"Is Cremation Christian"?

[josh p]

Here is the first example I came to. The very next post is me asking you if you hold to the Regulative Principle of worship which you denied. The reason I asked is that the regulative principle of worship (which I do affirm) says that we can only worship God as he has prescribed in His word. Therefore we only do in the church service what God has commanded. Not interested in discussing that here as it’s adjacent to my point. You seem to argue the same way about non-worship areas of life. In other words if God has not commanded something, we must not do it. Here is an example:

“Arguing from the greater to the lesser, because God did not permit His people to burn to powder the bodies of even heinous sinners who experienced capital punishment by hanging, how much less so would He have approved of their burning to powder the bodies of His righteous saints. This reasoning is fully corroborated by the witness of the entire Bible because Scripture never states explicitly that God’s people ever burned anyone’s dead body to powder.

Burning a dead body to powder by burning alone or in combination with any other actions has zero Scripture to support it, and God’s command in Deut. 21 is one of several biblical passages that (either implicitly [as in Deut. 21] or explicitly [as in other passages] ) show that God has never approved of humans doing so.”

You of course will disagree about the “explicitly” part but the “implicitly” is not here.

[Craig Toliver]

ALL THAT THE NEW TESTAMENT teaches about cremation …

• Romans 14 …
• Besides that … listen here

Dispute that!

(I’m a burial preference guy!)

[Craig Toliver]

RajeshG wrote:\

2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

The entire OT is divinely inspired and profitable for doctrine for NT Christians. That is God’s view.

My view too. But must be correctly interpreted and applied. See my previous point about divisiveness

“Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully,” 1 Timothy 1:8

I am ending my participation in this thread. I will not be reading or responding to any further comments from anyone.

Now that the moderators have weighed in and made it clear that bringing up personal background information is not acceptable, I am resuming my participation in this thread.
I reject categorically the notion that God does not care about what choice a believer makes between cremation vs. burial. Many hold an opposing viewpoint; I am not under any obligation to agree with them.
I have presented some evidence to support my view and intend to present much more information.
I do not have any obligation to refute anyone who asserts as valid the notion that it is “extremely dangerous” to derive doctrine from narratives. Whoever makes the claim that that viewpoint is true must prove the validity of that claim—mere assertion is fallacious argumentation.
I do not care what the Gospel Coalition teaches on the subject of cremation vs. burial or what Al Mohler says about fundamentalists.
Craig Toliver holds that the notions of doctrinal triage, etc. and his applications of those notions to the biblical data concerning cremation vs. burial are valid and biblical. He, however, has not established the validity of doctrinal triage as a biblical concept, and he has not established the validity of his assessments of the biblical data concerning cremation vs burial using that concept to evaluate the data. Thus, his statements are merely his opinions and nothing more and are not any legitimate basis for his saying that I am dangerous and divisive.
Furthermore, I have not taken a position on what “order” doctrine cremation vs. burial is. I have been falsely attacked through the false inferring and then asserting that I hold a particular position on that matter.
Burial is a gospel issue according to the direct statements of God: The gospel message explicitly includes the truth that “Christ … was buried” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). Jesus has commanded that truth must be given to every human being in the world (Mark 16:15).
Holding that burial is a gospel issue in that sense is undeniably true!

1. God, the ultimate Authority, explicity declares that all Scripture is profitable for doctrine:
2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
2. God teaches us that whatsoever things were written aforetime (i.e., the OT) were written for our learning:
Romans 15:4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
3. Citing multiple narrative OT accounts, the apostle Paul teaches us that those things were examples for us and written for our admonition:

1 Corinthians 10:6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
1 Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
These three NT passages plainly show that anyone who asserts that getting doctrine from narratives is “extremely dangerous” spouts unbiblical teaching.
The one who would claim that using a specific set of narrative passages on a particular subject is “reckless” has the burden of proof; no one gets to beg the question about what is and is not “reckless” use of narratives.
Citing patently wrong uses of various selected narrative passages as support for asserting that someone else’s use of other sets of passages is reckless is fallacious argumentation.

[JD Miller]

Bible narratives are profitable for doctrine, but suggesting Bible narratives as prescriptive for behavior is not necessarily profitable for doctrine. Sometimes Biblical narratives are profitable for doctrine as examples for how NOT to do something. Other times they are there to show us how we SHOULD do something. Other times they are there to help us illustrate a point. Other times they record events to focus on the broader events that occurred to clarify an important doctrine. These are all ways they are profitable to doctrine.

To draw unlimited doctrines from every detail of a narrative is not a form of exegesis I am familiar with. I am curious if there are any institutes of Evangelical education that teach this approach so that I can study it more and try to figure out why they would take such an approach.

