The Creed, Article 5: He Rose on the Third Day
In brief
After the tomb comes the turning point of history: "And the third day He arose again, according to the Scriptures." The same One who suffered and was buried rose in the body, on a real day, exactly as the Scriptures had promised. This single line is the ground of Christian faith — without it, as St. Paul says, our preaching is empty.
The third day He arose again
"And the third day He arose again." The Creed keeps counting days — the burial of Article 4, then the third day — because the Resurrection is an event in time, not a change of mood among the disciples. The women came to a tomb and found it open; "He is not here, but is risen," the angels tell them in Luke. The One who rose is the very One who died: the wounds remain, but death is behind Him for good.
This is the center of everything the Church believes and celebrates. The Orthodox call the feast Pascha, the Feast of feasts, and its light falls back across the whole Creed: the descent that ended in a tomb turns out to be the road to an empty tomb. In rising, Christ does not merely return to life — He tramples death itself, the harrowing of Hades in which He raises fallen humanity with Him.
According to the Scriptures
"According to the Scriptures" is the same phrase St. Paul used when he handed on the faith he had received: Christ "rose again the third day according to the scriptures." The Resurrection did not take God by surprise or overturn the Old Testament; it fulfilled it. Jonah's three days, the Passover lamb, the psalmist's confidence that God would not leave His Holy One in corruption — the Church reads all of these as pointing here.
The phrase also tells us how to receive the Resurrection: within the whole witness of Scripture and the Church, not as an isolated wonder. This is why the Symbol of Faith anchors the greatest of miracles in "the Scriptures" — the risen Christ is the one the prophets foretold and the apostles saw.