Pre-existence

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Pre-existence, preexistence, beforelife, or pre-mortal existence refers to the belief that each individual human soul existed before conception, and at some point before birth enters or is placed by God into the body. Concepts of pre-existence can encompass either the belief that the soul came into existence at some time prior to conception or the belief that the soul is eternal. Alternative positions are traducianism and creationism, which both hold that the individual human soul does not come into existence until conception.

Ancient Greek thought and Islam affirm pre-existence, but it is generally denied in Judaism and Christianity.

Judaism

See also: Guf

In rabbinic literature, the souls of all humanity are described as being created during the six days of creation (Book of Genesis). When each person is born, a preexisting soul is placed within the body. (See Tan., Pekude, 3).

In Tractate Sanhedrin, the question is asked, When does the soul enter the body of the newborn? The answer "at birth" is rejected in favor of an intermediate stage within the womb, usually interpreted as 40 days after conception, after which it is traditionally believed that a baby is taught Torah by an angel.

Within the Tanakh, Zechariah 12:1 is used to teach that the spirit within humans did not pre-exist, but was created within each person in the womb:

The burden of the word of the LORD concerning Israel. The saying of the LORD, who stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundation of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him

Greek thought

Plato believed in the pre-existence of the soul, which tied in with his innatism. He thought that we are born with knowledge from a previous life that is subdued at birth and must be relearned. He saw all attainment of knowledge not as acquiring new information, but as remembering previously known information. Before we were born, we existed in a perfect world where we knew everything.

Christianity

See also: Pre-existence of Christ

A concept of pre-existence was advanced by Origen, a Church Father who lived in the second and third century AD. Origen believed that each human soul was created by God[1] at some time prior to conception. Church Fathers Tertullian and Jerome held to traducianism and creationism, respectively, and pre-existence was condemned as heresy in the Second Council of Constantinople in AD 553.[2]

Origen quoted Romans 9:11-14 as evidence for his position:

For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth; It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.

Origen argued that God could not love Jacob and hate Esau until Jacob had done something worthy of love and Esau had done something worthy of hatred, therefore, this passage only means that Jacob and Esau had not yet done good or evil in this life and their conduct before this life was the reason why Esau would serve Jacob.[3] He rejected the position that God loves or hates a soul based on its inclination toward good or evil, before the soul actually commits a good or evil act. (God, being the creator of all souls and their inclinations, knows perfectly well each soul's inclination toward good or evil.)

Origen also quoted Jeremiah 1:5:[4]

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Those who reject pre-existence simply see this as another passage about God's foreknowledge.

The belief that human souls choose good or evil totally independently of God's will, which is most often found among Arminian Christians, means that God does not ultimately determine the will of each soul. However, ex nihilo creation, a belief also commonly found among Arminians, means that God determined everything that exists, including the will of each soul, without drawing on anything but himself. The question is definitively resolved in Calvinism by asserting that all souls act according to God's sovereign will, and in Mormonism (see below) by asserting that human souls have always existed and are co-eternal with God.[5]

Mormonism

The concept of pre-mortal existence is an early and fundamental doctrine of Mormonism. In 1833, early in the Latter Day Saint movement, its founder Joseph Smith, Jr. taught that human souls are co-eternal with God the Father just as Jesus is co-eternal with God the Father, "Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be."[6]

In 1844, Smith elaborated on this idea in his King Follett discourse:[7]

...the soul—the mind of man—the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation...We say that God Himself is a self-existing being...Man does exist upon the same principles...[The Bible] does not say in the Hebrew that God created the spirit of man. It says, "God made man out of the earth and put into him Adam's spirit, and so became a living body." The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal with God himself...Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal with our Father in heaven.

After Smith's death, the doctrine of pre-mortal existence was elaborated by some other Latter Day Saint leaders, primarily within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its breakoffs. Although the "mind" and "intelligence" of humanity were still considered to be co-eternal with God, and not created, Brigham Young introduced the idea that the "spirit", which he distinguished from the "mind" or "intelligence", was indeed created and not co-eternal with God. Young postulated that we each had a pre-spirit "intelligence" that later became part of a spirit "body", which then eventually entered a physical body and was born on earth. In 1857, Young stated that every person was "a son or a daughter of [the Father]. In the spirit world their spirits were first begotten and brought forth, and they lived there with their parents for ages before they came here."[8][9]

Among Latter-day Saints the idea of "spirit birth" was described in its modern doctrinal form in 1909, when the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued the following statement:[10]

Jesus, however, is the firstborn among all the sons of God—the first begotten in the spirit, and the only begotten in the flesh. He is our elder brother, and we, like Him, are in the image of God. All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.

