Reconstructing an undemolished Christianity 

I agree that a certain proximity would be necessary. If the reporter were shadowing St Mary Magdalene (happy feast!) then she would be faced with the simple question: is the tomb empty or not. If the tomb is empty, then there is a big question to ask and that is truly a question of objectivity.

@@Warwickensis would you say it's possible that there's a "spiritual proximity threshold", such that if she fell short of that, she wouldn't perceive an empty tomb, even if she shadowed directly next to Mary Magdalene?

@@WayneDrake-uk1gg a trained reporter ignorant of Christianity would be caught up in the grief of St Mary. She would expect there to be a body in the tomb. As a reporter she would reproduce the fact. If she is being rational and objective, I think a spiritual threshold would be irrelevant.

@@Warwickensis not to overly spiritualize Matthew 13:13, but if Jesus is the Word, and the Word comes to us in "parables", it seems there may be a "seeing yet they see not" mystery that could present as a "Schrödinger's Tomb". According to Dogma, one might think the journalist could see the tomb empty with "rational eyes of reason, alone". But, as you say, evidence is irrelevant to the atheist

@WayneDrake-uk1gg I rather think that if a reporter were utterly convinced that "the dead don't rise" which is a conclusion based on inductive reasoning, then she would rationalise it away like the Pharisees at the end of St Matthew's Gospel. But inductive reasoning is weaker than deductive reasoning as the discovery of the black swan shows.

Oh yes. I think the wheat and tares applies to the whole state of Creation, so both the individual and the corporate.

I think we do have to be careful of Soli Sancti - the idea that only those recognised to be saints contribute to the consensus fidei. That there are clear doctrines of Origen rejected by the Early Church is undeniable - the pre-existence of souls and universal salvation being most notable - that's not to say that his On First Principles or Contra Celsum are useless, nor that his various commentaries are without value. I am tempted to say that whatever is not rejected by the Sixth and Seventh Oecumenical Councils (which are largely the list of Anathemas of Justinian) is surely edifying. I don't think he was condemned as a heretic but rather than he had some ideas which were taken on board by heretics as the Sixth Council demonstrates.

@@Warwickensis yes, I do remember hearing something of the "dreadful doctrine of pre-existing souls" associated with Origen. But when I hear that doctrine condemned, the issue seems to be with the idea that we are all individual souls sitting around in Heaven playing harps until one day God sends us down to be incarnated on earth. I haven't studied Origen directly, but based on his expositors, I understand his actual teaching to be something more like this: The Garden of Eden was in some sense a "higher plane of reality" (ie, much closer to God than the world in which we find ourselves). But then Adam fell, and ended up on a lower plane, his children continued to fall to lower planes, and so on and so on, with more sin, death, and shorter lifespans until we find ourselves in this wonderful world. It's unclear to what extent Origen took that genealogy as literal, metaphorical, or spiritual, but regardless, it seems to be different from the "pre existing souls" heresy as I understand it. That is, we are not individual souls who fell down here from Heaven one day, but we are in some sense undeniably the fallen spiritual children of our fallen spiritual ancestors and the product of our fallen environment. I am only an armchair theologian. I'm not even sure if this is what Origen taught, and I'm certainly not qualified to judge its orthodoxy. But on the surface it seems to make much more practical sense than St Augustine's more direct equating of Original Sin with sex

​@@WayneDrake-uk1ggAugustine himself is not entirely self-consistent on the idea of Traducianism. It's fair to say that the EO, RCC and ACC follow Augustine in his idea of Original "Sin" as being the state of separation into which we are born. It's as if Adam sawed off the branch on which he was sitting and we are necessarily born onto that branch following Adam. Origen's theory rather loses credibility in this situation if we're in existence prior to the Fall. The problem, I think, with much of the medieval ideas of Atonement is that they are too legalistic. While Augustine often couches things in a legal framework, he also couches sin in terms of sickness in the City of God.

@@Warwickensis yes, but there's something so amusingly quaint about this doctrine of "man as an extended Russian Nesting Doll of 'soul homonculi (homonculuses?)' going back to Adam" that now I'm utterly compelled to research our dear Origen directly to find out if he really proposed such a thing and why. It is at the very least interesting that Scripture uses the language of "beget" in genealogies, light of the clear distinction between beget and make/create in the Creeds

@@Warwickensis it similarly makes me wonder if this is why so many of these pre-Thomas saints and monks were so obsessed with such fields as botany. It seems almost as if they were trying to confirm their mystical "theory of everything" by finding as many analogies as possible for it in life (perhaps this also belies their "polymathism", insofar as every one skill is just an analogy of every other)

Hello, of course you have my prayers. I'm sorry that you're struggling with thoughts about the future. I think St John Henry Newman has it right when he says, "I do not ask to see the distant scene - one step enough for me." I think in times like these, we need to look for the next step as best we can and grab the opportunities that come up. If the Lord says, "sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof," then our uncertain times become an opportunity to learn to trust Him. I'm sorry you haven't had a reply yet. Do see if you can find and talk with an ACC priest. Don't be afraid to email them out of the blue. They should be ready to help. That's what we are for, not just machines for saying Mass. As I say you have my prayers and those of St James and SS Anne and Joachim.

Hard labor is an outstanding spiritual tool on par with fasting. And unlike fasting it can sustain you

@@WayneDrake-uk1gg tell that to the desert fathers!

@@Warwickensis very true. It's almost a miracle in and of itself they were able to persist in that condition, and not get caught up in a primal feeding frenzy like Magellan's crew. The body has extreme food-seeking mechanisms when your body fat levels dip below the ~5% range

Craig and Ehrmann both pander to their audiences. It's why I loathe these sorts debates turning philosophical enquiry into a tournament in which there are winners and losers.

If I *have* to listen to a debate then it's usually Jimmy Akin that makes a debate less like a battle and more of an enquiry. He always looks for points of commonality with the other party and develops his argument from there.

@@Warwickensis do you ever watch Akin's "Mysterious World"? Parapsychology has been something of an "amusement"/recreation for me. I generally follow a pattern like "Feynman's Clock": First, Feynman found a clever natural solution to why the clock apparently stopped at his wife's time of death. But then, Freeman Dyson found an even more clever solution. But in so doing, he added another "layer of abstraction" with probabilities, which raised even more subtle questions about the nature of observations. It was as if Feynman were peering through the natural order while Dyson hinted at a "first strata of angels". And so Parapsychology goes along a sort of Thomistic meandering towards "Divine Simplicity" as increasingly clever solutions to an unusual phenomenon are pursued

@WayneDrake-uk1gg I must watch that. Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious world had a profound effect on me way back when it aired. I found it fascinating how there was a difference between what was natural, praeternatural and supernatural.

@@Warwickensis ah yes! I vaguely remember seeing bits of that Arthur C Clark show. It's almost difficult to conceive how shows like that aren't more popular today. A very fascinating Apostle of Parapsychology who's hardly discussed these days is Jacques Vallee. All the intellectual rigor of a mathematician, with his native French Postmodern outlook, pursuing Parapsychology through the methods of Jung. One can make of him what one will, but "boring" would be quite a stretch!