NOZIONI DIVINE. – These are theological terms expressing those characteristic notes by which the individual divine Persons can be distinctly recognized. They are customarily enumerated as five: innascibility, paternity, filiation, active spiration, procession.
In God there are two immanent processions (v.), corresponding to the two divine operations, intellection and volition (thought and love), from which arise four relations (v.), three of which are numerically and really distinct and therefore constitute the three Persons (Paternity = Father; Filiation = Son; Procession = Holy Spirit). These three subsisting relations are also strictly personal properties; two other properties, although personal, do not constitute the Persons but characterize them; they are: innascibility, proper to the Father (who derives from no one), and active spiration, which belongs to the Father and the Son in relation to the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from them.
The notions coincide with the relations and personal properties that distinctly denote the individual Persons. Therefore, while the three relations-properties—paternity, filiation, and procession—are also notions, active spiration is not, because it is common to two Persons (Father-Son). Moreover, innascibility, although it is not a relation, is a notion, because it indicates exclusively the Person of the Father. In substance, the notions serve to characterize unmistakably the individual Persons of the Most Holy Trinity.
Together with the notions, the notional acts should be recalled; there are two: generating and spirating (four, if the two verbs are also considered in the passive sense). “Generating” is, in concrete terms, nothing other than the first procession and therefore denotes the eternal divine intellectual act in relation to its two terms, Father (thinking) and Son (thought). Similarly, “spirating” is equivalent to the second procession and denotes the volitional act whose principle is the Father and the Son together, and whose term is the Holy Spirit. At the basis of the processions and the notional acts lies the immanent activity of God, thought and love, which are essential attributes and become notional when they are referred to the Persons; thus thinking is an absolute action, identical with the divine essence, but if it is referred to the thinking principle (Father) and the thought term (Son), it assumes a personal and therefore notional character (thinking = generating the idea: from the Father to the Son).
Similarly, willing is an absolute action, identical with the divine essence, which becomes personal and notional in relation to its terms, which are, on the one hand, the Father and the Son, and, on the other, the Holy Spirit (willing = spirating love).
BIBLI. Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 32 and 41; L. Billot, De Deo uno et trium, 7ª ed., Roma 1926, thesis 15 and 37; J. van der Meersch, De Deo Uno et Trium, Bruges 1928, n. 785; P. Galtier, De S.ma Trinitate, Parigi 1932, nn. 328-30 and 243-55; A. Michel, Notions, in DThC, XI, 1, coll. 802-805. Pietro Parente