All Our Yesterdays
"To the last
syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays. . ." (Macbeth V.v.)
A series of brief articles
dealing with Human Pre-existence
by Arthur & Rosalind Eedle.
23. Ancient Christian Beliefs
(3)
Hastings
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, page 239, has the following entry.
Clement
wrote, "The Male is Christ, and the Female is the Church. And the Book and
the Apostles plainly declare that the Church existed not now for the first
time, but comes from on high, for she was spiritual, as our Jesus also was
spiritual, but is manifested in the last days that He might save
us." (14:1-2) This points to an ante-mortal relationship between
Christ and the Church, during which Christ was chosen and foreordained to
become the future sacrifice for His brethren. (1 Peter 1:19-20)
Origen, the
greatest of the early church theologians, declared that he still favoured the
Doctrine (De Principales I.7:4-5, and III.5:4), as did Justin
Martyr, Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem, Pierius, John of Jerusalem, Rufinus,
Nemesius, and the Western Church generally until the time of Gregory the Great.
[End quote]
Augustine
condemned the idea that the soul sinned in its pre-existence and is being
punished on earth, without condemning the doctrine of pre-existence itself,
while Origen even suggests that earth-life is a reward rather than a
punishment.
In The
Shepherd of Hermas (A.D. 160; Visions 2.4:1) we read about the
pre-existent church, that "she was created before all things . . . for her
sake was the world framed."
Heracleon
(Commentary on John's Gospel chapter 2) explains that in Matthew 13:33-38, the
souls of men were sown as "leaven" amongst the tares, i.e. as
"children of the kingdom" in "the field of the world." This
theme, often repeated in early writings, is known as "the scattering of
souls in bodies". The idea that souls were "sown" into bodies
was taken for granted by early theologians, for example Origen's Contra
Celsus 5:29, which refers to "the doctrine of the entrance of
souls into bodies" as a secret that should be protected by the Church.
Although
there was a division of opinion amongst early Christian authors as to Origen's
doctrine of pre-existence, his unique standing as theologian par
excellence, was certainly one of the reasons why the doctrine was known
about and adhered to by quite the majority of Christians in the first four
centuries A.D. It received its quietus in A.D. 553, when the doctrines of
Universalism and Pre-existence were attacked by the Emperor Justinian, and the
2nd Council of Constantinople. Thereafter, the subject of pre-existence became
scarce in theological literature.