APPROPRIATION. - «Manifestation of the divine person through the attributes proper to the divine essence» (Sum. theol., 1ᵃ, q. 39, a. 1). This term belongs to trinitarian terminology, which theologians use to express in human language the riches of the divine mysteries. When one speaks of God, who transcends the whole finite world, no concept and no word can be adequate to the object: thought and language have only an approximate, analogical value (v. ANALOGY), which is 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. DIVINE ATTRIBUTES). Revelation, moreover, manifests what reason could never have attained: the mystery of the intimate life of God, the Trinity, before which our language becomes even poorer and more inadequate. From divine revelation we know that in God there are three persons, each of whom has his own distinguishing note and his own 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 liturgy of the Church, are accustomed to refer to the individual persons certain divine attributes which, being proper to the divine essence, belong equally to the three persons, but which for reasons of analogy can be appropriated to one rather than to another of them. Thus, for example, power, wisdom and goodness are essential attributes of God, and therefore common, like the essence, to the three persons; but by a certain affinity power is attributed to the Father, wisdom to the Son, goodness to the Holy Spirit, because the Father, as principle, from whom 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, denotes order to the good.
Other examples of a.: to the Father are attributed eternity and unity; to the Son, truth and its splendor, which is beauty; to the Holy Spirit, the sanctification of souls and their impulse toward eternal life (cf. Sum. theol., 1ᵃ, q. 39, a. 8).
Bibliography4 works
Pietro Parente