ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 7, 15 February 1906, Page 17

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

( J.R.H.— Many thanks. Will dissect that absurd nun and nobleman ' story in next issue. Overcrowded this week. W.II. (Dunedin).— The Church never taught, but, on the contrary, has ever condemned, any and every doctrine of the pre-existence or re-incarnation of the soul (2) In the early ages of the Church, the Simonian' Uophite, and Valentinian Gnostics and others taught a bewildering number of contradictory and generally fantastic theories of re-incarnation. Some, of them professed to receive the Christian Gospel, interpreting it after their own peculiar fashion ; others were openly and bitterly hostile to it. All of them were ever regarded by the Church as heretics or as infidels Valentine, one of the early theorists, was excommunicated by Pope Hyginus, who reigned from A.D. 139 .to 142 The rest, as they arose, were duly ' lifted b y the Pone over bis garden-wall. They vanished while the Churl v st 11 young. (3) None of them held the peculiar doctrine of reincarnation 1 aught by Theosophists in our day. (1 Origen was condemned by the Council of Constantinople (A.D. 553) for having held that human souls pre-existed before the creation of Adam But h/s teaching, as given and condemned in the decree (Hefele vol. IV., p. 21!*, Lvl\), is woild.s away, >as to its de' tails, from that oi modern Theobophists.