Article 5 : He descended into Hell.

The fifth article is not found in the Nicene Creed, and its basis in the New Testament is very slim. The first Letter of Peter speaks of Jesus after his death going " to preach to the spirits in prison [who] refused to believe long ago, while God waited patiently to receive them, in Noah's time when the ark was being built "(3:19).

Scholars think the reference is to the (non-canonical) Book of Enoch, which states that after his death Jesus visited the fallen angels, imprisoned in some form of sub-heavenly confinement.

Martin Luther, the Reformation leader, provides an interpretation based on the psychology of the spirit. Hell, according to Luther, refers to the all-aloneness and abandonment Jesus experienced in death.

If hell is essentially the absence or loss of God, Jesus' experience of abandonment was akin to it. That unconsoled, dark night of the soul was the hell he descended into.

The Latin word for "hell" can also be rendered "lower regions," or "underworld", and descent to the underworld has been taken to mean going "beneath" the world, beyond the coordinates of space and time. Jesus could thus bring salvation to all the just of previous ages, from Abel onwards, who died before he was born.

Finally, hell has been taken in the traditional or common sense as the domain of Satan. The "harrowing of hell," as the secular literature puts it, sees Jesus binding Satan and raking through the dead for those who not belong there, who are only there because the gates of heaven were closed until he opened them through his resurrection.

These latter theological interpretations convey the meaning that the range of salvation secured by Jesus' death extends to the length and breadth of the cosmos, and even outside it. Nowhere is out of bounds. Even in the stronghold of Satan, Jesus is victorious.

Luther's interpretation has its own relevance and merit. It says that the Incarnation means solidarity with humans not only in life but also in death, in all of death's loneliness, agony and separation.

Article 6 : On the third day he rose from the dead.

We're familiar today with the phenomenon of the "near death" experience, from which people "return" to their former lives. This is not what "resurrection" means. Resurrection is not what happened to Lazarus (John 11:17 -44), or to the young man from Naim, whom Jesus raised to life and returned to his mother (Luke 7:11 -16).

In both instances the return to life was a resuscitation. Lazarus and the young man resumed their lives, and in due course died again. Resuscitation is excellent news for family and friends, but it's not "good news" that affects everyone else. It does not start a religion, and it does not transform lives across the ages.

The Christian claim regarding the resurrection is not that Jesus picked up his old manner of life, but that after his death he entered into an entirely new mode of existence, where he shared the power of God, and could share that power with others.

There is no eyewitness to the resurrection in the Gospels or letters of St Paul . We may not even know when it took place. The tradition of Jesus after death making salvation available to the just from Abel onwards, or storming the stronghold of Satan implies that resurrection had already taken place before " the first day of the week ."

That was when the women discovered the empty tomb, but that says nothing of the actual time of the occurrence.

We do not know the how of the event either. If hypothetically someone were outside the tomb on Easter morning with a camcorder, nothing would have been recorded. There was no way an event occurring outside the coordinates of space and time could have been recorded.

So direct proof and timing are not available. The discovery of the empty tomb by itself only means that something unaccountable transpired. The body, as the Gospel of Matthew suggests, could have been moved or stolen.

What beggars explanation, however, is not an absence or an emptiness but a presence and a transformation. Belief in the resurrection has never depended on eye witness testimony. It has rested on the experience and conviction of the early Christians.

It was something that also happened to them. The sharing in Jesus' new life through the power of the Holy Spirit was an essential dimension of the resurrection.

On this basis, Christians became "a new creation," a new form of humanity shaped according to the image of the One who was the "first fruits" from the dead.

At the very beginning of Christianity, there is thus a special experience and a special claim. The experience is one of transforming, transcendent, personal power within communities, expressed as the " gift of the Holy Spirit ."

The claim is that this power comes from Jesus, who was crucified, but who now lives by the life of God, and is expressed in the phrase " Jesus is Lord ." Paul combines the elements in his statement: " No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit " (1Cor 12:3).

Experience and conviction --- these two elements form the "resurrection experience" of the early Church, and it is what continues to ground Christianity today. As Paul put it, "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain" (1 Cor. 15:14 ).

The resurrection was not historical in the ordinary meaning of the term, that is, an event that occurred in space and time. Jesus could no longer be defined in these parameters, though he became available to us who live within them.

As resurrected Lord, he was and is inaccessible to history's limited mode of knowing, though he continues to influence lives within history, and generate continuing activity and mission.

Critics, however, question several aspects of the resurrection claim. It's been said, for instance, that it was merely a vision in Peter's head, and not much more.

It was as if a light went on in Peter's consciousness, when he realised that God was in Jesus throughout his life. Peter communicated his experience to others, and that's how Christianity began.

The evidence, however, is that the resurrection experience went far beyond that of one person. Our earliest testimony (1 Cor 15:3-8) speaks not of one singular experience of Peter's, which was then related to others, but of an experience had by many others apart from Peter, including Paul himself.

The Gospel accounts also refer to appearances involving small groups of people rather than solitary individuals. These accounts stress not the musings of one individual's inner locution but an encounter of great force by several persons with an Other.

The issue, as Luke Timothy Johnson writes, is also a matter of logic. Anyone, for example, noting the substantially reduced numbers of Jews in Europe in 1945, compared with 1932, could logically posit a cause sufficient to account for the phenomenon. An occurrence like the Holocaust need not be cited, but something like a decrease in tourism would not do.

Similarly, one person's mental locution is miserably inadequate as a rationale for the explosion that within 25 years of Jesus' death managed to create special communities across the Mediterranean . Denying the resurrection is equally problematic, even more so.

If a distinctive occurrence was not at the root of the rapidly growing Christian movement, what accounted for the movement's unlikely origins, amazing growth, and special literature?

The resurrection continues to authenticate itself in experience, wherever people testify that Jesus is Lord. It also remains a special, miraculous claim. The claim is not only that death is overcome, but that while all flesh remains "grass", all flesh is now bound for glory.