The Resurrection
Referenced in: What Returns Is Not What Was Buried
The central claim of Christianity: that Jesus of Nazareth, having been executed by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate and buried in a known tomb, was raised bodily from the dead on the third day. This is not a metaphor for spiritual renewal or the survival of His teachings; it is a claim about a physical event in space-time history. If it did not happen, Paul says, Christian faith is useless and Christians are “of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). The resurrection is also the interpretive key to the entire RSR (Rejected, Slain, Raised) framework of this site: rejection (the crucifixion) is followed by death (actual death, not a symbol) and then by something that returns with greater weight and transformed nature (the resurrection body). The pattern is not a metaphor drawn from nature; it is stamped into the structure of reality by the historical fact that it happened once to one man.