World Religions

Reincarnation is the view that when a person dies his soul travels to another newborn human being. Reincarnationists generally believe that human persons have experienced many such incarnations, Hindus, Buddhists, and New Agers typically hold this belief.

Reincarnation is incompatible with Christian belief. The author of the biblical book of Hebrews says, “It is appointed for people to die once – and after this, judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Moreover, and more significantly, reincarnation is inconsistent with the resurrection of Jesus. We believe that Jesus rose from the dead and that those who believe in him will enjoy eternal life through bodily resurrection.

There are also serious concerns about justice raised by reincarnation. According to those who believe in it, the cause of reincarnation is the law of karma. If a person commits a bad deed, he accumulates “bad karma” which may be understood as a kind of moral debt. If a person dies with any karmic debt, he is reincarnated into a new life and given the opportunity to pay off his debt. What is more, the physical and social conditions into which a person is reincarnated are determined by his past life deeds. If a person is born into poverty or disease, that is because he was a bad person in his past life. Karma assumes, then, that “what a person sows, so shall she reap.” Of course, in every life, most people tend to perform both good and bad deeds, so there is usually the accumulation of more karmic debt that must  be eradicated in yet another incarnation. Reincarnationists believe that people generally must experience thousands, even millions, of incarnations in order to erase their karmic debt.

The problem is that this system seems unjust for several reasons, First, it would seem counterproductive at best, and unjust at worse, that a reincarnated soul should come into the world with no memory of her past life. Would it not be more fair and more fruitful if the reincarnated person called the reasons for her present  incarnation? Second,  most reincarnations believe that the process of life death – reincarnation has no beginning. No one had a first incarnation in which she was debt-free. Every incarnation of a person is the result of sins committed in a previous life. But this means that no person was ever in a state of innocence and then fell into karmic debt. Everyone has been perpetually in karmic debt. How can this be just? Third,  the doctrine of reincarnation motivates moral apathy both for oneself as well as towards others. Consider that a person who believes in reincarnation could very well rationalize immoral and unvirtuous behavior by saying that she an deal with her karmic debt in a later life. What is worse, the believer in reincarnation has a strong reason to refrain from helping those who are less fortunate than himself. After all, whatever condition a person is in (e.g., poverty) is the result of her past-life sins. Helping that person may even hinder her from working off her debt.  So the doctrine of reincarnation seems to motivate a moral apathy that exacerbates the suffering in the world.

Adapted from Steven B. Cowan and James S. Spiegel, The Love of Wisdom: A Christian Introduction to Philosophy (Broadway & Holman, 2009)