As more and more people are being inclined to belief in the endless births and deaths brought about by reincarnation, we are apt to think of the logic or hope attached to a theory that has subsisted ’til the present time. Why do men suppose we should live again and take upon another body?
Is it because men naturally desire immortality? Is it for love of this world that men could not bear living it in exchange for something he knows nothing of that he’d ratherspend eternity in the familiar environment in which he has lived, hoping as though cursed, that the next life would indeed be better than the last? Is this for fear of the Judgment to come, such that men may accept the temporary punishment of living in the body of a fish hoping that this is an easier burden than the eternity of separation from God that awaits those who have chosen the dark path in this life?
Men dislike uncertainty. Men could not accept the idea of dying. Men desire a comfortable explanation which he can accept and live with without seeking for a truth he fears may not fulfill that which he so desires.
But what does the Church say about all this? For those who have the courage to hear, what is there to realize?
Irenaeus
“We may undermine [the Hellenists'] doctrine as to transmigration from body to body by this fact-that souls remember nothing whatever of the events which took place in their previous states of existence. For if they were sent forth with this object, that they should have experience of every kind of action, they must of necessity retain a remembrance of those things which have been previously accomplished, that they might fill up those in which they were still deficient, and not by always hovering, without intermission, through the same pursuits, spend their labor wretchedly in vain. . . . With reference to these objections, Plato . . . attempted no kind of proof, but simply replied dogmatically that when souls enter into this life they are caused to drink of oblivion by that demon who watches their entrance, before they effect an entrance into the bodies. It escaped him that he fell into another, greater perplexity. For if the cup of oblivion, after it has been drunk, can obliterate the memory of all the deeds that have been done, how, O Plato, do you obtain the knowledge of this fact . . . ?” (Against Heresies 2:33:1-2 [A.D. 189]).
