RC Piety includes an apology for sort of offering personal insult to God in the act of contrition. And I would maintain, as I said earlier, that God is "at least personal" (which requires a re-assmenet of what "personal" means and that both the OT and the Incarnation gice permission, as kind of a hermeneutic, to talk about and to God in a personal way. SO, I'm wanting to pick my way carefully through this. I don't see how anyone can disagree with +Anthony, and when I tried to articulate the "Satisfactory" doctrine I talked about justice rather than insult -- bearing in mind that for a long time, it seems, all matters of justice were "personal" in the sense that a misdeed offended some individual and/or the king (or "king equivalent"). The idea of a quasi-hypotstasized "justice" is pretty sophisticated, I'd suspect.
"RC Piety includes an apology for sort of offering personal insult to God in the act of contrition. And I would maintain, as I said earlier, that God is "at least personal" (which requires a re-assmenet of what "personal" means and that both the OT and the Incarnation gice permission, as kind of a hermeneutic, to talk about and to God in a personal way."
I wouldn't say it was "an apology for sort of offering personal insult to God in the act of contrition", I'd say it is exactly an apology for what we perceive as an insult to God. That's the way we think. But the Act of Contrition, a wonderful prayer by the way, is for us, not God. God doesn't "need" our repentence, we do. You are absolutely correct that the Incarnation does indeed give permission to talk about God in a personal way. +Athanasius makes that very point.
"when I tried to articulate the "Satisfactory" doctrine I talked about justice rather than insult -- bearing in mind that for a long time, it seems, all matters of justice were "personal" in the sense that a misdeed offended some individual and/or the king (or "king equivalent")."
Again, this is the way we think. In England, violations of the law were seen as offenses against "the King's Justice". Speaking of offenses "against" God or "God's Justice" are, as the Fathers said, useful for the edification of the simple people. I know that's a hard statement, but its true. Each of us to the extent we are able, needs to go beyond those concepts, to put away childish notions, and move towards a fuller, though certainly not by any means complete, knowledge of God and what He has done for us. Of course there's nothing easy about "understanding" He Who doesn't even exist in any way we comprehend. We can only observe what He has done, His effects as it were.
Sticking with notions of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", maybe useful to "spiritual children" at least for awhile. But thereafter it is pernicious as many come to reject the Dagon god that image gives birth to.