It is not accidental that Byzantine iconography represents Christ’s Resurrection as his descent into hades and the liberation of Adam from death. The Resurrection, therefore, was not a successive stage in Christ’s life following upon his Cross and his burial; it was already present in Christ’s death, as the factor that made this death ontologically significant. Had there not been the Resurrection, the death of Christ would prove that history is condemned to succumb to its finitude, to “being-unto-death.”
