Resurrection or Re-Incarnation?

when you have this concept of the soul body and the resurrection body, then suddenly re-incarnation doesn’t make any sense. What, am I to suddenly adopt another physical body altogether? What about the fusion of my soul and my body that existed before? So it wasn’t a real fusion after all. It really was the fact that my body was just the container for my soul. No. We reject this idea. The Judeo Christian view is that the soul is engrafted and is inseparable from the body (at least from the ‘soul body’ I have been theorizing about)

Why does it matter? It matters because matter matters. In other words, it matters because we believe the body is important. We believe the physical world is important. We’re not gnostics who believe that the physical world is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the spiritual realm.

No, we believe that everybody matters because every body matters. What I do with my body immediately affects my soul. What I do with other peoples’ bodies affects their soul and my soul. What I do with material things affects my soul and other people souls because our souls and our bodies, the spiritual and the physical are all wrapped up together. This integration of the soul and body is totally necessary to have a Catholic, a sacramental and even a Christian philosophy.

Re-incarnation, on the other hand, simply considers the body to be a container for the soul. Do you see how this affects everything? If the body is simply the container for the soul, it doesn’t really matter what you do with the body. See how it impacts morality? It doesn’t matter what you do with your body or another person’s body sexually because the body doesn’t matter.

See how it affects the pro life debate? If the fetal body does not yet have a soul (a view that re-incarnation can well support) then it doesn’t matter if we kill it.

Finally, some will say, “Well, we can’t know one way or another. Resurrection of the body might be true. Re incarnation might be true. I guess it’s a toss up.” No it’s not. We have a historical occurrence of resurrection. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. People saw him. They were scared. They touched him and had breakfast with him. Those who claim re-incarnation have nothing more than subjective experience and a theory.

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