Loehr-Daniels Study Course
Incarnation and
Reincarnation
By Franklin Loehr
Have you ever lived before as a cow, a tree, an ant, a person, or a fish? Answers: No, No, No, Yes, and No. We find no evidence in our extensive research that the soul is ever less than human when it incarnates (takes on a flesh body). But we do find conclusive evidence that the soul does come to Earth in a number of different bodies, at different times, as different per-sons, for different experiences and purposes.
The
chemicals in the body come from the mineral kingdom. Some of the organs of the
body, including generative organs, bear strong resemblance to aspects and
manifestations of the plant kingdom. The physical body of each of us is animal
in nature and function. Thus in our bodies we find represented all three of the
recognized “kingdoms” of Earth. When we watch the body of the human evolve from
fetus to maturity, we find it going through many of the steps recognized in
evolution.
Definitely, the human body is a product of the causative and evolutionary processes of Nature on Earth. In our bodies we symbolically -- and to some extent actually – “partake of all that is” on Earth. But the body is but half the human being. The very word incarnation, which means “in flesh” (from the Latin in meaning “in”and carnus meaning “flesh”), means that there is something not of the flesh which is for now in the flesh.
Let
us take a quick look now at a scientific finding that has generated more heat
than light among many religionists. It is called the theory of evolution. That
is a misnomer. It began as a theory, but it quickly became, not theory, but
established, proved fact. Religionists fought it because religionists are incarnationists, and at first thought that evolution
challenged incarnation. The major teaching about man in every major religion is
that there is a spirit – something non-material, non-physical – in, around,
connected to, or somehow vitally associated with every human being. Christian
theologians speak of “The Incarnation,” meaning that God Himself was present in
the flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
But Jesus consistently
refused to make of His nature, His earth-beingness,
anything fundamentally different from all human beings. Jesus insisted that all of us are incarnations of spirit, Children of God. Even His
advanced spiritual accomplish-ments, he proclaimed
are within the range of possibility of all of us as we progress in character
and in learning: “The things that I do ye
shall do, and greater things shall
ye do.” Incarnation means there is a spirit, a non-material soul, associated
with the physical body of every human
being, past, present, and future. All of
man’s religions teach this as the basic truth of our human beingness.
Evolution, as first
presented and understood, seemed to challenge this basic religious teaching of
incarnation. Evolution definitely has found that forms of life can change.
These changes occur in several natural ways going on all the time. First,
occasionally a cosmic ray will strike the nucleus of a generative cell – a
sperm, an ovum. This can change a molecule of linkup of the DNA code of genes
and chromo-somes, or some other factor of that cell,
and thus cause a mutation in the offspring produced by that cell (if it
produces any).
This offspring is different
– usually worse, sometimes better, but different from the parent(s). Strictly
speaking this is not an evolutionary process, but a process by which change
from outside does occasionally come into earth plants and animals. Evolutionary
changes are those brought about slowly, over the course of many generations, by
the greater adaptability to environment of some individuals or traits within a
species, leading to an enlarged percentage of offspring for those better
individuals. The horse of ancient times, whose bones are occasionally found by archaelogists today, was about the size of our small ponies
today. How did it double its stature, in the course of millions of years?
Because the bigger, stronger, fiercer stallions could drive away their less
able male rivals, and thus sire more offspring. Or a butterfly may have
different wing markings, making it less noticeable to predators in its native
environment – and more of these survive to produce offspring. By these natural
processes of selection, most of the various life forms now found on Earth have
made some progress over the millions of years they have been here.
This is sometimes called
“the survival of the fittest” – and if you will permit me, I’d like to tell a
wonderfully silly little story that may help set this in your mind. It concerns
three little kittens. One had a fit, and died. The second had two fits, and
also died. The children to whom these kittens belonged watched the lone
survivor anxiously, hoping it would escape the fate of its siblings. But soon
that third kitten had a fit (This was before the days of distemper shots.) And
a second fit. And still a third fit. Then it got well! And the point of this
story? – the survival of the fittest!
Survival of the fittest is
precisely what scientific research has found true of the evolutionary
development within species. But this is not the whole of the story of
evolution. If this were all, if life itself spontaneously evolved out of matter
and into all the forms we find today to finally produce man, the incarnationists (relig-ionists
who hold that Man is an incarnate soul) would find themselves threatened by the
evolutionists. But the scientific view of evolution is known as emergent
evolution. It finds four great emergents, four
great new things that it is not able to ascribe to development from that which
came before. The pre-existent did not even contain the possibilities, in
itself, for producing these new emergents.