To be sure, God did not need to do some of these things, but it’s worth noting that had God said to do something else with the bodies—Abraham, executed criminals, Moses—that would have been going against known cultural preferences in the region, and would have had a very clear meaning. So in those cases, He’s simply going along with what these people would have chosen to begin with. In other words, following cultural preferences in areas where they didn’t have sufficient wood to light a funeral pyre. [bold added to original]

It is especially dangerous business when one considers that in the near east, cremation was often very difficult simply because it takes a lot of fuel to burn a body, wood that they simply didn’t have to spare. The Bible refers to burning the cuttings from grape vines and cooking over manure for this very reason. Hence the cultural preference for burial was more or less “well, we can bury Dad and have fuel to bake our bread and warm our homes, or we can cremate Dad and go hungry and cold this year.” [bold added to the original]

For multiple reasons, these claims appear to be dubious as valid explanations for the vast biblical data concerning burial.
First, in all the articles and other sources that I have read, whether pro-burial or pro-cremation or neither, I do not remember a single author citing this consideration as the explanation for why the Jews in OT Israel buried their own. One would think that at least some careful researchers would clearly know about and comment on such a key factor. Perhaps, I somehow just missed the statements in all the articles that clearly discussed this leading consideration.
Second, various sources, including Scripture, speak of forests in ancient Israel, and forests obviously show that there was an abundance of wood available. I will document these sources at a later time in a future post.
Third, a significant percentage of the burials recorded in Scripture are for people of vast means for whom any such consideration would have been totally a non-factor. Obtaining the wood needed for cremations for such people would not have been any issue at all. Strangely, however, among the Jews in Scripture, we do not read of a single person’s body intentionally being reduced to ashes, powder, or dust by burning alone or in conjunction with some other means.
In order, therefore, for anyone to even begin to make a plausible claim that burial in the OT was more or less merely a Jewish (and Near Eastern) cultural preference because of a lack of sufficient wood …, the person making these claims would need to definitively substantiate them with solid evidence. Where is that evidence?

[Bert Perry]

Regarding the relative absence of wood for burning, sure, it’s not like there’s anything like “Google satellite view” that will allow you to ascertain at a glance that most of Israel is in an “arid” zone where, say, an invading army would be commanded not to cut the trees down around a city (Deuteronomy 20:19). Certainly there are not any “Bible atlases” out there that will tell you the same, and just as certainly, it’s not like the entire region is built with masonry because apart from roofs, wood was a luxury item.

Except, ahem, all of that is true. For that matter, the very fact that Ezekiel could bake his bread over dried cowpies tells us that the climate of Israel then was much like today’s; very dry in the summer. If you get consistent rain, manure doesn’t dry out enough to burn.

(side note; wonder why most recipes for Ezekiel’s bread I’ve seen omit that key part of the process….?)

Deuteronomy 20:19 When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life) to employ them in the siege:

20 Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.
God specified that what He commanded in verse 19 was only for trees from which fruit would be eaten; He commanded them not to cut down those trees for that reason.
In verse 20, God commanded them to cut down the other trees around the cities and to use them in making their war against those cities. This command shows that there were around the cities trees that He commanded them to cut down when they attacked those cities. There was therefore not a shortage of trees that were to be and could be cut down around those cities.
This passage does not have anything to do with a supposed shortage of trees in what was supposedly “an ‘arid’ zone” in most of ancient Israel at the time of the conquest of the Promised Land.
Not only does it not provide any support for your assertions but also it argues against your claim by showing that God commanded the cutting down of trees in the cities that they were going to invade, which proves that there were around those cities trees that were to be cut down.

[Bert Perry]

Regarding the relative absence of wood for burning, sure, it’s not like there’s anything like “Google satellite view” that will allow you to ascertain at a glance that most of Israel is in an “arid” zone where, say, an invading army would be commanded not to cut the trees down around a city (Deuteronomy 20:19). Certainly there are not any “Bible atlases” out there that will tell you the same, and just as certainly, it’s not like the entire region is built with masonry because apart from roofs, wood was a luxury item.

Other sources speak similarly:
https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20150715/forests-ancient-israe…

https://scoopempire.com/unbelievable-forests-that-still-exist-in-the-mi…
https://theisraelguys.com/nations-plant-trees/
(Obviously, my citing these sources does not mean that I endorse all that the authors say in their articles or all the views that they hold in other matters. Nor does it mean that I hold that everything that they say in their articles is necessarily true.)
Based on what these sources (and others) treat about trees being plentiful in OT Israel for much of her history, your assertion that burial was prevalent in Israel in OT times due basically to a shortage of wood that would be needed for cremation is completely unsubstantiated.
You have not provided any evidence that there were such shortages of wood to use for cremation, and there is no evidence that such supposed shortages were the reason that the Jews practiced burial in Israel.

Job and Eliphaz were God’s people who were not Jews. They were not following or under Mosaic Law.

