Luther on the graveyard.
“As we have a churchyard here in Wittenberg, not only necessity but also devotion and respectability should drive us to make a common burial ground outside the city. For a burial ground should be a fine, quiet place, set apart from all other places, where one could walk and stand with devotion, contemplating and praying about death, the Last Judgment and the Resurrection; so that the same place would be, as it were, an honorable, almost a holy place, that one could walk there with fear and all honor; because without a doubt several saints lie there; and there, on the walls, one could have such devotional pictures and paintings painted.” (X, 2346, § 43-44, [AE 43, ~115])
Especially in the present time, in which the pagan custom of not laying the corpses in the lap of Mother Earth and as seeds of the resurrection in the field of God, but of handing them over to the fire, wants to arise more and more, we Christians should hold our burial places all the more dear, yes, more sacred. This includes, among other things, that the Christian congregations do not tolerate any grave monuments with pagan symbols and unchristian grave inscriptions on their graveyard. W. [Walther]
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Hello BackToLuther!
ReplyDeleteIt is written in subject "Luther and Walther on cemeteries, burial practices; against cremation" above:
"Luther promoted the practice of burial grounds or places for quiet cemeteries, which presupposes the burying of the body. Walther is more explicit about this by calling out cremation as an un-Christian practice. It has been quite a disappointment for me to read from other Lutherans today, even ones considered conservative, who give counsel promoting cremation."
BackToLuther,
What are the lutheran churches considered conservatives, who give counsel promoting cremation?
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI decided to inform to you that the pastor Gavin Winter of the ELCR (Evangelical Lutheran Congregations of the Reformation) said in page 9 of the pdf THE SCRIPTURAL DOCTRINE OF ADIAPHORA AND CHRISTIAN LIBERTY that cremation has therefore ceased to be an adiaphoron, this pdf there is in following website (http://www.knightgeorge.info/mobile/gavin-winter-elcr.html):
1. CREMATION. Cremation of the bodies of dead persons is in itself neither right nor wrong, neither commanded nor forbidden. The Bible nowhere directly forbids Cremation, although the Biblical custom and practice has always been BURIAL.
Yet Cremation for many years has been used by Atheists to bolster up their blasphemous denial of the Resurrection of the dead on the Last Day. Since this false doctrine is contrary to the teachings of the orthodox Lutheran Church, in order to confess the Scriptural doctrine of the Resurrection, the Lutheran Church has always buried its dead unless exceptional circumstances (e.g. contagious disease brought about by an epidemic) demanded otherwise. Cremation has therefore ceased to be an adiaphoron.