OOo...can I play both sides of this, just for fun?
Rooster: Why do you even ask, you know you're going to anyway.
Bana: Yup.
kk...First, reincarnation has a LOT of different definitions depending on who you ask. And it's mostly based on what we define as our soul and spirit. Which definitely makes the whole discussion a bit difficult, because you have to define WHICH you believe is the truth before you can talk the same language. In the simplest form, You have a body and a mind (not to be confused with a brain which is only a storage vessel for your thoughts and memories).
Most consider this "mind" to be the thing that is your soul or your spirit. I look at the way God created everything, and I believe that man is a trinity of body, soul, spirit, just as God is the soul, Christ was the body, and the Holy Ghost is the spirit. After all, we are created in His image.
But...when the Bible says spirit, what is it actually referring to? Are we talking about our personalities, memories, thoughts? Are we talking about our eternal soul? There is a lot of church teachings that have helped muck this up over the years.
OK...so that's the background info...let's start with the first argument that we are reincarnated because "John had the spirit of Elias". I simply see no reason or precedence anywhere to take this as proof that the soul of Elias was actually reincarnated into John. More importantly, even if this was the case, there is no other mention of it happening to anyone else. Many New Age regions believe that even Christ was a reincarnation of Adam, and Buddah was a reincarnation of Christ, etc... But there is simply NO basis of proof for this. The thing is, even if we allow the basis of this argument to mean that Elias was literally reincarnated on Earth as John, this does not say ANYTHING about anyone else. Logic has rules, and we need to follow them. At MOST, it means that God allowed for reincarnation ONCE. First impression I get when reading that, is pretty much telling your son that he has the spirit of a great baseball player, or a friend they have the spirit of a warrior. So nothing about the statement guarantees reincarnation whatsoever.
Next..."It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment". Seems ironclad, but again it's not. Because we haven't established that we are speaking the same language. Because, while it's a bit of a stretch, this could actually be used to SUPPORT reincarnation. How do we define "man"? The body? The soul? The collection of the 2 (or 3)? We haven't even properly defined what judgment means in this case. We're assuming it's the Great White Throne Judgment, or possibly some other version that involves us going to Heaven or Hell. But, was Paul even aware of these ideas? I don't really want to get into it after this great big wall of text, but if you really want me to, I could give a pretty good argument of how I could prove that this statement is referring to a single instantiation of the spirit in a body, and judgment would decide if the person needs to return to another body, and be a different "man". Reincarnation itself, already states that you are a different "man", so ultimately, the verse isn't ironclad either.
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