APPROPRIATION. - “Manifestation of the divine person through the attributes proper to the divine essence” (Sum. theol., 1ᵃ, q. 39, a. 1). This entry belongs to Trinitarian terminology, which theologians use to express in human language the riches of the divine mysteries. When speaking of God, who transcends the entire finite world, no concept and no word can correspond adequately to the object: thought and language have only an approximate, analogical value (v. ANALOGIA), founded on the relation of causality and therefore of likeness between created things and the Creator. By this path human reason succeeds in grasping with certainty, albeit analogically, many attributes or essential properties of God, such as omnipotence, wisdom, goodness, etc. (v. ATTRIBUTI DIVINI). Revelation then manifests what reason could never have attained: the mystery of God’s intimate life, the Trinity, before which our language becomes still poorer and more inadequate. Through divine revelation we know that in God there are three persons, each of whom has its distinctive note and personal properties (Father, general Principle; Son, Image, Only-begotten; Holy Spirit, Love).
Not content with these few notions, theologians, following the example of the Fathers and of the Church’s liturgy, customarily refer certain divine attributes to the individual persons. Since these attributes are proper to the divine essence, they belong equally to the three persons, but for reasons of analogy they may be appropriated to one rather than to another. Thus, for example, power, wisdom, and goodness are essential attributes of God, and therefore common, like the essence, to the three persons; but by reason of a certain affinity, power is attributed to the Father, wisdom to the Son, and goodness to the Holy Spirit. For the Father, as the principle from which the other persons derive, evokes the idea of the origin of all things from divine omnipotence; the Son, who proceeds from the Father by way of intellection, evokes the idea of wisdom; and the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of love, signifies an ordering toward the good.
Other examples of appropriation: eternity and unity are attributed to the Father; truth and its splendor, which is beauty, to the Son; the sanctification of souls and their impulse toward eternal life to the Holy Spirit (cf. Sum. theol., 1ᵃ, q. 39, a. 8).