1010- Is the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh a reference to reincarnation as taught by the Spirits?
“How could it be otherwise? This expression is similar to so many others that only appear to be nonsensical to those who take them literally and are driven to disbelief. However, give it a logical interpretation, and those whom you call freethinkers will accept it without difficulty precisely because they are able to rationalize it. Make no mistake, such freethinkers want nothing more than to believe; like everyone else – perhaps even more so – they long for the future, but they cannot accept what is absurd to reason. The doctrine of the plurality of existences conforms to the justice of God and it alone can explain what is otherwise inexplicable. Why do you wonder that this principle is found in religion itself?”
1011- Then in the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh, does the Church teach the doctrine of reincarnation?
“That is obvious. This doctrine is the consequence of many things which have gone unnoticed and which will soon be properly understood. Before long, the Church will realize that Spiritism relates at every step the very text of the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, the Spirits have not come to subvert Christianity, as some claim; on the contrary, they have come to confirm and sanction it through irrefutable proofs. And since the time has arrived to replace figurative language, they speak without allegories and give things a clear and precise meaning that cannot be the object of any wrong interpretation. That is why it is simply a matter of time before there will be more sincerely religious and believing persons than there are today.”
St. Louis
Science has demonstrated the impossibility of resurrection according to the common idea. If the remains of the human body actually remained homogeneous, even though dispersed and reduced to dust, we might conceive of their being reunited at some determined time. Such is not the case, however. The body is composed of diverse elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, etc. Through decomposition, these elements are dispersed and will serve to form new bodies in such a way that the same molecule of carbon, for example, will have entered into the composition of many thousands of different bodies (we are only speaking of human bodies, leaving out those of animals). Consequently, an individual may have in his or her body molecules that belonged to humans of earlier times. The same organic molecules that you absorb from your food, for instance, may have come from the body of an individual whom you have known. Since matter has a definite quantity and since its transformations are indefinite in number, how could each one of those bodies be reconstituted with the same elements? This implies a material impossibility. The resurrection of the flesh cannot, therefore, be rationally accepted except as a figure of speech symbolizing the phenomenon of reincarnation, and as such, there is nothing shocking to reason; nothing that may be contrary to the data of science.
It is true that according to dogma the resurrection will only occur at the end of time, while according to the Spiritist Doctrine it occurs everyday. Doesn’t the image of the final judgment carry a great and beautiful metaphor, which, behind the veil of allegory, hides one of those immutable truths that the skeptics will no longer reject once its true meaning comes to light? Meditate well on the Spiritist explanation concerning the future of souls and their destiny that results from the many trials they must undergo, and it will be apparent that with the exception of it being simultaneous, the judgment in which their sins are condemned or absolved is not a fiction, as disbelievers think it is. Let us further consider that this theory is the natural consequence of the plurality of worlds – nowadays perfectly accepted – whereas according to the doctrine of the final judgment, the earth is the only inhabited world.
Site Espírita 