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 all finite reality, no concept or word can fully correspond to the object: thought and language have only an approximate, analogical value (v. ANALOGY), based on the relationship of causality and thus of similarity between created things and the Creator. By this means human reason can grasp, albeit analogically, many attributes or essential properties of God, such as omnipotence, wisdom, goodness, etc. (v. DIVINE ATTRIBUTES). Revelation, moreover, discloses what reason could never have attained: the mystery of God’s intimate life, the Trinity, before which our language becomes even more inadequate.
From divine revelation we know that in God there are three persons, each of whom has its distinctive mark and personal properties (Father, generating Principle; Son, Image, Only-begotten; Holy Spirit, Love).
Not content with these few notions, theologians, following the example of the Fathers and the Church’s liturgy, have appropriated to the individual persons certain divine attributes that, though proper to the divine essence and thus common to all three persons, may for reasons of analogy be appropriated to one rather than another. Thus, for example, power, wisdom, and goodness are essential attributes of God, common therefore—as is the essence—to all three persons, yet by a certain affinity power is appropriated to the Father, wisdom to the Son, and goodness to the Holy Spirit. The Father, as the principle from which the other persons proceed, 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, directs all things to the good.
Other examples of appropriation: eternity and unity are attributed to the Father; truth and its splendor, which is beauty, to the Son; and the sanctification of souls and their impulse toward eternal life to the Holy Spirit (cf. Sum. theol., 1a, q. 39, a. 8).