Pre-existence

Pre-existence (also spelled preëxistence), beforelife, or pre-mortal existence refers to the belief that each individual human soul existed before conception, and at conception (or later, depending on when it is believed that the soul enters the body) one of these pre-existent souls enters, or is placed by God, in the body. Alternative positions are traducianism and creationism, which both hold that the individual human soul does not come into existence until conception.

This belief is held to a varying degree in Abrahamic and other religions.

Judaism (Tanakh)

Within the Jewish scriptures, in the Tanakh (commonly called the Old Testament in Christianity), there is a passage used to teach^[who?] that the spirit within humans did not pre-exist, but was created within each person in the womb:

"The burden of the word of the LORD concerning Israel, the saying of the LORD who stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundation of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him:"^[1]

In Jeremiah 1:5 we read,

"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations."

Greek thought

Plato believed in the pre-existence of the soul, which tied in with his innatism. He thought that we are born with knowledge from a previous life that is subdued at birth and must be relearned. He saw all attainment of knowledge not as acquiring new information, but as remembering previously known information. Before we were born, we existed in a perfect world where we knew everything. This theory is similar to reincarnation, though there are differences – for example, Plato only believes in one earthly life.

Septuagint

The Book of Wisdom contains the following text:

"As a child I was by nature well endowed, and a good soul fell to my lot; or rather, being good, I entered an undefiled body." Wisdom of Solomon 8:19-20 RSV

Christianity

See also: Pre-existence of Christ

The Old and New Testament address the question of pre-existence indirectly. For example, in Jeremiah 1:5 we read, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations."

Romans 9:10-12 says "And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good of evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger." On the other hand, Paul says in Ephesians 1:4 that "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:"

The question Christ's disciples asked about the man born blind suggests that they believed in the pre-existence of the man's spirit. "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?"^[2]

The earliest surviving Christian writings on the pre-existence are by Origen. Origen posited in a speculative work that the soul was assigned a body as a penalty for its sin of looking downward toward the corrupt earth.^{[citation needed]}

The doctrine also derives in part from a repudiation of Greek thought by Tertullian, who argued that a material body was created for each immaterial soul.^{[citation needed]}

While orthodox Christian doctrine insists that humanity did not pre-exist,^{[citation needed]} there are those who postulate that the biblical tradition says otherwise.^[3]

Rabbinical Judaism

See also: Guf

In rabbinic literature, the souls of all humanity are described as being created during the six days of creation (Book of Genesis). When each person is born, a preexisting soul is placed within the body. (See Tan., Pekude, 3).

In Tractate Sanhedrin, the question is asked, When does the soul enter the body of the newborn? The answer "at birth" is rejected in favor of an intermediate stage within the womb, usually interpreted as 40 days after conception, after which it is traditionally believed that a baby is taught Torah by an angel.

Islam

In Islam all souls are believed to have been created in adult form (before earthly life) at the same time God created the father of Mankind, Adam. The Quran recounts the story of when the descendants of Adam were brought forth before God to testify that God alone is the Lord of creation and therefore only He is worthy of worship (Quran chapter 7, verse 172), so that on the Day of Judgment, people could not make the excuse that they only worshipped others because they were following the ways of their ancestors. God then removed the memory of this event from the minds of Mankind (leaving only an innate awareness that He exists and is One, known as the Fitra in Islam) and He decreed at which point each and every human would be born into the physical world.

Latter Day Saint movement

The concept of pre-mortal existence (sometimes referred to as pre-mortal life or, incorrectly, as pre-existence, from the traditional Christian terminology) is an early and fundamental doctrine of Mormonism. In 1833, early in the Latter Day Saint movement, its founder Joseph Smith, Jr. taught that just as Jesus was coeternal with God the Father,^[4] "Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be."^[5]

This reference indicates the LDS belief that aside from spirit and body, there is a third aspect of humanity, namely, an "intelligence". It is this intelligence, according to LDS doctrine, that "was not created or made, neither... can be." Latter-day Saints believe there was a spiritual creation quite some time before the physical creation.^[6] The non-created, eternal intelligences of humans were put into the created spirits, which were in turn put into physical bodies. The nature of an "intelligence" is not precisely understood and its difference from spirits largely seems to be an arguable moot point, so far, until further revelation is given (but there are spiritual bodies as well as physical bodies, according to LDS doctrine.)^[7]

In 1844, Smith taught:

"[T]he soul—the mind of man—the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation.... We say that God himself is a self-existent being.... Man does exist upon the same principles.... [The Bible] does not say in the Hebrew that God created the spirit of man. It says 'God made man out of the earth and put into him Adam's spirit, and so became a living body.' The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal with God himself.... Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it had a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had not beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven."^[8]

After Smith's death, the doctrine of pre-mortal existence was elaborated by some other Latter Day Saint leaders, primarily within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its breakoffs. Although the "mind" and "intelligence" of humanity were still considered to be co-eternal with God, and not created, Brigham Young introduced the idea that the "spirit", which he distinguished from the "mind" or "intelligence", was indeed created and not co-eternal with God. Young postulated that we each had a pre-spirit "intelligence" that later became part of a spirit "body", which then eventually entered a physical body and was born on earth. In 1857, Young stated that every person was "a son or a daughter of [the Father]. In the spirit world their spirits were first begotten and brought forth, and they lived there with their parents for ages before they came here."^[9][10]

Among Latter-day Saints the idea of "spirit birth" was described in its modern doctrinal form in 1909, when the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued the following statement:

"Jesus, however, is the firstborn among all the sons of God—the first begotten in the spirit, and the only begotten in the flesh. He is our elder brother, and we, like Him, are in the image of God. All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity." MFP 4:203.

This description is widely accepted by modern Latter-day Saints as fundamental to the Plan of salvation. However, there are differences of opinion as to the nature of the pre-mortal existence in other Latter Day Saint denominations.

The LDS Church teaches that during the pre-mortal existence, there was a learning process which eventually led to the next necessary step in the pre-mortal spirits' opportunity to progress. This next step included the need to gain a physical body that could experience pain, sorrow and joy and "walk by faith." According to this belief, these purposes were explained and discussed in "councils in heaven," followed by the War in Heaven where Satan rebelled against the plan of Heavenly Father.

See also

• Bodhisattva
• Gnosticism
• Hypostasis of the Archons
• Kabbalah
• Origenism
• Manichaeism
• Past life
• Spiritualism
• Esotericism (western)

References

1. ^ Zechariah 12:1
2. ^ John 9:2
3. ^ Hammerton-Kelly, Robert. "Pre-Existence, Wisdom, and the Son of Man", Society for New-Testament Studies Monograph Series No.21. Cambridge, UP, 1973, p.273
4. ^ Doctrine and Covenants 93:21-23
5. ^ Doctrine and Covenants 93:29
6. ^ Moses 3: 5, 7, 9
7. ^ Ensign, September 1984 - First Presidency Message - We Are Children of God
8. ^ Excerpt from King Follett Discourse
9. ^ 4 Journal of Discourses 218
10. ^ Ostler, Blake (1982), "The idea of pre-existence in the development of Mormon thought", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15 (1): 59–78, https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V15N01_61.pdf .

External links

• Metempsychosis: From the Catholic Encyclopedia—see CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Metempsychosis.
• Origen of Alexandria (185-254 CE), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• "Reincarnation as Taught by Early Christians", by I. M. Oderberg, from Sunrise magazine, May 1973, Copyright © 1973 by Theosophical University Press.
• The Fifth Ecumenical Council, from online site Kuriakon: Infinity, section "Reincarnation".