...mainly because salvation is from God, not your own works as it is in some Eastern religions. If your works move you 'up' the spiritual plane, then it is understandable that reincarnation is needed to give you another life to keep improving your status. In the case of Christianity, the believer can repent and experience paradise the day of their repentence (e.g., the criminal on the cross next to Jesus). If it were Buddhism, the criminal on the cross would simply be re-born, not so with Christianity.

However, reincarnation of a different level is not ruled out. For example, there might exist parallel universes that are 'us', just with slightly different occurrences in our lives. Or, as another example, our souls might be exemplified over multiple human occurrences/times (like a wave function) and that we are judged not just one lifetime, but a collection of lifetimes. The difference between this idea and reincarnation is that you aren't reborn, you simply are located in more than one place in history at the same 'time'. I could see this as viable for Christianity since accepting Jesus as the Savior is key to being saved, so this strategy would allow everyone who has ever lived the opportunity to be saved if they wished to be. I'm not saying this is how it is, but I do like the idea that souls are wavefunctions, and your final eternal state is the most likely condition of your soul has some appealing characteristics. Whether you really need to be a Christian (in a formal sense) to be saved, that I'm not so sure. I think there's a lot more to salvation without advocating reincarnation (in my own personal opinion).

• Your concept of eastern religion is naive - yanniru - December 21, 2004 - 04:28 UTC
  • My understanding of reincarnation in Eastern religions - harvey1 - December 21, 2004 - 06:23 UTC
    • What a Christmas gift! - yanniru - December 24, 2004 - 22:22 UTC
  • Everyone's concept of everything is naive, right? - carefuluniverse - December 21, 2004 - 19:45 UTC