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The first Easter is at the core of Christianity, yet is still susceptible to interpretation by those who wonder to this day: Was Jesus' resurrection really physical as well as spiritual?

If polls are any indication, most of the two billion Christians worldwide who are celebrating the event today would say they have no doubt that Jesus rose from the dead body and soul.

"I believe in the resurrection of Jesus," said the Rev. William Underhill, interim pastor at All Saints Episcopal Church in Attleboro.

But he also said it's not easy to believe that a dead person rose from his tomb and appeared in bodily form to those who knew him. Yet in some of the gospel depictions, he said, the risen Jesus is a tangible presence.

Whether or not people accept a physical resurrection, he said, they still believe that "Jesus' spirit is alive and well in the world." The bodily resurrection is in both the Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed and is therefore an article of faith for many Christians.

Yet trying to explain it means describing something that is almost impossible to understand, said the Rev. Terence Keegan, a Dominican priest and professor of theology at Providence College.

"It occurred only once, and there was no other like it in the whole history of the world," he said of Jesus' resurrection.

For evangelical Christians, who take the Bible literally, there is no debate.

"Obviously I believe in the physical reality" of the resurrection, said Pastor Tim Hatch of Living Waters Christian Church in North Attleboro. "I believe it not just as a reality, but as the central issue of the Christian faith."

Hatch refers to Paul, who wrote that if there were no resurrection, anyone's faith would be in vain. "I agree with Paul," he said. "Without the resurrection, there really is no point in being Christian."

Yet there are those who argue that Christian faith is not dependent on belief in an actual physical resurrection. Some theologians who do not take the Bible literally have long contended that the resurrection story is a metaphor, and that Jesus came back to life in a spiritual, but not necessarily physical way.

And although various polls in recent years have shown that 65 to 80 percent of Christians say they believe Jesus physically rose from the dead, up to a third believe otherwise, and that keeps the discussion alive.

The topic saturated the mainstream media recently when a documentary on the Discovery channel claimed that the tomb of Jesus and his family may have been found in Jerusalem.

The claims were widely debunked by respected scholars and archeologists, but the idea that Jesus' bones could still exist brought out a range of theological views on the resurrection, which would have left no human remains behind. The debate has long been prominent between two theologians and authors, the conservative Anglican N.T. Wright and the liberal Marcus Borg.

They co-authored a book called "The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions," in which they take on their opposing views of the resurrection as historical fact involving a physical body, or as a metaphorical depiction of the risen Jesus as a spiritual reality.

Pastor Dennis Baril of the evangelical Community Covenant Church in Rehoboth has been studying the writings of Wright and has come to a new appreciation of the resurrection because of it.

"He is challenging us to think of it historically, socially and anthropologically," Baril said. "When you do, you have to conclude that Jesus did what he said he did."

Baril said he believes in the resurrection because it really happened.

"It changed the world, and 2,000 years later we are still talking about it," he said. "The only reason is because it's true."

Catholic teaching on the resurrection is spelled out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Bishop George Coleman of the Fall River Diocese references that text in this year's Easter message to parishioners, referring to the event as "the crowning truth of our faith in Christ."

The bishop noted that those who say the resurrection came from the imaginations of the apostles overlook the fact that the apostles at first had difficulty believing it until they encountered the risen Christ, themselves.

"Our faith in Jesus and his Resurrection, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, is something that is true and certain," Coleman said.

Keegan of Providence College said the trend in modern times has been to make religious themes more comprehensible by examining them on a human and scientific level, but that is not possible.

"God is not limited by science, by time and space," he said.

In trying to understand the resurrection, he said, many people confuse the word with resuscitation, which means that someone who was dead - or apparently dead - then came back to life, but to a human life, as occurred in the biblical story of Lazarus.

That is not what happened to Jesus, he said.

"He resurrected. He conquered death, to a life that goes on forever," Keegan said.

What is important to Christians, he said, is that "his resurrection guarantees our own resurrection."

Keegan also noted that the differing accounts in the four gospels of the risen Jesus' encounters with his disciples show that the resurrection was both physical and spiritual. In some encounters, Jesus walks and sits and eats, he said, and in another he tells the apostle Thomas to touch his wounds so he can believe. Yet in other stories, he seems to appear then disappear, and at times his followers don't initially recognize him.

"He really is physically present, but in a new form of existence no one has ever experienced," Keegan said.

The bottom line, he said, is that the resurrection is a matter of faith, and faith is a gift from God.

"If you have the gift of faith, you will accept the resurrection," he said.

The Rev. Garvin Warden of Centenary United Methodist Church in Attleboro also refers to the gift of faith in speaking of the resurrection.

Based on the evidence in the gospels, he said, the resurrection has to be a physical event, but trying to work out the details can cause confusion because Jesus defies biology, chemistry, physics.

"You just have to believe," he said. "You see it through the eyes of faith."

Some prominent theologians take a more interpretive approach.

In a recent article by Religion News Service, retired Episcopal Bishop and author John Shelby Spong said the resurrection was real but not in a physical sense, while Roman Catholic theologian John Dominic Crossan said the biblical accounts are best understood as metaphor.

In recent comments to The Sun Chronicle on the Discovery channel documentary, Michael Coogan, a professor of religious studies at Stonehill College in Easton and the author of several biblical texts, including "The New Oxford Annotated Bible," said belief in the resurrection does not mean it had to be a physical one, and the discovery of bones would, in his view, have little impact on Christianity.

To some scholars, the meaning of the resurrection is unclear, Coogan said, and various accounts in the New Testament are inconsistent. The empty tomb, he noted, is not mentioned in the letters of Paul, which were likely written around the year 50 CE, before any of the gospels.

Paul's writings speak of the resurrection of a spiritual body rather than a physical one, he said, and that has led some scholars to think that the story of the empty tomb developed later, and then was included in the four gospels that were written sometime after the year 70 CE.

Yet the gospel accounts of Jesus' appearances after the resurrection indicate that his disciples had some kind of profound experience that made them believe Jesus was alive, Coogan said, and that experience was likely more than just an interior, spiritual one. But whether or not they saw his actual body is not certain, he said.

Underhill of All Saints Church said the resurrection is difficult to define.

Explaining how it happened, he said, is not as important as saying that it did in fact happen.

"That he is risen, I have no doubt," Underhill said. "Jesus is alive. We know his presence."