What does the Bible say about reincarnation?

The Bible flatly contradicts Hindu ideas of reincarnation and karma. Hinduism teaches that the atman (soul) is uncreated and eternal. The Bible teaches that each person is created by God, will die once and then be resurrected once at the judgment (see John 5:17‑30; 1 Cor. 15; Heb. 9:27). Hinduism teaches that the atman is perfect, free and unlimited, and no matter how many lives it takes, eventually each and every atman will realize its divine nature. The Bible teaches that each person has one life to live, and after this comes the judgment (see Heb. 9:27).

They press him further as to whether he is Elijah (v. 21), no doubt with Malachi 4:5 in mind. “I am not” is his curt answer. If this seems contrary to the Lord's words in Matthew 11:4, the answer is that, though in a spiritual sense John was Elijah (that is, a prophet of similar spirit and power — Luke 1:17), yet the Jews had thoughts of a literal re-incarnation, which was not by any means true: John was not personally Elijah.

Verse 13 now initiates a deeply important subject, based upon a mere important foundation. In the far north of the land the Lord Jesus asks His disciples of men's opinion as to who He, the Son of Man, was. This is the foundation of all blessing, whether in the assembly or in the kingdom. The answers show the mere fleshly speculation that influenced men generally. They only reason that a great prophet like this must be the re-incarnation of a former prophet, as though God must resort to duplication, as man does. But how pathetic was the ignorance of those who said He was John the Baptist, for John had been contemporary with the Lord Jesus for many years, and both had been seen together (Mt.3:13-17). Also when God spoke in Mal.45 of sending Elijah the prophet, there was no reason to suppose that this must be literally the same man, as though God would return him to earth to suffer again after having rewarded him with the joys of heaven. Luke 1:17 explains the sense in Which this is to be understood, when speaking of John the Baptist going before the Lord Jesus "In the spirit and power of Elias." John was the same type of prophet as was Elijah.

"And passing along, He saw a man blind from birth.174 And His disciples asked Him, saying, Rabbi, which sinned, this (man) or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither this (man) sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be manifested in him. I† must work the works of Him that sent Me† while it is day: night cometh, when no one can work. When I am in the world, I am the world's light" (verses 1-5). Some authorities insert ὁ, "the," contrary to the great mass. † Tischendorf, in his eighth edition, reads ἡυᾶς, " us," in both occurrences, following ℵpmBDL, several ancient versions, etc.; but Alford, Green, Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, etc., adhere to ἐμὲ and με, with AC and the great majority of uncials, cursives, and many ancient versions. BD give με in the second place, followed by Tregelles, as by Westcott and Hort also [and Weiss], with the Sahidic and the Syriac of Jerusalem, etc. This goes far to explode the "we" [Syrsin] must work; still more is the internal evidence against it.

It was an act of pure grace which the Lord was about to do. Nobody had appealed to Him, not even the blind man or his parents. The disciples only raised a question, one of those curious speculations in which the later Jews delighted:175 was it the man's sin, or his parents', which had involved him in congenital blindness? Certainly no such Pythagorean fancy prevailed then in Judea as that a man might have sinned in a previous existence on earth, and be punished for it in an after-state also on earth. Nor is there any sufficient reason to endorse a pious and learned author's view, that the disciples might have entertained — what rabbis afterwards drew from Gen. 25:22 — the notion of sin before birth.

It seems easy to understand that they conceived, however strangely, of punishment inflicted anticipatively on one whose eventual sin was foreseen by God. Doubtless it was unsound; but this need be no difficulty in the way; for what question or assertion of the disciples did not betray error enough to draw out the unerring correction, so precious to them and us, of our Lord? He now puts the case on its real purpose in the Divine mind — that the works of God might be manifested in him. It is the day of grace now: therefore was Jesus come; and this was just an opportunity for the display of His gracious power. Yet man understands not grace but by faith, and even believers only so far as faith is in exercise. Government is the natural thought when one sees God's cognisance of every thing and every one here below. But it was not then, nor is it now, the time for His government of the world. Here lay the mistake of the disciples, then, as of Job's friends of old: a mistake which leads souls, not only to censoriousness and misjudgment, but to forget their own sins and need of repentance in occupying themselves with what they count God's vengeance on others.

