If it was found to be true that we have had past lives, would this affect the Catholic Faith?

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For the reasons which have already been repeatedly explained earlier in the thread . . .
 
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Why not, I always believed it possible as a child.

Likewise rebirth has never seemed to me to be opposed to natural reason though it does not appeal to me.
 
I have seen none re rebirth.
You do realise they are different concepts?
 
Well if you aren’t sure about the difference between Hinduism and Buddhism then it might be a little premature to be coming out with statements about beliefs in past lives being opposed to natural reason.

Have you ever learnt anything about Hinduism or Buddhism from an actual Hindu or Buddhist teacher. Christians have a tendency for criticising religions they have only ever learnt about via the internet, books or lectures by biased Christians. Its a bit sad to be so cossetted.

That’s not to say Buddhists/Hindus don’t do the same, but its not something to be imitated hopefully.
 
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It’s tedious and annoying to try to debate someone who refuses to explain what they’re talking about. Please explain what “rebirth” is and how it’s different from reincarnation in such a way that the arguments given earlier in the thread don’t apply to it. Don’t expect everyone to automatically know minor details of false religious systems from the other side of the world.
 
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My apologies, I haven’t come here to educate anyone but to learn more myself.
Hence the questions.

I’ve assumed people have a reasonable grasp of the topic. Especially those who are confident enough in their understanding to say belief in past lives opposes natural reason.

Such a facile statement contradicts my own personal discussions with, for example, highly Western educated Buddhist monks. They often visit the temple across the road from my Church where I go for a coffee with my Buddhist wife after mass. We have some great discussions. They are not stupid or unreasoning people. It is we in our hubris who constantly underestimate and misunderstand their religion. I have unlearnt a lot from them.
 
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The unmistakable sign of a pseudo-intellectual is that he’ll respond to a question about a concept by telling you about how knowledgeable he is.
 
All you needed to do was justify your unusual assertion by answering my reasonable questions.
I now realise your “belief in past lives is opposed to reason” was a bit of debating hyperbole and a bridge too far for you.
That’s OK, we all exaggerate a little too far at times.
 
Blue Horizon, you know something about Aquinas philosophy. You know a body must properly organized for infusement of a soul . The soul that’s had a life as a body has been changed. Can it fit another body?
 
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Interesting question, never really thought about it.

The reason being that for Buddhists the “past life” is not actually “theirs” (whereas for Hindu’s it is the same person). So there is no continuity of person but only of causality/karmic stream and which is a non-material linkage.

But for Hindus…for it to be “my” past life then the soul must be the same.
But what matter goes with that body.
Obviously it doesn’t have to be the very same atoms I had previously (because the whole body changes every 7 years anyways).
Does it have to have the same DNA? I don’t know, probably, though its hard to say it has to be necessarily so. It would seem Hindu reincarnation is not about identical dna or persons looking exactly the same. Aquinas would have located the formative power of DNA we know of today not in the body or in the soul but in the spiritual force of the father’s semen which externally constructs the embryo from the female menses for reception of its own distinct soul.
The discovery of DNA does not necessarily ruin the Thomistic body/soul system but, in adapting it to cope with DNA, it may rule out its support for re-incarnation (whereas the old understanding may have been compatible with reincarnation).

Does it have to have the same memories of the past life. That is what is being asserted.
Well where are memories stored? That’s a difficult question. The Scholastics seems to be vague on the matter. Imagination is considered material, memory seems to be part material and partly in the soul. Maybe that is why the Hindu’s and colloquial (Tibetan) Buddhists teach the memories of past lives are not clear but in the unconscious. Disembodied souls do not seem to have full personhood or memory of their earthly lives according to Aquinas…that requires bodily faculties to some extent.

So that is why I am hesitant to easily conclude that even reincarnation (Hinduism) is against Thomistic understanding of body and soul. Even if it were that doesn’t mean its against reason.

Aquinas’s system isn’t co-terminus with reality - though close!?

Obviously its not compatible with Church Teaching which holds that at death there is judgement then heaven (via purgatory) or hell…
 
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All religions commonly answer the question of life and it’s relationship with death. That’s the biggie. Transmigration of souls ends in material extensions to the lowest forms of life(Hindu). That seems unreasonable to me since the human soul can’t infuse into inscects and such. Evrn if it could there would be no power of intellect operating. And, The purpose is to achieve the spirtual goals of asceticism. That is achieved by many Saints of the Church.
 
