There is some serious confusion happening on this thread, regarding three different subjects: Systematics, Moral Theology, and personal Christian/Catholic Spirituality.
Theme 1:
A discussion of “the image of God” belongs to a branch of Catholic theology called Systematics. Any system is useful for creating working definitions by which people can converse, for describing the interrelationships of concepts and terms within that system, etc. The Roman Catholic Church has never declared either the terms or the dynamics within Systematic Theology to be the means of “knowing God” of understanding God, of “understanding” Scripture, or of understanding Tradition with a capital T. She didn’t do so during ancient Christianity, during the 21st century, or at any point in her history, no matter how “conservative” she was believed or interpreted to be.
Paragraph 237 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church re-asserts what not only she has always known, but what the ancients knew, in ways they searched & labored to describe the reality of God:
The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God”.58 To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
What does anyone not understand about how the Roman Church has never tried to contain, limit, or define in finite terms an infinite God? Anyone who asserts this, or believes he or she has come to some original epiphany about how God cannot be analyzed, is seriously, seriously poorly read in the various branches of theology, including any branch he or she privately believes is “new,” unique, or invented by the same self.
It wasn’t just the earliest Christian mystics who were aware of this, but our Hebrew/Jewish brothers and sisters, who expressed poetically in the Psalms how Unfathomable and Unknowable God is, and how the realistic and truthful response to Him is one of Awe, surrender, and non-analysis.
Nevertheless, within the absolute statement that God is ultimately unknowable within the limitations of human experience, certain fixed definitions & principles are asserted so that the Catholic faithful can converse.
Theme 2:
Moral Theology is not Systematic Theology. Different branch. As with Systematics, moral theology depends on certain fixed principles in order to be a workable, unified system which has practical value for each person. Again, the ancients understood this as well: Hence, the Torah. Unlike some people on this thread, they had no problem distinguishing the finite and knowable nature of moral precepts from the unknowable mysteries of God’s plan for them, God’s “ways,” and God’s profound intimacy with them, individually and as a people. One mode of Knowing did not diminish
or alter the other mode. They were able to keep both in balance, even without analyzing “why.” What they did understand was that moral behavior was the pathway into what we would call “the divine life,” or, union with God. While they expressed that union in prayer (Psalms, temple prayers, etc.) and in worship, they were keenly aware that there was no such thing as union with God without following his precepts (moral law). Jesus also understood that and proclaimed that, repeatedly.
There was no such thing as private, personal insight diminishing the community moral law, no matter what form such private insight took. Righteousness (
tsedeq) was achieved by conformity with God’s law, and that conformity was indispensable to knowing Him and loving Him. The Roman Church embraces what Jesus Himself embraced in the incorporation of Righteous (morally faithful) living as the first and most essential means and sign that one is in fact living in union with God. And righteous living, then as now, was understood within a community context, not a ‘private’ context with independent laws “discovered” or known only to that individual.
Theme 3:
Prayer obviously belongs to a branch of theology called Spirituality. As with Systematics, the Roman Church has never tried to “contain” or limit the prayer life of any individual, and anyone who believes so is shamefully poorly read. The Church has described forms of prayer – again, so that common language about it can be understood, and especially so that we pilgrims can grow in our prayer journeys. No one on this thread has discovered or invented some prayer form that the Church was not previously aware of, taught, published about, and encouraged. How can I say that? Because the Church would be the first to acknowledge that she has no control, nor wishes to have any control, over the individual’s life of prayer. The Church wants to liberate us to pray as the Holy Spirit calls us to. She has never tried to intrude into the inviolable space between the individual and God. She has, however, warned against certain false spiritual journeys, mostly having to do with New Age deceptions and confusions which tend to distract the individual from his or her relationship with the Trinity, especially the Second Person of that Trinity. Other than that, the Church embraces contemplation, including but not limited to that modeled by the saints and mystics, including formulaic prayer, & more. If you think you’ve invented something, then you haven’t read enough.
The Church also embraces, teaches, and encourages
lectio divina. Warning: lectio divina is not ‘private interpretation of Scripture.’
Lectio divina is praying the Scriptures. It may – often does—provide insight into those Scriptures, but if it is genuine, the fruits of
lectio divina do not contradict the moral teachings of the Church.
