnation of Christ. Christ gives some of his attributes (even if indirectly), when creating a rock; Christ gives even more of his attributes when creating a human, but neither is a ful incarnation of Christ, only partial.
We are not created with divinity, eternity, or the complete abilities of Christ.
Even is something is created indirectly by God, using his Heavenly helpers; in every case, either the clay or the mold, or the mold which makes the secondary mold, is some attribute of God himself. This idea that God is necessarily, directly a part of every creation is the Catholic idea of ‘divine omnipresence’. This is not pantheism (God is all things), but divine omnipresence, whereby God sustains all of creation, and is necessarily a part of all things.
II John 3:13 (Jesus was the first to Heaven), does not preclude the repeated incarnation of a particular (human) dimension of Christ. It would restrict it to a time after Heaven was opened to all. Recall also that Jesus was speaking of humans of his era. Those angels obtaining salvation did so before the human Jesus existed; they were included into the Trinitarian Son of God directly. The evidence for this communion is that some angels failed, and now live in a state of Hel .
The earliest known NDE report is written by Plato, in the tenth book of 45
Christ is continually and even repeatedly incarnated. This is a partial incarnation, and does not result in another divine Jesus Christ, but as the humans we know on earth. The birth of an individual is just this. Catholic theology does permit Christ to incarnate particular dimensions of himself as often as he wishes.JJ
“The Republic”. NDE’s are really visits to the afterlife, or the boundary of Heaven and they are recorded throughout Church history, the apostle Paul made such a visit, (2 Corinthians 12:1-10). Paul’s visit to Heaven may be his NDE which occurred 14 years prior to his telling of it. His NDE likely occurred during his stoning and apparent death recorded in Acts 14:19-20.
A similar incident may have happened to Buddha. His 49 day fast under a bodhi tree brought on near death and a NDE. He gained awareness of past lives, and the ongoing (partial) incarnation of persons, spiritual efficacy (karma), and finally of moral detachment from selfish desires. He did not see Jesus, who would be born 400 years later, but other truths of Heaven were revealed to him in his NDE. As for God, he simply said that God was beyond understanding, and that a precursor to union with God was selflessness, or
“Nirvana”. Both ideas, which are in accordance with Catholic doctrine, or even Catholic mystical tradition.
Non-Catholic faiths are not assumed to be devoid of truth. Jewish monotheism began 4000 years ago; but did God simply abandon his other children outside of the smal Jewish tribe (before or after Judaism), or did God give al people adequate knowledge of purpose, faith and morality?
Hinduism, Buddhism and all other faiths prior to the birth of Christ, necessarily did not speak of God made man. This does not render void what God did reveal to these religions. With the advent of Christianity, the faith took the slow route of Roman roads, and sea routes, over a thousand years, all by God’s wil .
JJ Catholic teaching supports a literal re-incarnation of our soul at the resurrection. Our soul will again be incarnate with a body. Catholic teaching rejects the idea of transmigration of a soul, in which a human soul progresses from body to body. At our death, we join the body of Christ in Heaven, and we are again a dimension of Christ. Christ may again use this dimension of himself in his act of creating a human person. This operation is not a human soul progressing serially through bodies.
It is useful to remember that there is only one person in Heaven ―
Christ, who is now constituted of many individual members, dimensions and attributes. Anything occurring in Heaven occurs within, and to Christ, not a human person. Christ is one divine person, having one immortal soul, and many individual points of awareness and human ability. These are former 46
Jesus Christ himself speaks of repeated incarnation. In Mt 11:14, Jesus teaches that John the Baptist is the prophet Elijah come again. 2Kings 2:11 has Elijah taken to Heaven by divine action, rather than experience death. Elijah seems to be an incarnation of the prophetic attributes of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus teaches this same spirit of prophecy is incarnated again in John the Baptist, (Mt 11:14).
The case of John the Baptist being Elijah come again may be some sort of third case. Elijah appeared from nowhere…no family, no record. He may have been an apparition of the Holy Spirit.KK He did not die, such as is demanded of humans, but was assumed into Heaven. John the Baptist had a record of humanity, and died a human death.LL
human persons who now make up the single person of Christ. They lose none of their former abilities, but now constitute the single divine person of Christ. Christ desires to incarnate into human persons, and NDE’s reveal that there is much work done in both preparation to incarnate, and later reception into the body of Christ.
