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Updated: June 25, 2025
"Death, so called, is but older matter dressed In some new form. And in a varied vest, From tenement to tenement though tossed, The soul is still the same, the figure only lost." Poem on Pythagoras, Dryden's Ovid. Here it may be asked, if we existed before our birth why do we not remember? This is one of the strongest objections often raised against the belief in pre-existence.
Science has annihilated space; knowledge becomes universal, and the wilderness disappears. The sages of centuries agone are animating the bodies of to-day. The doctrine of pre-existence is not a fable, yet to have lived two lives belongs only to a chosen few, or those whom a fortuitous circumstance has blest. Napoleon was one of these. The spirit of a great warrior took possession of him at birth.
For it could not have been a Christian of Palestine, from the overflowing Alexandrine Platonism; nor a Christian at all; for it contradicts the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and in no wise connects any redemptory or sacrificial virtue with the death of his 'just man'; denies original sin in the Christian sense, and explains the vice and virtue of mankind by the actions of the souls of men in a state of pre-existence.
Him shall ye hear. How ridiculous the cool superciliousness with which modern historical criticism 'pooh-poohs' that interpretation! But the contrast is quite as prominent as the resemblance. This saying is one which occurs in all the Synoptics, and is as full a declaration of Sonship as any in John's Gospel. It involves pre-existence.
For to bring in the will, or reason, as causes of their own cause, that is, as at once causes and effects, can satisfy those only who, in their pretended evidences of a God, having first demanded organization, as the sole cause and ground of intellect, will then coolly demand the pre-existence of intellect, as the cause and ground- work of organization.
For the construction of a durable system of Christology, still further elaboration was necessary. The pre-existence of Jesus, as an emanation from God, in whom were summed up the attributes of the pleroma or full scale of Gnostic aeons, was now generally conceded. But the relation of this pleroqma to the Godhead of which it was the visible manifestation, needed to be more accurately defined.
The pre-existence cannot be thought of except as ideal. The two natures we assert for every man, only not in such a manner as to destroy unity in the personality. The heart of the dogma is not in these.
The Jews adopted it after the Babylonian captivity. Philo of Alexandria, who was a contemporary of Christ, preached amongst the Hebrews the Platonic idea of the pre-existence and rebirth of human souls. Philo says: "The company of disembodied souls is distributed in various orders. The law of some of them is to enter mortal bodies, and after certain prescribed periods be again set free."
That is why these modifications are perpetually changing, while the simple substance remains. I have even pointed out a certain middle way between a creation and an entire pre-existence.
The idea of pre-existence certainly is not; the Occidental mind is already prepared for it. It is true that the notion of Self as a composite, destined to dissolution, may seem little better than the materialistic idea of annihilation, at least to those still unable to divest themselves of the old habits of thought.
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