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It’s not clear why having more than one life is necessarily impossible although i see that it is literally incompatible with Catholic revelation. I say literally, because while it may be true that the normal way of things is judgement after death (its true in general that all men face judgement upon death), i don’t believe that there cannot be an exception to the rule, simply because it’s up to God. For example the Church is the only path to God, but it is also possible for an atheist to be saved.

This is my personal opinion of course.

The migration of the soul is contingently impossible because of the way God created personal beings, but it is not metaphysically impossible. God could have created things so that the migration of the soul was possible. He could have decided that the soul alone is what defines a person and that the body was just a means of expression. God could simply put the soul in another body at the moment of conception. Its only because God created the body to be as important as the soul when making a person, that it is an error to think that it happens.

So you cannot really say that the Hindu is necessarily acting against natural reason in this regard since it is only because of God’s decision that they are wrong, not because of something ontologically necessary.
 
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Aristotle distinguished four ways of speaking about what a thing is (known as the four causes, though obviously the word cause is not used in the way it generally is today):
  1. Final Cause is the purpose of a thing, the end to which it is directed.
  2. Efficient Cause is cause in the sense we normally think about.
  3. Formal Cause is what a thing is (e.g. human, dog, cat).
  4. Material Cause is the matter that a thing is made up of.
All natural substances have forms, and the forms of living things are called souls. Rational animals have spiritual souls, which is why they can have intellectual knowledge.

Matter is the irreducible principle of particularity. It is at bottom what distinguishes any two members of the same species (I am made of this matter, you are made of that matter). Incidentally, this is why each angel is its own species, there can’t be two versions of St. Michael because there would be no differentiating principle between them.

It is true that God could have, instead of making rational animals, simply created a bunch of angels and allowed each to possess successive members of a human-looking animal species. But it is knowable from natural reason that are bodies are part of our own identities, which is why Aristotle was able to know this without any divine revelation. Moreover, if the “ghost in a machine” theory were true, it would drastically effect morals. There would be no good reason for insisting on greater respect for human bodies than for animal bodies, and death would be no worse than moving.
 
IWantGod said:
If it was found to be true that we have had past lives, would this affect the Catholic Faith?
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A Muslim once told me that if he ever found out that reincarnation was true, he would leave his faith immediately, because it would mean that the Koran was not the true word of God. I wonder if Catholics feel the same way?
 
openmind77 said:
A Muslim once told me that if he ever found out that reincarnation was true, he would leave his faith immediately, because it would mean that the Koran was not the true word of God. I wonder if Catholics feel the same way?
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Reincarnation is completely incompatible with Christianity. They cannot, repeat absolutely cannot, both be true.

Unfortunately, as reading this thread demonstrates, there’s a disconnect between the truths of the faith and what people either think or believe or are willing to think or believe.
 
FrDavid96 said:
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openmind77:
A Muslim once told me that if he ever found out that reincarnation was true, he would leave his faith immediately, because it would mean that the Koran was not the true word of God. I wonder if Catholics feel the same way?
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Reincarnation is completely incompatible with Christianity. They cannot, repeat absolutely cannot, both be true.

Unfortunately, as reading this thread demonstrates, there’s a disconnect between the truths of the faith and what people either think or believe or are willing to think or believe.
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I realize belief in reincarnation is incompatible with Christianity. But I just wondered how fundamental this belief in ‘one life’ is. When we first found out that the earth revolves around the Sun, the church accepted it after some struggle. Prior to that the belief that the earth revolves around the Sun was incompatible with Christianity.

I assume the belief in only ‘one life’ is more fundamental than that?
 
Yes, in the context of Christian teaching it is unacceptable and impossible. But out side that belief system it is not. We have a very linear understanding of history (beginning -middle - end). The east is more cyclical, evolution is a spiral upward.
 
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openmind77 said:
I realize belief in reincarnation is incompatible with Christianity. But I just wondered how fundamental this belief in ‘one life’ is. When we first found out that the earth revolves around the Sun, the church accepted it after some struggle. Prior to that the belief that the earth revolves around the Sun was incompatible with Christianity.

I assume the belief in only ‘one life’ is more fundamental than that?
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And maybe someday we will discover that the moon stays in one place while the sun and the earth revolve around it? Won’t we be surprised?

That is not a reasonable or logical position to take on anything. That kind of reasoning doesn’t rise to the level of a response.

The answer to your question is this: yes, the belief in one life is absolutely fundamental to Christianity.

I don’t like using the word “fundamental” because that word has been taken over by some false Christian beliefs (fundamentalists) so I need to say that I mean that word in its authentic sense. It is “foundational” it is a basic belief upon which all else rests, etc.
 
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