KK A human incarnation (not just an apparition) of the Holy Spirit is not impossible. No one expected a human incarnation of Christ…until it happened. The most likely candidate for this status is Virgin Mary. She was sinless, and made complete union (marriage) with the Holy Spirit at the annunciation. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit was total, and Mary is now the human incarnation of the Holy Spirit. Mary also attained divinization at her marriage to the Holy Spirit. Divinization is the intended end for all people (CCC 398). Ours occurs after death, Mary could not die, and hers necessarily occurred during her life.
The ideal for marriage, and the ideal that God can only pursue, is union of persons to the greatest possible extent. Human marriage has its limitations, and two persons can never fully become one in this life. When marriage is contracted by God however, it is an unlimited, total, perfect and permanent union of persons. Mary is the human incarnation of the Holy Spirit because of her unlimited, total, perfect and permanent union with the Holy Spirit. This is a possible fifth Marian dogma which continues to be studied.
LL “Spiralic”, the Holy Spirit is said to be a spiration (breath like action) of the Father and the Son.
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In any combination, John was certainly a repeated, partial incarnation of the Holy Spirit. This idea of repeated incarnation is perhaps the best of the possible explanations of Christ’s statement, “If you can accept it, John is Elijah come again.”.
Online NDE accounts that refer to “reincarnation” and
“previous lives”, (remember these are mislabeled) are: www.nderf.org, exceptional NDE’s 1957; www.nderf.org, NDE
4426, Doug F; www.nderf.org, NDE 8887, Ashley M; www.near-death.com, notable NDE’s Thomas Sawyer; www.near-death.com; notable NDE’s Lynnclaire Dennis; iands.org, NDE
accounts, unnamed patient 11 January 2019. 33
Christ is free to make repeated creation of a particular person, but a “Big Crunch” scenario would almost demand this repeated creation. As mentioned in the previous section, a “Big Crunch/Big Cycle scenario would allow the repeated incarnation of a particular set of dimensions of Christ, (even a human-like set of dimensions). Both the “Big Bang” and the “Big Cycle” scientific scenarios are accepted as physical and theological possibilities by the Catholic Church, because they are scientifically possible, and they do not violate any know moral law of God.
A “Big Crunch” has created matter (and possibly created spirit) retracting back into its original infinite dimension (God).MM
This intelligent and free God may then start another creation cycle, at his pleasure.
MM The Big Bang/Big Crunch scenario would certainly have matter and energy being created and retracted. But would spiritual creation such as virtue also be created and retracted? The author suspects not. Yet we know that God wil one day include all of creation (except Hell?) into his person, to give it the highest possible existence. Once all of creation is included into God, (as the single divine person of Christ), God is free to make original creation from himself again if he so desires. It is a rash physicist or theologian who says that something is impossible.
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Within God are contained sets of attributes which are previous humans which have rejoined the body of Christ. These are not a bank of human souls, they are human-like dimensions, contained within Christ. At Christ’s will, he may incarnate these dimensions again, into a creation cycle.
Christ may incarnate such dimensions at his pleasure, even until there dimensions attain spiritual parity with God himself, so that the student may become like the master, (Lk 6:40). We recall that spiritual advancement is the reason that anyone is given created existence. We enter into our created (and even fallen) world, we make spiritual advancement, having only an indirect knowledge of God; we bring our spiritual advancement to our reunion with Christ, as the body of Christ.
The entire universe benefits, and God who cannot advance in virtue does just this.
Each NDE account is unique, and a few speak of ideas which can in no way be included within Catholic theology.
However, all the major and repeating NDE elements are within
the bounds of Catholic theology. NDE accounts are properly seen as individual post-Biblical revelations, each to be judged on its unique merit.
We must now ask and answer the question, “Why does Christ continue creating?” He could have shut down the whole operation after sin damaged it, but Christ continues his creation.
Our incarnation fulfills not only God’s desire for children, but God’s desire to grow in love. The Absolute cannot grow…but a non-absolute, human dimension of Christ can grow.
These human persons triumph in a fallen world, then return to Christ to become the body of Christ, thus giving God wider and deeper dimensions of love.
The reason that Christ makes repeated incarnation of particular dimensions (that’s us), is for their perfection…and a perfection that can only come through triumph in a fallen world.
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These dimensions which incarnate into human persons will one day attain perfection and, “He who overcomes, I will make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out no more.”, (Rev 3:12). NDE’s give real life meaning to this idea. NDE stories are really the lives of the saints.