Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism

Although Pythagoras is known today for his mathematics, it is clear that many in the Greek world looked to him regarding religious philosophical ideas. He is one of the first Greeks to come up with the idea of the transmigration of souls as seen in excerpts (14,1), (14.8a), and (14.8). This is the belief that the soul is immortal and goes from one organism to the next after death of the body. This idea can be seen throughout the world beyond Greek culture in Egypt, India, and many native tribes on multiple continents. Without revelation, it seems that there is an inherent inclination in humans to formulate such an idea. This could be due to the fact that there is truth in the belief that souls are immortal. Immortality has always been a common belief throughout the history and cultures of humanity. Additionally, we have a tendency to personify or project our humanity onto other organisms. Thus, it is not surprising that ideas such as excerpt (21B7) would be found in association with the transmigration of souls.

The Christian tradition would reject this idea because it goes against many beliefs such as humans being a particular creature of a certain kind. We are rational creatures capable of loving God and by our very existence as human rational creatures created in his likeness, we have a sort of innate dignity separate from every other organism.Thus, it would not follow that a human soul would then become an animal soul or plant soul. There is also a special unity between the body and soul as exemplified through Jesus Christ with our bodies being part of salvation in his second coming. Despite these conflicts, there appears to be a slow rising trend of metaphysical thought among the Greeks moving away from the Homeric tradition and towards the Christian tradition with the Milesians, Xenophanes, and now Pythagoras. This process reminds me of Aquinas' teaching on the intertwining of faith and reason. The Greek philosophers appear to be slowly getting at the truth through the use of only reason, but this also leads to the many errors that we are finding and is a far slower way of attaining the truth. Therefore, one also needs faith in addition to reason, which can be seen in the form of revelation through Jesus. Do you think there is a slow developing trend of moving away from the Homeric tradition to a more Christian perspective or is this just coincidence and our infusion of our own ideology into the Greek thinkers?

-BaylorBear16