Cremation: Is it Biblical?

“For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime. But I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth; Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting and trumpet sound. And I will cut off the judge from its midst, and slay all its princes with him,” says the LORD. (Amos 2:1-3)

It is my firm belief that cremation is not according to the will of God, but rather He wills that we use burial to dispose of the bodies of the dead:

1. Burial is the standard method of disposing of dead bodies throughout the Bible in example after example, either in the ground or in a burial chamber.

2. Cremation is only used to dispose of bodies to deliberately disgrace them,* e.g. in the case of Achan and after capital punishment in several cases in the Mosaic Law, or it is explicitly stated as contrary to the will of God. (See articles below for details.)

3. The will of God is often not stated in explicit statutes, but rather through the godly example of the saints’ practice. Therefore, it is sufficiently clear that it is God’s will that we bury bodies.

4. God’s people buried their dead, but pagans burned them. This practice was widespread in Greek and Roman society, but the early Christians took great care to only bury their dead, leading eventually to the virtual eradication of cremation.

5. Cremation, as a modern practice, was only resurrected in the late 19th century amongst liberals, agnostics and atheists who rejected the resurrection of the body, and who sought wisdom in pagan classical and eastern thought.

6. Cremation is therefore not only unbiblical, but also without support from the history of the Church.

7. Ultimately, man as a whole is made in the image of God. His body is part of that image and should be treated with dignity, not burned as we would rubbish. God has willed that the dignity of the body is retained through burial. It was a deep shame that the bones of the King of Edom should be burned; such a disgrace indeed, that God pronounced it as the great cause of Moab’s terrible punishment.

We may know, love and respect someone who has been cremated, or we may fear condemning others because it is a sensitive and emotional subject, but this should not stop us from obeying the clear teaching of the Bible and the universal testimony of the saints prior to the end of the 19th Century.

The following are useful discourses on the subject:

"Cremation or Burial?" on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
“Why Cremation Is Unscriptural” by Paul P. Maher
“Is Cremation a Christian Option?” by Jeff Black of Providence RPCUS in Wytheville, VA (formerly of Westminster Presbytery in the PCA)

* Except in the case of Saul, who may not have been cremated (see Mahler), esp. as the bones were still solid enough to bury. However, if he was cremated, he is the only example of cremation that was not done to shame the body. He was not a godly man and his associates may have been the same.