The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas - El Camino ...

13
Appropriation
Once having set out the essential attributes and discussed the properties of the
persons, St Thomas investigates appropriation. Appropriation is the name for
the theological procedure in which a feature belonging to the nature of God,
common to all three persons, is specially ascribed to one of the divine persons.
This process aligns the persons’ properties with their essential attributes.
We have to start by keeping in mind that the enquiry into the person as
‘subsistent relation’ has already reconnected the persons in their distinctness
with their unitary nature. That allowed us to present a Trinitarian monotheism
which respects both the persons’ plurality and their consubstantiality:
since each person is the divine essence, the three distinct persons are one
single God. This identity of person and nature is frequently emphasized in the
investigation of the notion of person (q. 29). The treatise in the Summa takes
this over in its comparison between what it means for Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit to be the divine persons they are, and what it means for each of them to
be divine (q. 39). We have already pointed out many aspects of this: the
identity of nature and person, the consubstantiality of the three persons who
are ‘of one single essence’, the name ‘God’ being applied to the Trinity and to
each person, and so forth.1 Appropriation is assigned to the same framework
and it is by means of this idea that the Trinitarian treatise rounds oV its
investigation of the ‘persons in relation to the essence’.2
The signiWcance of this context is twofold. In the Wrst place, the reservations
which are often expressed today about the doctrine of appropriations are
narrowly focused on the context of God’s relationships with this world. But
scholastic theology—and St Thomas is no exception to this rule—does not
restrict appropriation to the Trinitarian works of creation and salvation. The
setting for appropriation is much wider. Most of the appropriations it discusses
do not belong to the divine action within this world but to the Trinity
in itself. Secondly, theologians often suspect the idea of appropriation of
harbouring a confusion between personal properties and essential attributes;
1 On these diVerent aspects of question 39 in the Prima Pars, see above, Chapter 7.
2 ST I, q. 39, prol.