(1) Matter. The first
great emergent is matter. As far as man has been able to ascertain, by
scientific observation and by logical deduction, non-matter just simply cannot
of itself produce matter. That which is in nature on earth must come from that which was. But something existed before nature,
to produce nature.
(2) Life. The second
emergent is life. The chemical kingdom in itself, which is what we mean by
matter, holds all the matter used in the bodies of living things on earth. But
by itself the chemical world does not produce life. Life emerges – comes from
somewhere else.
(3) Animal Life. The
third emergent was that form of ambulatory life we call animal. Here is a
capacity for choosing one’s environment that is not found among plants. Plants
are rooted, animals move around. This means an animal can move away to escape
an enemy, and can seek its food far from where it was born. A greater degree of
intelligence, even the appearance of a definite brain to direct the individual,
is concomitant with this difference between animals and plants.
Along with this conscious
control of place and reaction to situations there appears a more expressive
consciousness in animals, even though controlled by instinct more than by
thought, a group consciousness more than an individual consciousness. Dr. Cleve
Backster made one of the truly great history-making
discoveries of the 1960s, a polygraph (lie detector) teacher in New York City.
Hooking up his polygraph to a plant in his office, he discovered, to his
amazement, that plants have emotional reactions that can be measurably, repeatably, scientifically shown on the polygraph. But an
animal can show security or fear, love or anger, in open behavior, without
being hooked up to a lie detector. An animal can consciously and of itself
express itself more fully than can a plant.
(4)
Human Life. The fourth emergent, the fourth great something-new-that-has
been-added, is that which marks off the human being from the lower animals.
There is a quantitative enlargement of intelligence and consciousness that
amounts to a qualitative change, and a spiritual element which religion calls
the soul. Not all emergent evolutionists accept the concept of “soul,” but they will speak of finding in the
human such qualities as appreciation of beauty, the holding of values,
commitment which can lead the individual to submerge his own welfare and even
lose his life for something he believes in, even an abstract cause – all
indicating a component within the human being very closely akin to what
religion calls the soul.
Along
with the human being’s vastly increased intelligence and conscious expression,
a difference in such degree as to be a difference in kind, and with it a
self-consciousness which becomes dominant over the group consciousness, there
is also this non-material “something else.” A great symphony, a great painting,
a great philosophy, a great idea – a human being can enjoy these, produce
these, devote his life to these. Truly, in man something new has been added to
earth. This is the fourth emergent recognized by evolutionists – and it ties in
directly with the incarnational concept of man held
by religionists, that man is an embodied soul.
Science and religion – if you pursue them far enough – come together.
Remember
– always remember – that science and scientists are not the same. Even as 99+%
of churchgoers do not live up to the religion they profess (but thank God they
have a religion; what might we be like without it?), so also very few
scientists live up to the teachings and standards of science. Scientists, as
people, are not a special pure or better breed, set apart from the rest of us.
The scientist often presumes and acts as though he were superior, but he is
only another human being, a man or woman made even as we are, subject to all
the frailties and temptations of life in the flesh with which we are all too
well acquainted. They who call themselves “scientists” are just plain human
beings, like unto you and me. They are subject to the same habits and
temptations as we. They get in habits of thinking in certain patterns, and
these habits work against their whole-heartedly seeking and being open to new
truth. They consider their professional standing, their position, their
livelihood, and they – most of them – oppose or suppress or turn from certain
new truth which might threaten their present personal wellbeing. (Emanuel Velikovsky bears eloquent witness to this opposition to new
truth.) They fall into the pitfall of pride – indeed, perhaps a higher
percentage of the scientists of our day are trapped in pride than any other
profession. For example: So many scientists consider themselves so
intellectually superior to those of us who believe in God!
There
were times during my seventeen years as an active pastor that I came away from
meetings of ministers and church officials shaking my head, wondering how God
could ever get much done through such a limited group as we. Then as I was
invited to meetings of other groups -–doctors, attorneys, car salesmen,
management, labor, garden clubs, seed growers, chemists, nuclear physicists,
undertakers, you name it – I came to the conclusion that ministers are about
the same, really, and the trouble with all of us is simply that we are human
beings. “If you were perfect you
wouldn’t even be here,” as friends have so often said.