330 There was another system, which Origen applied even to Christ, that the higher soul could not come into this world without taking a secondary soul, and so, consequently, the body. Indeed, according to him, they are born here according to their conduct in a previous existence. Josephus says the Pharisees held the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls. It would seem that this trinity of the soul was someway connected with their speculations about the Godhead, the Memra, Shekinah, and a tissue of irreverent absurdities, which I need not enter into here.

In all ancient mythology and tradition, heathen and Jewish, will be found the craving of the human mind after truths which revelation gives as in their perfection. Infidels have consequently alleged that these truths were borrowed from the traditions, than which nothing can be more false. They were the source of Arianism and Gnosticism, Universalism and Annihilationism. Thus Rationalists tell us that the doctrine of the λόγος, or Word, was derived from the Alexandrian or even Palestinian Jews. These had their Memra, those their λόγος; and Philo speaks largely of it, and makes the visible world itself an expression, so to speak, of the λόγος, a living expression of it. But mark the real bearing of this. The reason was, that the supreme God could not by any possibility be in connection with matter. The mystic Rabbins held God for a kind of non-existence, because there was no such connection with what we hold to exist. Hence there was a secondary God, the λόγος, or Word, which partook of His nature but was not the Supreme, and He then revealed Himself and was in communication with the creature. Yet in general, matter (ὔλη) was a thing evil in itself, a bond to the soul, and eternal too.

174 Again, Origen — a most attractive, interesting man, I fully admit, but whose name became the football of passion in the church — what was he? First he applied to himself literally, by mutilation, Matthew 19:12. He held that souls were born into different conditions in this world, according to their conduct in a previously existing state — a doctrine current among the heathen Egyptians, but a well-known eastern idea of Buddhists and Brahmins too. Buddha's great doctrine was, how to escape it by hearing "Bana," and absolute indifference to everything sense could feel, so as to obtain Nirvana (extinction). But Origen held — it is not my part to make him consistent — that the fall (and this was Alexandrian and Philo's doctrine already, and Platonic) was the pure soul of man coming into a body. He was not sound, though he seems sometimes to be clear, on the divinity of Christ. As to the divinity of the Holy Ghost, he was wholly unsound. As to Ammonius (the master of Heraclas the Patriarch, and others), it is disputed whether he is Christian or heathen.

175 John 9:2. — The Pharisees supposed that the souls of good men passed from one body to another (Josephus, "Antiquities," xviii. 1, 3; "B.J.," ii. 8, 14). So Herod, of John the Baptist. By the "pious and learned author" referred to in the Exposition Tholuck would seem to be meant, for such is the view that he propounds.

238 We have a singular specimen of Jewish, Eastern or Platonic soul's pre-existence notion, in the Book of the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, chap. 41:9-10, though the unspotted body is out of the way. It is very likely that the disciples, in John 9, were under the popular, unreasoning influence of this, when they asked, 'Who did sin, this man or his parents?' The Lord's words would merely be negative.

Herod seems to have supposed there was a change of soul from an old body into a new one, as part of the current Jewish notion of pre-existence: cf. John 9:2.

A brief mention is next made of the perplexity of Herod, tetrarch of Galilee, when he heard of the works of the Lord Jesus. His conscience was troubled at the suggestion by some that Christ was John the Baptist risen from the dead (v.7). There was no excuse for such ignorance, for it was well known that both John and Christ had been publicly seen together (Mt.3:13-17). Both were preaching the Word at the same time, and John bore special witness of his inferiority to this One infinitely greater than himself. But people had many ignorant speculations as to Christ, as they do today. Some considered Him to be a reincarnation of Elijah or of some other long-dead prophet. Satan tries every means of depriving Christ of His proper glory. Still, in curiosity Herod desired to see Him (v.9), for Herod had a religious bent, but no evident faith. When he eventually did see the Lord (Lk.13:7-11) and Christ did not entertain him with any miracle or even answer his questions, he treated Him with mocking contempt.