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

Appropriation 337
essential attribute. This indirect illumination enables us to give a better
disclosure of each person in his distinctness, even though the means are still
imperfect. When we appropriate omnipotence to the Father, for example, this
proWles the property of the Father as Source, principle without principle.
Appropriation nourishes our capacity to contemplate all things in the light of
the Trinity.
Appropriation is a process of understanding and of language. It derives
from an analogical judgement based in faith, and it is in this capacity that it
introduces us to a deeper understanding of the mystery of the divine persons.
In order to be illuminative, appropriation draws on speciWc theological rules,
as we can see in Thomas, as well as in St Albert and St Bonaventure. These
writers invite us to maintain a very precise usage of appropriation, not to
descend into arbitrariness. This requires an exact notion of the persons’
properties, of the Trinitarian order, and of the modes of procession. Appropriation
is ineliminably bound to an organic view of Trinitarian theology.
The process of making appropriations also involves limitations. More
precisely, it is necessary to evaluate appropriation in terms of what it can
give us, not in relation to tasks which do not belong to it. By deWnition, the
appropriated attributes are no substitute for the personal properties, and are
not to be conXated with them. It does not belong to appropriations to give us a
proper notion that could really distinguish each divine person; this is the task
of the properties or Trinitarian ‘notions’, knowledge of which is assumed
within the process of appropriation. Appropriation can never in any way
replace theological study of the persons’ properties, for it presupposes it.
Appropriation is concerned exclusively with the region of that which
is absolutely common to the three persons, that is to say, with that which is
‘attributed to the nature’. It is here, and here alone, that it applies, and can
show its worth. For this reason, appropriation was not called for in the
exposition of the processions, the relations, or the personal properties. But
reXection on the action of the Trinity is not exhausted by appropriation. The
study of creative and salviWc action will enable us better to perceive the
Trinitarian grounds of the divine action, and, in return, will help us to
grasp the value of appropriation more deeply.