From: Steve.Hayes@f22.n7101.z5.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Cremation
Date: 20 Dec 92 22:16:41 GMT

On <14 Dec 1992 22:32> Dr Nancy's Sweetie (5:7104/2) said to All :

 DNS>Dean Lavdas writes that the Greek Orthodox Church forbids 
 DNS>cremations, on
 DNS>the grounds that "the body is the Temple of God and is 
 DNS>considered very
 DNS>important."  He asks for arguments to support this position, or 
 DNS>opinions
 DNS>from people who disagree with it.  Herewith is one of the 
 DNS>latter.  (I'm
 DNS>always happy to oblige.  8-)
 DNS>
 DNS>Cremation will do a lot of damage to your body, but the only 
 DNS>difference
 DNS>between this and burial is how long it takes.  If you are 
 DNS>buried in a wood
 DNS>box, it will eventually rot -- and so will you.  If, on the 
 DNS>other hand, you
 DNS>are buried in an airtight metal casket or sealed concrete 
 DNS>vault, then
 DNS>anaerobic bacteria will go to work on you.  In that case, you 
 DNS>will be
 DNS>putrefied -- that is, you will be partially liquefied.

I don't think that the state of the body is the reason for the disapproval of 
cremation in the Orthodox Church. 

In certain parts of Greece, for example, there are a few communal graves with 
a fancy tombstone. When people die, they are buried there, and then after 8-10 
years, when the body has decomposed, the bones are removed to a communal 
ossuary, and the grave is used by someone else. 

I think it may have more to do with the fact that when Christians were 
persecuted in the early Roman empire, the graves of those who were killed in 
the persecutions became places where Christians would meet to celebrate the 
Divine Liturgy. In other words, Christians would gather at the grave, the 
place of death, to celebrate their hope in the resurrection. It was also  
cocking a snook at the authorities.

This has continued to the present. The priest who celebrates the Divine 
Liturgy does so on a cloth or board (the antimension) into which some relics 
of the saints have been sewn, and which is signed by the bishop. 

Another reason may be that cremation was seen as a pagan practice - Hindus and 
Vikings practised it, for example. Christian missionaries in India used to get 
very upset by the practice of suttee - burning the widow of a great man with 
him. 

Yet another reason is that Jesus used the Jerusalem municipal rubbish dump, 
Gehenna, where rubbish was incinerated, as the image of hell. So for 
Christians burning someone has the connotation that that person was just 
rubbish, was not valued, and can be thrown away.

In the nineteenth century cremation was seen as anti-Christian, especially by 
its advocates. The modern crematorium fits in well with the Enlightenment 
paradigm. 

I personally don't like cremation, for all the above reasons, but especially 
for the last. A funeral in a crematorium or undertaker's chapel is always 
thoroughly depressing. The building is used for nothing else, and it somehow 
separates death from life. If I had to be cremated, I would rather it were 
done in the Hindu or Viking way - on a whopping great pyre. 

One way the friends and relatives of a dead person can deal with grief is 
through physical activity, and filling in the grave is a way of giving the 
dead person a good send-off. But pressing a button to make a coffin disappear 
behind curtains in the Enlightenment-style crematorium is banal and bathetic.