What they believed about burial is vitally important. There are at least 7 verses in the book of Job that either directly or indirectly pertain to the subject:

Job 3:22 Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

Job 5:26 Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.

Job 10:19 I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

Job 17:1 My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me.

Job 19:26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:

Job 21:32 Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb.

Job 27:15 Those that remain of him shall be buried in death: and his widows shall not weep.

These verses do not have anything to do with any so-called Jewish cultural preference for burial (there is no evidence that burial among the Jews was merely their cultural preference).
God has given us these verses to profit us as Christians for doctrine. He has given these to us as Christians to fully equip us for all good works.

[Bert Perry]

Rajesh, looked through your sources, and it was very interesting that … another coming from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. (Glad to see that you’re doing so well keeping yourself pure from non-Christian influences, by the way!)

Ha ha. I anticipated you using this kind of nonsense tactic and put a huge disclaimer on that comment:

(Obviously, my citing these sources does not mean that I endorse all that the authors say in their articles or all the views that they hold in other matters. Nor does it mean that I hold that everything that they say in their articles is necessarily true.)

[Bert Perry]

And that’s why Deuteronomy 20:19 is so important. You don’t tell someone not to cut down trees because they’re growing like weeds, but rather because (as any competent geographer or archeologist would tell you) they are scarce, and eliminating them can (as the Romans did after the destruction of Jerusalem) decimate the entire area by allowing the topsoil to wash away.

Such blatant misuse of the Scripture. I already refuted you on this point because Deut. 20:20 proves that your use of Deut. 20:19 is false. God specified why He prohibited cutting down those trees, and His stated reason refutes your claim.

[Bert Perry]

Regarding Job and other non-Jews, all that means is that other nations also had a preference for burial …

[Bert Perry]

RajeshG wrote:

Bert Perry wrote:

Rajesh, looked through your sources, and it was very interesting that … another coming from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. (Glad to see that you’re doing so well keeping yourself pure from non-Christian influences, by the way!)

Ha ha. I anticipated you using this kind of nonsense tactic and put a huge disclaimer on that comment:

(Obviously, my citing these sources does not mean that I endorse all that the authors say in their articles or all the views that they hold in other matters. Nor does it mean that I hold that everything that they say in their articles is necessarily true.)

Nonsense tactic? Wasn’t what you were saying with your guilt by association claims regarding modern music vis-a-vis Exodus 32. A hypothetical connection of modern music to idolatry is more significant than a very real connection to a denial of the deity of Christ, then, in your mind?

Or is it that your principles only hold until they’re inconvenient to you? At any rate, citing a JW source, given what they do to the first chapter of John, shows a general lack of discernment on your part.

From a Jerusalem Post article by a Jewish presidential scholar:

Ask the Rabbi: Why does Jewish law prohibit cremation?

Recognizing the divine image found in all human beings, the Torah prohibits leaving a body (or body part) unburied… .

Recognizing the divine image found in all human beings, the Torah prohibits leaving a body (or body part) unburied and even demands interring the bodies of criminals who receive the death penalty. Several ancillary laws derive from this commandment, including the prohibitions of mutilating the corpse, deriving benefit from it or delaying its burial. The Torah further demands that one take responsibility for a “met mitzvah,” a corpse that does not have a caretaker, even if this entails financial expense or requires a kohen (priest) to become impure. As such, even if a person desires not to be buried, Jewish law mandates ignoring that request. This is because lack of burial is considered to be an affront not only to the deceased’s family but also to humanity, which is created in God’s image.

The Torah, however, also records the embalmment of Jacob and Joseph, which was necessitated both by their Egyptian environs and their desire to be ultimately buried in the Land of Israel. Contemporary scholars generally assert that any form of embalmment constitutes a forbidden tampering with a corpse unless absolutely necessary to preserve its body for burial. This includes freeze-storage of the body and above-ground burial crypts in which the body is not buried within the earth itself. Similarly, Jewish law opposes cryonics and all other attempts to preserve a physical body for later rejuvenation.

Humans, according to the Bible, were created from the earth, and in death we return to our source. This reminds us during our lifetime of our modest origins, while further encouraging us to utilize our time on earth to merit the eternal life in the world to come alongside the resurrection of the dead, which will be granted only through God’s grace.

It was precisely out of a rejection of these notions that many Westerners favored cremation, when new technologies developed for efficient incineration in the 1870s. In modern cremations, bodies are incinerated at four-digit temperatures for two to three hours. Bone fragments and other residue are further pulverized before they are collected and returned.

A basically unanimous consensus of 19th-century rabbinic decisors firmly banned this practice. They argued that the body’s incineration is its ultimate desecration, citing a Talmudic story that viewed the burning of King Yehoyakim’s remains as an ultimate punishment. The Jerusalem Talmud already indicates that Jews prohibited this practice in antiquity, a point that was testified to by the 1st-century Roman historian Tacitus.