This description is widely accepted by modern Latter-day Saints as fundamental to the plan of salvation. However, there are differences of opinion as to the nature of the pre-mortal existence in other Latter Day Saint denominations.

The LDS Church teaches that during the pre-mortal existence, there was a learning process which eventually led to the next necessary step in the pre-mortal spirits' opportunity to progress. This next step included the need to gain a physical body that could experience pain, sorrow and joy and "walk by faith." According to this belief, these purposes were explained and discussed in "councils in heaven," followed by the War in Heaven where Satan rebelled against the plan of Heavenly Father.

Islam

In Islam, all souls are believed to have been created in adult form (before earthly life) at the same time God created the father of Mankind, Adam. The Quran recounts the story of when the descendants of Adam were brought forth before God to testify that God alone is the Lord of creation and therefore only He is worthy of worship (Quran chapter 7, verse 172), so that on the Day of Judgement, people could not make the excuse that they only worshipped others because they were following the ways of their ancestors. God then removed the memory of this event from the minds of Mankind (leaving only an innate awareness that He exists and is One, known as the Fitra in Islam) and He decreed at which point each and every human would be born into the physical world.

Hinduism

In the Bhagavad Gita, considered by Hindus to be the most holy scripture, Krishna tells Arjuna; "Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be."[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Origen. De Principiis. I.V.3. "let us inquire whether God, the creator and founder of all things, created certain of them holy and happy, so that they could admit no element at all of an opposite kind, and certain others so that they were made capable both of virtue and vice; or whether we are to suppose that He created some so as to be altogether incapable of virtue, and others again altogether incapable of wickedness, but with the power of abiding only in a state of happiness, and others again such as to be capable of either condition." 
  2. ↑ "The Anathemas Against Origen". 
  3. ↑ Origen. "Argument from the Prayer of Joseph, to Show That the Baptist May Have Been an Angel Who Became a Man". Commentary on John. Book II, Section 25. "If, then, when they were not yet born, and had not done any-thing either good or evil, in order that God's purpose according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, if at such a period this was said, how if we do not go back to the works done before this life, can it be said that there is no unrighteousness with God when the elder serves the younger and is hated (by God) before he has done anything worthy of slavery or of hatred?" 
  4. ↑ Origen. De Principiis. I.VII.4. "How could his soul and its images be formed along with his body, who, before he was created in the womb, is said to be known to God, and was sanctified by Him before his birth?" 
  5. ↑ Hausam, Mark (2005). "It's All in Arminius: Mormonism as a Form of Hyper-Arminianism". pp. 20–21. "What has not been frequently observed, however, is that the concept of free agency allows Arminian thought to do an end-run around the concept of our creation ex nihilo and brings in by the back door a concept of human beings as uncreated entities. Creation ex nihilo implies a radical metaphysical dependence upon God, one that logically guarantees that the creature will not be independent from God or be capable of independent contributions to reality in the ways envisioned in Arminian thought. In fact, creation ex nihilo logically leads directly to Calvinistic determinism." 
  6. ↑ Doctrine and Covenants. 93:29. 6 May 1833. 
  7. ↑ History of the Church 6:14. 
  8. ↑ Young, Brigham. "To Know God is Eternal Life—God is the Father of our Spirits and Bodies—Things Created Spiritually First—Atonement by the Shedding of Blood". Journal of Discourses 4: 218. 
  9. ↑ Ostler, Blake (1982). "The idea of pre-existence in the development of Mormon thought". Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15 (1): 59–78. 
  10. ↑ Smith, Joseph F.; John R. Winder; Anthon H. Lund (November 1909). "The Origin of Man". Improvement Era XIII (1): 78. 
  11. ↑ "Chapter 2 Verse 12". Bhagavad-gita As It Is. 

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Pre-existence, Doctrine of.
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