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

Appropriation 321
about the Trinity and ‘further to bring out the distinction between
the properties’. The former aims always presuppose the latter, of showing the
diVerence between the properties. And so, from our own point of view,
the foundation of appropriation is pragmatic.36 Its function is to highlight
each of the distinct personal properties: appropriation thus makes it possible
to avoid mix-ups and to show the truth.
Saint Albert also pinpoints the nature of the relationships between the
appropriated essential attributes and the properties. Making an appropriation
assumes a given knowledge of the personal properties. It could never be used
to establish the personal properties, since it is not the essential attributes
which distinguish the persons, but their incommunicable characters. ‘If one
has no initial property, one will have no appropriated attribute.’ This view
involves a very tight conception of how an understanding of the divine nature
and of the distinct persons is open to us. (1) Considered ‘materially,’ that is, as
to its intrinsic meaning, one can get a perfectly good grip on an essential
attribute without the personal property. A non-Christian believer who does
not profess the Trinity can recognize that God is eternal, powerful, or wise;
taken in itself, the attribute of eternity or that of power is not conditional on
the personal property. (2) Considered ‘formally’, that is, as actually appropriated,
the appropriated essential attribute presupposes and includes the property
of the person. Taking Albert’s own example, the appropriated attribute of
eternity is not the notion of divine eternity alone but eternity in as much as it
‘aligns with the person of the Father’, that is, eternity as joined to Fatherhood.
Seen as appropriated, the notion of ‘appropriated attribute’ thus includes the
notion of essential attribute and the personal property kindred to it. The
concept of an ‘appropriated attribute’ is a complex notion which joins both
aspects in itself.37 Despite what many people think, appropriation takes real
understanding of Trinitarian doctrine; it is not a ‘walkover’.
This analysis takes into account what Bonaventure had meant by the terms
‘meaning’ and ‘connotation’. But there is no space for ‘connotation’ in Albert’s
view. One could say that, for Albert, it is not a matter of using one aspect to
‘extend’ the other, but of ‘uniting’ two distinct aspects. In other words, Albert
does not base his interpretation frontally on the mutual order amongst the
attributes, but on the notion or special ‘rationale’ of any particular essential
attribute, that is, on the meaning of the name of that attribute, which presents
a ‘congruence’ with the notion of this personal property. Albert formulates
this doctrine in relation to the Trinitarian triads worked out by the Church
Fathers which we mentioned above. Their analysis undergirds both the
general theory and the terms of its application.
36 Albert, I Sent. d. 34, a. 5. 37 Albert, I Sent. d. 31, a. 2.