Pre-existence , pre-existence , beforelife , or the premortal existence refers to the belief that every individual human soul exists before conception mortal, and at some point before birth entered or placed into the body. The concept of pre-existence can include the belief that the soul appears at some time before the conception or belief that the soul is immortal. The alternative position is traducianism and creationism, both of which believe that the individual human soul does not appear before conception. It must be distinguished from preformation, that is, of physical existence and applies to all living things.
Ancient Greek thought and Islam affirm pre-existence, but are generally rejected in Christianity.
Video Pre-existence
Greek Thought
Plato believed in the pre-existence of the soul, which is bound by its innatism. He thinks that we are born with the knowledge of a quiet previous life at birth and must be re-examined. He sees all the achievements of knowledge not as acquiring new information, but remembering the information previously known. Before we are born, we are in a perfect world where we know everything.
Maps Pre-existence
Christianity
The concept of pre-existence was put forward by Origen, the father of the church from the second and third centuries. Origen believed that every human soul was created by God at a time before conception. The priests of Tertullian and Jerome Church adhered to traducianism and creationism, respectively, and pre-existence were condemned as heretics at the Council of Constantinople II in 553 AD.
Origen cites Romans 9: 11-14 as evidence for his position:
For unborn children, never do any good or evil, that God's purpose according to election may stand, not of works, but of him who calls; Told him, the Elder will serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob I have loved, but Esau whom I hate. Then what shall we say? Is there unrighteousness with God? Good-bye.
Origen argued that God could not love Jacob and hated Esau until Jacob had done something worthy of love and Esau had done something worthy of hatred, therefore this passage simply meant that Jacob and Esau had not done good or bad in this. life and their behavior before this life is the reason why Esau will serve Jacob. He rejected the position that God loves or hates the soul based on his tendency toward good or evil, before the soul actually does good or evil deeds. (God, who is the creator of all his souls and inclinations, knows the tendency of every soul to good or evil.)
Origen also quotes Jeremiah 1: 5:
Before I mold you in the stomach I know you; and before you come out of the womb I sanctify you, and I set you as a prophet to the nations.
Those who reject pre-existence, which would become any Christian denomination that accepted the conclusions of the Council of Constantinople II (ie, all Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Catholics and many Protestants), saw only Jeremiah 1: 5 as another part of God's previous knowledge. This ecumenical council explicitly states, "If one affirms the existence of the pre-existence of souls, and will affirm the great restoration that follows from it: let him be anathema." This will make a rejection of Origen's teaching which tends to be the opinion of the majority of Christians to this day.
The belief that the human soul chooses good or evil is completely independent of the will of God, most often found among the more extreme Christians, meaning that God ultimately does not determine the will of every soul. However, the ex-nihilo creation, a belief commonly found among Arminians, means that God determines everything that exists, including the will of every soul, without attracting anything but himself. This question is definitively solved in Calvinism by affirming that all souls act according to the will of God, and in Mormonism (see below) by affirming that the human soul is always present and living with God.
Latter-day Saints
The concept of premortal existence is an early and fundamental doctrine of Mormonism. In 1833, at the beginning of the Latter-day Saint movement, its founder Joseph Smith taught that the human soul is as immortal as God the Father just as Jesus is eternal with God the Father, "Man is also at first with God Intelligence, or the light of truth, is not created or made, nor can. "
In 1844, Smith described this idea in King Follet's discourse:
... the human mind - the eternal spirit. Where does it come from? All learned people and divine doctors say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: it reduces humans in my estimation... We say that God Himself is an existing being... Man does exist on the same principle... [The Bible] does not say in Hebrews that God created the human spirit. It is said, "God made man from the earth and put into the spirit of Adam, and thus become a living body." The human mind or intelligence is equal to God Himself... Is it logical to say that spiritual intelligence is eternal, yet it has a beginning? The intelligence of the spirit has no beginning, nor will there be any end. That's good logic. That which has a beginning may be over. There was never a time when there was no spirit; because they are parallel to our Father in heaven.
In the context of this core LDS doctrine, the term premortal existence is a term that is significantly more accurate to describe the time before this mortal existence than pre-existence , since pre-existence has the connotation of something that existed before the beginning of existence, and the doctrine of LDS specifically rejected the creation of ex-nihilo. Therefore, the term "premortal existence" is highly favored in the LDS church to represent the time before this mortal life, but the term "pre-existence" is being used extensively.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
After Smith's death, the doctrine of premortal existence is expounded by some other leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Although the human mind and intelligence are still considered eternal with God, and not created, Brigham Young introduces the idea that the spirit, which he distinguishes from the mind or intelligence, is created and does not live with God. Young postulates that each of us has a pre-spirit intelligence which then becomes part of the spirit body, which then eventually enters the physical body and is born on earth. In 1857 Young declared that everyone was a "son or daughter." In the spirit world their spirits were first begotten, and they lived there with their parents for centuries before they came here.
In the LDS Church the idea of ​​a spiritual birth is described in the form of its modern doctrine in 1909, when the First Presidency of the church issued the following statement:
However, Jesus was the firstborn among all the sons of God - born first in spirit, and the only begotten in flesh. He is our eldest brother, and we, like Him, are in God's image. All men and women are in the resemblance of universal Father and Mother, and literally are the sons and daughters of God.
This description is widely accepted by modern Latter-day Saints as the basis for the plan of salvation. However, there are differences of opinion about the nature of the premortal existence in other Latter-day Saint denominations.
The LDS Church teaches that during the premortal existence, there is a learning process that ultimately leads to the next important step in the opportunity of the premortal spirit to move forward. The next step includes the need to get a physical body that can experience pain, sadness and joy and "walk by faith." According to this belief, these goals are explained and discussed in the councils of heaven, followed by a War in Heaven where Satan rebels against Heavenly Father's plan.
Islam
In Islam, all souls are believed to have been created in adult form (before worldly life) at the same time God created the father of Man, Adam. The Qur'an tells the story when the descendants of Adam were born before God to testify that only God is the God of creation and therefore only He is worthy of worship so on the Day of Judgment, one can not make excuses that they only worship others because they follow the way their ancestors. Humans do not remember because they were born with an undeveloped mind (leaving only the innate awareness that He exists and One, known as Fitra) and He decides at which point every human will be born into the physical world.
Hinduism
In the Bhagavad Gita, considered by Hindus as the most sacred scriptures, Krishna tells Arjuna; "There never was a time when I was not there, or you, or all these kings, or in the future we would all stop being."
Bahá'à Faith
The Baha'i text refers in a number of places to at least three four key dimensions of pre-existence. First, that the soul of the individual man appears at conception and only after that is eternal; in other words it was not there before. Secondly, in the above distinctions, that the souls of the world's greatest spiritual masters, the founders of world religions, have existed before. Thirdly, that God, a reality which can not be understood by human consciousness, has existed before, ie, His existence before His time and creation. Fourth, that the relationship between God and the phenomenal or contingent world is one of emanations, because the sunlight leads to the sun. In other words, the pre-existing world of the Lord remained separate from and did not descend into His creation.
See also
- Hereafter
- Bodhisattva
- Gnosticism
- Hypostasis from Archons
- Kabbalah
- Origenisme
- Manichaeism
- Spiritualism
- Esotericism (west)
- Scientology
References
External links
- Metempsychosis: From 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 Ã, Â © 1973 by Theosophical University Press.
- The Fifth Ecumenical Council, from the online site Kuriakon: Infinity , the "Reincarnation" section.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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