Several of the early Church Fathers taught the doctrine of reincarnation. Origen even calls it a "general opinion." Justin Martyr declares that the soul inhabits a human body more than once, and Clement of Alexandria asserts it was sanctioned by Paul in Romans 5:12, 14, and 19. Despite this, the Council of Nicea pronounced it a heresy in 325
a.d. , the Council of Chalcedon condemned it in the same century, and finally in the reign of Justinian at the Council of Constantinople in 551-553 a.d. , it was again repudiated and its supporters anathematized. There was no room for it along with the rest of Catholic theology and especially with the teachings on redemption and purgatory. There is no room for both the doctrine of reincarnation and the doctrine of everlasting torment in purgatory; one or the other must go. So the first was branded a heresy and its believers were excommunicated or persecuted. The second reason for opposing it was that, the doctrine of Atonement was brought in little by little until it displaced the doctrine of metempsychosis, as it was intended to do. These two also could not exist side by side, for one contradicted the truth of the other. The third reason was that in the contentions for supremacy among the various Christian sects, those which later arose in Greek and Roman peoples triumphed over those which existed earlier among Oriental ones who believed in reincarnation, as most Orientals do even today.
-- Notebooks Category 9: From Birth to Rebirth > Chapter 2 : Rebirth and Reincarnation > # 192
