No you could NOT have been with Jesus in the past!
To begin with, reincarnation is the belief that a soul
can move from one physical body to another.
Now, let’s take a look at Sacred Scripture. It’s true
that nothing in the Bible directly rejects reincarnation.
However, you will discover a remarkably consistent
depiction of the human person as a living union of spirit
and matter, both being valuable and necessary.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, we immediately meet this
understanding in Genesis. In chapter 2, the inspired
writer shows God forming a human body from
clay. Then God blows the divine breath into the body.
Here God’s act causes human life, which is simultaneously
spiritual and material. God does not insert an independent
“soul” into a material “container.” Rather, body and
soul exist together. As such, the notion that the “soul” of
Adam could somehow freely migrate to another body while
remaining Adam is completely foreign to the text.
A look at Israel’s understanding of
the “after life” also shows an avoidance
of any body/soul dualism. Take, for
example, the description of Abraham’s
“post-death” situation: “Then he
breathed his last, dying at a ripe old
age, grown old after a full life; and he
was taken to his kinsmen.” (Genesis 25:8)
Here we have a very earthy image of the
afterlife as a gathering of bodily human
beings whose original relationships
somehow endure.
More important, later texts clearly
assert some sort of bodily resurrection
of previously dead bodies. For a very
graphic image, take a look at chapter
37 of Ezekiel. This dramatic prophesy
culminates when a collection of
human skeletons, “came alive and
stood upright, a vast army.” (Ezekiel
37:10) The point is clear: God will
eventually restore — and transform
— the unique relationship between a
particular body and particular soul.
Everything we read in the Scriptures
about the body/soul unity of the human
person and eventual bodily resurrection
receives ultimate validation in and
through the life, death and resurrection
of Christ. To begin with, the Son of
God is not an independent spiritual
entity implanted into a human body
temporarily. The Prologue of John
makes this abundantly clear: “The Word
became flesh and made his dwelling
among us.” (John 1:14) Note the key
phrase “became flesh,” which means
that the Son of God became fully and
permanently human.
Because of the incarnation of the
Word, which means the union of
humanity and divinity in the divine
person of Christ, his resurrection is not
merely the survival of his soul. Rather,
the resurrection necessarily involves
his whole person, which is also bodily.
Without the body, the Risen Christ
would not be truly human. Moreover,
the Gospels, especially John’s, stress that
the body of the Risen Christ is the same body that suffered
crucifixion.
What difference does this make for us? Lots. The New
Testament tells us that Christ’s resurrection is a preview of
our own ultimate destiny. Two passages from St. Paul show
this: “For if we have grown into union with him through
a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the
resurrection,” (Romans 6:5) and, “He will change our lowly
body to conform with his glorified body by the power
that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to
himself.” (Philippians 3:21)
This brings us to your statement, “the soul is the only part
of the person that really matters.”
True, we often forget our spiritual dimension. However, a
person’s specific body is crucial to his or her future identity.
Indeed, we believe that our personal identity after death will
extend the bodily existence we now have. In other words, at
the time of our resurrection, we will rise in the identifiable
— though transformed — bodies we have now, not in some
new “container.”
But how can this body/soul linkage survive the inevitable
decomposition of the corpse. Ludwig Ott, the author of
the classical theological handbook called Fundamentals of
Catholic Dogma (1954), explained it this way: “The identity
must not be conceived in such a fashion that all material
parts which at any time, or at a definite moment belonged
to the earthly body, will be present in the body in the
resurrection. As the human body always remains the same
in spite of the constant changing of its constituent matter,
it suffices for the preservation of the identity, if a relatively
small share of the amount of the matter in the earthly body is
contained in the body after resurrection.”
Take, for example, the case of John Henry Cardinal
Newman, who will soon be beatified. Last year, when his
grave was opened with the intention of moving his body to a
chapel for veneration, nothing was left. The sole bodily relic
of Cardinal Newman is a single strand of hair! In a sense,
that single hair can act as the seed of a risen body. God needs
nothing more. A simple line from Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great
Austrian philosopher who lived from 1889-1951, serves
to summarize: “The human body is the best picture of
the human soul.” Because we each have a unique and
unrepeatable soul, we also have just “one picture,” the body
we have now and in eternity.
