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Calvin R. Goligher
When a family member dies, the mourners face a host of practical questions, including what do with the loved one’s body. Burial is the traditional answer to that question, but cremation is an increasingly popular alternative. The reasons for cremation are often practical: it is cheaper, simpler, and more efficient. Most people also don’t think it really matters what happens to a body, since it doesn’t affect the person who has already died. I would like to challenge that status quo and argue that burial is the proper way to dispose of a human body, especially the body of a Christian. To make my case, I will review a discussion of burial from Augustine (AD 354–430), the great bishop of Hippo in modern Algeria.
Tragedy swept the Roman world on a grand scale in the early fifth century. Invaders poured through the Empire’s northern borders, threatening Roman society at its foundations. Augustine died in 430, having spent his final weeks reciting psalms from his deathbed, as the Vandals laid siege to the city.
By this time, Augustine had been addressing the questions raised by tragedy for many years. When Rome, the “Eternal City,” fell to Gothic armies in 410, he began working on The City of God, which addressed many objections to Christianity occasioned by the crisis. Was God to blame for this tragedy? Were the old pagan gods better protectors of Rome? Is God really governing world history? If so, is he doing a good job of it?
A more personal question was why God failed to protect even the Christians from the disasters of the Gothic invasion. Many Christians had suffered in these conflicts, and many died. To make matters worse, many of the dead never even received an honorable burial. This is the specific question that Augustine addresses in book 1, sections 12–13, of The City of God: What does it mean that these people died without burial?
Augustine first concedes that dying without burial is indeed a tragedy. He acknowledges that (as the pagans of his day would have said) it is an “ill-omened circumstance” (The City of God, Modern Library 1993, 16).
Augustine had a very simple reason for this view: “The body is not an extraneous ornament or aid, but a part of man’s very nature” (18). There is no room for flippancy in dealing with a dead body. “For if the dress of a father, or his ring, or anything he wore, be precious to his children, in proportion to the love they bore him, with how much more reason ought we to care for the bodies of those we love, which they wore far more closely and intimately than any clothing?” (18).
This is doubly true, as Augustine pointed out, in the case of believers. The bodies of believers are especially worthy of honor because they “have been used by the Holy Ghost as his organs and instruments for all good works” (18).
For those convinced that it is important to properly honor a Christian’s body, the next question is whether there is a particular way that such honor should be given. Augustine looked to the Scripture for guidance on this point and found several examples. The patriarchs provided sepulchres and honorable burials for their dead (see Gen. 23). Augustine noted specifically that Jacob and Joseph “while yet alive, gave commandment to their sons about the burial, and, on occasion, even about the removal of their bodies to some favorite place” (Gen. 49:29–32, 50:25). He found a further example in Tobit, a character in the apocryphal books (18).
The highest example of burial is in the Gospels, which pay special attention to the burial of Jesus. Augustine pointed out that Jesus himself commended “the good work of the religious woman who poured precious ointment over His limbs, and did it against His burial” (17; see Matt. 26:12). The Gospels further record the godly care and attention of those who removed Jesus’s body from the cross, wrapped it in a costly and skillful way, and provided for its honorable burial (18; see Matt. 27:57–61).
As a contrast to these examples, Augustine noted the poignant lament of Psalm 79:2–3: “They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the heavens for food, the flesh of your faithful to the beasts of the earth.” The point of this lament, he noted, was “to exhibit the cruelty of those who did these things” (17).
Augustine concluded that burial is a fitting way to honor a body, especially a Christian’s body. Augustine did not advocate burial because he thought it comforted the dead, but because it shows godly love and hope. The important point, Augustine said, is not that “corpses have any feeling” but “that God’s providence extends even to the bodies of the dead, and that such pious offices are pleasing to Him, as cherishing faith in the resurrection” (18).
We should not underestimate the importance of burial, but there is also a danger of overestimating its significance. Burial is important and honorable, but it is not our hope. Our hope is resurrection, and that is in God’s hands. Augustine emphasized that dying without a burial cannot ultimately harm God’s people or frustrate God’s intention to bless them.
Augustine reminded his readers of the promise that “not a hair of your head will perish” (Luke 21:18). He accurately explained that this is not a guarantee of absolute safety in this life, but an assurance that even if they “be devoured by beasts, their blessed resurrection will not thereby be hindered” (16–17). Christians need not fear those who can kill the body (Matt. 10:28), and therefore we have no reason to fear that our dead bodies will be left unburied (17).
While the unburied bodies of Christians may be abandoned by men, they are never abandoned by God. Since he created heaven and earth, Augustine argued, he certainly “knows whence he will raise again what he created” (17). When a Christian’s body remains unburied, the promise remains that “the flesh itself shall be restored, and the body formed anew, all the members of it being gathered not only from the earth, but from the most secret recesses of any other of the elements in which the dead bodies of men have lain hid” (18).
Augustine reflected on the fact that when Christians suffer in this life they ultimately are not harmed, since they are in God’s care. In the same way, “the absence of the funeral, and of the other customary attentions paid to the dead [cannot] render those wretched who are already reposing in the hidden abodes of the blessed” (19). This should be especially precious to parents of Christian children lost by miscarriage, who may be unable to bury their child’s remains.
Christians know that world history will come to a proper end in the day of judgment. We also know that each individual believer’s life of bodily weakness and decay will come to a glorious conclusion in the power and glory of resurrection life. On that day, our questions will be answered, and the goodness, wisdom, and power of God’s providence will be visible to all.
Augustine drew one practical lesson from all this: Christians should not be concerned to have a lavish or extravagant funeral. He pointed out that a “costly burial” does no good to a wicked man, and a “squalid burial” cannot harm the godly. The rich man in Jesus’s parable had a funeral that was “gorgeous in the eye of man,” but in God’s sight “that was a more sumptuous funeral which the ulcerous pauper received at the hands of the angels, who did not carry him out to a marble tomb, but bore him aloft to Abraham’s bosom” (17).
I would not venture to guess what other practical lessons Augustine might give if we could ask him, but I have a few suggestions of my own. First, Christians should make a special effort to attend graveside burial services. These are very spiritually edifying occasions, as we honor a Christian’s body, bear witness to God’s continued care, and express our hope for the day of resurrection.
Second, Christians should be diligent to provide for their own burial as well as the burial of others. This will require some planning and some saving. For most Christians in America, a burial and a plot should be within financial reach, especially if saving for this purpose is considered a priority. In cases of financial destitution, the church and its deacons should consider assisting with expenses for a simple burial as an act of Christian mercy.
In some places, a scarcity of land makes burial prohibitively expensive. Some creative thought may be required here. One idea would be to practice burial at sea, which is a dignified and time-honored method for honorably disposing of a body without a plot of ground.
Third, Christians should live without fear of what will happen to their body in death. God’s providential kindness and covenant promises guarantee our ultimate welfare. Whether our bodies are laid to rest in an honorable and well-appointed funeral or tragically abandoned amid war or disaster, still it is true that “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15).
The author is pastor of First OPC in Sunnyvale, California. New Horizons, December 2021.
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