The Savior is Risen!

The Resurrection of our Lord is, first, the Restoration of the life which appeared to be quite ended, while the broken bond between soul and body is again knit together; secondly, a Continuance of the previous life, wherewith the consciousness of its identity again awakes, the memory returns, and the objective fact acquires also subjective truth for the Risen One Himself; finally, the Glorification of the former existence, whole burdens now all fall away, so that the Risen One shows Himself entirely different than before, without on that account being another. The Scripture testifies that Christ rose with a truly human body, from an actual sleep of death, in the literal sense of the word, out of the grave. Condemned, therefore, is the [heretical] representation by which either reality or the identity of His body is doubted, or the manner of His resurrection so represented that it becomes entirely impossible to conceive a true corporeality…. But not less is the rationalistic interpretation, according to which the revivification of the Lord becomes only the awakening out of a seeming death, against the Scripture and the Christian consciousness. – John Peter Lange