It is true that a few other kings were burned after their deaths, including kings Saul and Asa. In the former case, however, this was clearly done so that his bones could be transported and buried in an appropriate place. In the latter case, it was understood to indicate a ceremonial burning of clothing and other objects, in line with many pyrrhic rites in antiquity, since once again the verses indicate that the king was ultimately buried.

In any case, these decisors understood that the irreligious motivations of many who chose cremation reflected their heretical denial of either the world to come or physical resurrection. Some even asserted that the ashes from cremated bodies were not entitled to burial within Jewish cemeteries, since it represents the ultimate rejection of Jewish beliefs that underlie traditional burial practices.

Interestingly, in some Eastern religions, cremation is utilized precisely because of their belief in the continued (and primary) existence of the soul, with the body’s destruction indicating its inconsequence.

Yet, as we’ve seen, Jewish law rejects this attitude toward the physical body. While the soul and its eternal life may have primary importance, the body is still seen as a holy vessel that allows us to manifest our inner spirit. A Torah scroll that has become blemished must still be treated with sanctity and properly interred. All the more so with the human body, which was created in God’s image and allows us to bring the divine word into the world.

It is precisely out of these beliefs in the eternity of the soul and the sanctity of the body that Jewish law has demanded interment and rejected both embalmment and cremation.

One hopes that Jews off all stripes will continue to affirm these beliefs by maintaining traditional burial practices.

Obviously, I am not posting this lengthy excerpt from this article because I hold that this Jewish authority is right in everything that he says or believes, etc. (In fact, I completely reject as unbiblical and untrue whatever he says that contradicts anything that the Bible actually teaches, especially about our salvation, etc.)

The purpose of my doing so, rather, is to show what a Jewish scholar has to say about the subject, especially because there is no mention that a shortage of wood was/is the primary or a leading reason for Jews’ burying.

It is telling that I have yet to see a single source that has made that argument or even mentioned it as any consideration at all.

Genesis 23 provides the earliest recorded burial in Scripture. In the 18 verses in Gen. 23:3-20, four words pertaining to burial occur a combined total of 13x in 9 verses:

buryingplace 23:3, 9, 20

bury 23:4; 6 (2x); 8, 11, 13, 15

sepulchre(s) 23:6 (2x)

buried 23:19

By my count, Genesis 23 has more total occurrences for words pertaining to burial than any other chapter in Scripture. It is clear, therefore, that the Spirit has emphasized what Abraham did after Sarah died to secure “a possession of a buryingplace” in which he buried her.

Abraham purchased a field in which there was a cave and trees in the field (“all the trees that were in the field” [Gen. 23:17] ). Had Abraham wanted to do so, he could have used the wood from one of those trees to cremate her.

Alternatively, as “a mighty prince” (Gen. 23:6), he undoubtedly had everything he needed to secure wood from elsewhere had he wished to do so in order to cremate her.
In support of that understanding, we must note that the chapter that emphasizes all that was done so that Sarah could be buried comes right after a chapter in which Abraham had cleaved wood that he needed in order to offer Isaac as a burnt offering in obedience to God’s command to him to do so (Gen. 22:2-3). We, therefore, by the Spirit’s design have more than enough basis to infer that Abraham certainly would have had enough wood on hand (or would have been able to obtain it if he did not have it on hand) to cremate Sarah had he wanted to do so.
Abraham, however, did not do so—he buried her, and the Spirit’s emphasis on her burial and the obtaining of that buryingplace instructs us that burying her and providing a buryingplace for her (Gen. 23:19; 49:31), Abraham (Gen. 25:9-10; 49:31), and others of their family (cf. Gen. 49:29-31; 50:13) was an important matter.
The notion that there is not anything important for Christians to see here but that the passage is merely a narrative of a cultural preference being fulfilled and highlighted is absurd. Abraham the father of all believers (Rom. 4:16) went to great lengths to obtain a place to be buried himself and to have his loved ones buried there as well.
God wants us to learn from this passage (Rom. 15:4), learn from Abraham’s exemplary actions (cf. 1 Cor. 10:6, 11), and profit from the inspired, emphatic earliest record of burial so that we will be equipped by it to do the good works that He wants us to do (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

God does not want His own to be cremated—He wants them to be buried!

[Mark_Smith]

it is illegal to dig a hole a place a dead human in it. To bury a person costs $$$$ in the USA. You pump them full of toxic chemicals, while being charged $5000 or more. Is there any consideration of that?

[JD Miller]

I don’t think the lack of wood argument holds much sway. There was plenty of wood for sacrifices, so I do not assume there was not enough for cremation. At the same time I do not see a clear passage forbidding cremation. What we do see are many examples of burial in scripture. Although I do not see these examples as prescriptive, my personal preference would be to bury ashes after cremation.