Science
is a noble thing, as noble as religion. Science is a method of getting
information that insists that that information be true, and objectively proved
true. Science persists in its quest for truth until it has the truth; however,
many scientists may be surpassed in the final achievement. Science venerates
its high priests but does not allow itself to be confined by them. Einstein’s
discovery of general relativity refined even the great Isaac Newton’s
discovery, cornerstone of the scientific understanding of the universe, of gravity.
Science
succeeds in getting more and better information than any of the other methods
man has used (authority, tradition, speculation, personal experience,
intuition, special revelation – remember our second lesson). Why? Because
science is a more humble, God-fearing, devout method than any other. (Not
scientists, remember – but science.) Science says to the thing it is studying,
“Tell me what you are, in and of your own true self.” This is the same as
saying “Tell me what God made you to be” – but thank goodness the scientist, if
he happens to be not religiously oriented, can use this approach without using
the religious terminology!
“Tell
me what you are, in your own terms,” says the scientist to the thing or process
he is studying. “You don’t have to learn my language. I will learn your
language, that you may speak to me.” For this is precisely what the scientist
does in his experiments to determine the native qualities and characteristics,
the real nature, of the thing he is studying.
“Ye
shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” said Jesus.
It has taken science to enable us to know the truth about the elements of
nature. Science says to whatever it studies, “Tell me what you really are, in your own being. Not what
people have thought you were, not even what past (and present) authorities
teach about you, but what you truly are, in your own beingness.”
This is in essence science humbly asking of everything it studies, “What hath
God wrought here?” Science succeeds above all the other methods by which man
gets information because in essence Science is the most humble, the most
devout, the most God-respecting method, the method which asks “What is the truth – God’s truth, the Creator’s
doing – in this object or process before me.”
Now
back to evolution: The facts of life observed by science do show a
growth-characteristic in most forms of life. A few, like the shark, are so well
adapted to their particular environment that they have not changed for perhaps
200 million years, but these few are the exceptions. Horses have gotten larger
because the strongest, fiercest, wiliest, most successful stallions sired the
most offspring. Man himself uses this evolutionary principle of choosing
breeding stock with characteristics wanted in the offspring to “upgrade the
breed” of racehorses, milk cows, beef cattle, chickens, hybrid corn, potatoes,
the new rice, and almost every plant and animal he uses. The English bulldog,
for example, was bred to have forward jaws and a pushed back nose, for it was
used to “bait” bulls in a sports ring. The dog would clamp onto the bull’s nose
or lip and hang on while the bull threshed him against any object available to
shake him loose in that vicious “sport.” The protruding jaw and receding nose
gave the dog a better grip.
The
human body has evolved, in recent centuries probably mostly from better
nutrition and health. I remember visiting the John Knox house in Edinburgh,
Scotland. Here that great reformer, political power, and early Presbyterian
lived. I had to stoop as I walked through the rooms, to keep from hitting my
head against the roof beams. That made me realize that John Knox – and most of
the men of his day – must have been several inches shorter than men today. That
towering historical figure, John Knox, had a body smaller than mine.
The
“raw idea” of evolution, holding that man simply developed from monkeys and
there is nothing about man essentially new or different, did threaten religion.
Religionists of that period, when scientific processes were not well understood
even by scientists, felt the issue was, “Does man come from God or from
monkeys?” Defending not only historical religion but also their own true, deep
down, “gut feeling,” they chose – and chose aright – for God. As one orator put
it, “If I go back far enough in my ancestry I may find someone hanging from a
tree, yes. But he’ll be hanging by his neck, thank God, and not by a tail!”
I
think God appreciated that defense, but breathes more easily so to speak as the
truth of evolution was refined. Emergent Evolution is the form accepted today,
and seems to be well established. (Evolution as a scientific inquiry is not
attracting much new inquiry.) Emergent evolution recognizes that there is some-thing different about man.
This is exactly what the religious teaching of incarnation says. Man has a body, yes. But the essence of man is
not that earth-animal body. There is something not of the body which for a time
is enfleshed, embodied, in it. As Kirby Page said
years ago in a chapel service while I was in college, “Man is a spirit, he has a body.”
That’s
the essence of incarnation. Science’s “fourth emergent” of evolution and
Religion’s “soul” are one and the same.
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