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"This is one reason that some Evangelical leaders (Al Mohler comes to mind) are opposed to cremation. Dr. Mohler is of the opinion that burying an intact body gives testimony to all present to our hope of the bodily resurrection."

Thanks for that info--- I hadn't known that about Dr. Mohler and am glad to hear of it.

I've been in FR since 1997, first under my husband's name, and then my own, and I had never before run into Christians who explicitly denied the resurrection of the body. It threw me for a loop when some FReepers on this thread started taking that POV.

There are a couple of FReepers, not on this thread, who do take a reincarnation view (the soul is granted a new body to live in) - they are dualists and self-described non-Christians or post-Christians.

Since you are undoubtedly more familiar with the range of non-Catholic Christianity than I am, I have a question for you: is the denial/reintepretation of "the resurrection of the body" a very widespread thing out there amongst Evangelicals or Reformed or Pentecostals or what-have-you? (I wouldn't think so, but I assume you would know more than I do.)

Incidentally, I always read Dr. Mohler's stuff when it gets posted on FR. Deeply educated, very smart, a good guy:I respect him highly.

This is one reason that some Evangelical leaders (Al Mohler comes to mind) are opposed to cremation. Dr. Mohler is of the opinion that burying an intact body gives testimony to all present to our hope of the bodily resurrection.

I understand that point of view and held that opinion until I started thinking about what really happens to our flesh and blood bodies when we die. It takes relatively little time for even a preserved body to deteriorate to dust and a non-preserved one even less time. Then when you consider all the people who have been obliterated in fires, bombs, buried at sea, drowned and lost in the sea and became shark/fish food, etc., it made me realize that the body that the Lord resurrects for His children is one that is changed - something happens that gives us a glorified, incorruptible, immortal body - reconstituted, if you will - from what only God, Himself, could do. Those that died hundreds or thousands of years ago, that will receive their resurrected bodies when we do, will STILL be every bit as changed as the one we may be alive and inhabiting, should the Lord Jesus return in our lifetime. It's not a belief in "reincarnation" - because that doctrine has with it the idea of karma and needing to go through countless lives to reach a state of perfection or god-consciousness and which remains in a corruptible life form of some type that always dies.

I think that we really do believe the same thing regarding Christian resurrection, but maybe we just lack the ability to put into words exactly what we think God will do so we take it on faith that:

But we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality, But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, "DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory. O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?" (I Corinthians 15:52-55)

I don't disrespect anyone for wanting to testify to the hope of the resurrection by being buried instead of cremation, but neither do I for those who choose "other" forms of burial. It won't matter for God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think.