Dr Paul Allen

What is cremation? Cremation is a process that uses intense heat (1400–1800 °F) to incinerate a body. After the body is vaporised and reduced to bone fragments, these fragments are pulverised into a sand-like powder. The final step involves placing the “cremains” in a container and returning them to the surviving family. The word “cremate” is actually a sanitised version of the crass “burning a corpse.” What is the history of cremation? Early Christianity While there were a few exceptions (notably the Hebrews), cremation was a common practice in the ancient world. That rapidly changed, however, with the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. As Francis Schaeffer explains, “Gradually Christianity came to Roman Avenches. We know this by studying the cemetery of that time—the Romans burned their dead, the Christians buried theirs.” 1 In some respects, the care with which early Christians disposed of their dead through the burial process would not have gone unnoticed in the pagan wo...

A few years ago, I received this unexpected request from one of my church members with multiple sclerosis: “When you have time, could you please do a Bible study on how to prepare for death?”  This person knew that her condition was incurable, and although death still seemed a reasonably long way off, she was anxious to receive advice on how to face it. I was taken aback by that request, but I should not have been.  This was a very sensible idea.  Why wouldn’t every church member be interested in such a Bible study? Yet, I could not remember when I preached or heard a sermon on that topic. The Bible is very upfront about the reality of death but also very clear that it is possible to die well.  It is perhaps significant that one of the best-known Hebrew words in the Old Testament, the word shalom, which we associate with peace and well-being, first appears in the context of death (Gen. 15:15). Knowing how we may die “in peace” should be an essential concern for us al...

When the Roman authority in Jerusalem crucified Jesus , who was viewed as a dangerous messianic pretender and disturber of the peace, there was no uncertainty about what came next: The body of Jesus would be buried in a tomb, but not in a place of honor. That was the Jewish law, and the Romans had no objections to it. We know the Romans permitted the Jewish people in Israel to follow their customs. If they had not, they would have had insurrection on their hands. Proper burial of the dead, even the bodies of the executed, was of enormous importance to the Jewish people. Guided by the Mosaic law of Deut 21:22–23, the Jewish people buried the dead before nightfall to safeguard the purity of the land. This included criminal dead.  We also know that this Jewish custom was respected by the Romans, during peacetime (as seen in Philo, Embassy 300 ; Josephus , J.W. 2.220; Ag. Ap. 2.73), especially because of what Josephus reports: “the Jews used to take so much care of the burial...

A rare discovery of 81 Anglo-Saxon coffins made from the hollowed-out trunks of oak trees may provide new insights into how people lived in the early days of Christianity in Britain , archaeologists say. The coffins, which date back to the 7th-9th centuries, were uncovered at a previously unknown Anglo-Saxon cemetery on a site called Great Ryburgh in Norfolk, eastern England , where six rare plank-lined graves were also found. Evidence suggesting the cemetery served a community of early Christians includes a timber structure thought to be a church or chapel, wooden grave markers and a lack of grave goods that would have been expected at pagan burial sites. "This find is a dramatic example of how new evidence is helping to refine our knowledge of this fascinating period when Christianity and the church were still developing on the ground," said Tim Pestell, curator at Norwich Castle Museum in Norfolk, where the finds from the dig will be kept. Few Anglo-Saxon coffins ...

No. Cremation , however, may have something to say about the Bible . The proper handling of human bodies after death is not something the Bible expressly deals with.  There are sundry ceremonial laws in the Old Covenant about touching dead bodies , but no instruction on what to do with these bodies. As such we need to be careful not to condemn what the Bible does not condemn. How though, could cremation speak to the Bible? Cremation, strange as it may sound, is a form of liturgy.  It is a form for dealing with matters of eternal consequence. As a form it in turn communicates a message. That message, it seems, does speak against the Bible’s understanding of death.  Cremation, however subtly, suggests that our bodies are of no significance or import, that they are simply so much trash that must be burned.  It is implicitly a Gnostic practice, a denial of the goodness of the creation in general and the human body in particular. Burial, on the other hand, ...