Reincarnation – an original Christian doctrine

12 Human beings represent a new species between angels and devils. Their soul makes them creatures of heaven, but through their body they inherited a part of their progenitors’ original sin and this has grave consequences during their terrestrial existence. It is therefore the cause for all afflictions and the mortality of the body. 5. The Church’s doctrine of eschatology Why are human beings mortal and not immortal like spirit beings? “ Paul teaches us with absolute certainty that death is the result of Adam’s sin Romans 5, 12: ‘Sin came into the world through one man and his sin brought death with it. As a result, death has spread to the whole human race because through him everyone has sinned…’ Death loses its punitive character for the righteous and it simply turns into a sequence of sins. Because of their freedom from original sin, death is neither punishment for sins nor a sequence of sins for Christ and Mary . Taking the character of human nature into account, their death was however natural.” (Ludwig Ott P. 564) The accumulation of the concepts of ”death” requires closer scrutiny to see what it means, because the way these concepts are applied here makes their coherences nonsensical : Christ and Mary are not subject to original sin, ergo there is no death for them. As they died just the same , “death” cannot be synonymic with “dying”. Christ himself gives us the answer: John 11, 25f: “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies and whoever believes in me and lives, will never die.” “Life”, according to this means belief in Christ , whilst “death” on the other hand mean disbelief , separation from God or living remote from God. The dead are therefore not decedents in a biblical sense, but remote from God . This is particularly clearly defined in the following passage from the Bible: 1 Corinthians 15, 26: “The last enemy to be defeated with be death .” “Death” obviously refers to Lucifer, the last of the spiritually dead of those that fell away from God. (Lucifer will also return to God one day and this will destroy all enmities.) The following points in the same direction: Acts 2, 24: “But God raised him from death, setting him free of its power, because it was impossible that death should hold him prisoner.” Dying and death are therefore concepts whose different meaning must not be disregarded. Whilst the necessity of dying, without personal guilt, has already been determined by the creator for every human birth, the point in time of death gains particular meaning according to one of the Church’s “secure doctrine”, because “When death occurs, the time for gaining merits and the opportunity for conversion comes to an end. (Ott P. 564)