Should Christians Cremate? What the Bible Says About Cremation

Our family cat Buttercup is a hunter par excellence. Almost daily she deposits a kill on our back porch, be it a mouse, bird, mole, squirrel, chipmunk, or even rabbit. (I have joked with my wife that we don’t need a dog, we already have a watch-cat, and she is fierce!) When I regard Buttercup’s latest offering, I often instruct one of our boys to go and dispose of it in the woods. Nature tells us that it is not right to leave a corpse out in the open. But how best to do so, particularly when it is a person? A loved one? In what follows, I will cover some of the history behind this debate and explore what the Bible says about both cremation and burial. I will argue that only burial gives specific witness to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Table of contentsWhat is cremation?What is the history of cremation?What does the Bible say about cremation?How does burial witness to our faith?What about those already cremated?Conclusion What is cremation? Cremation is a process that uses intense heat (1400–1800 °F) to incinerate a body. After the body has been vaporized and reduced to bone fragments, these fragments are then pulverized into a sand-like powder. The final ...