The doctrine of appropriation refers to the practice of ascribing essential names or actions of God to particular persons of the Trinity, even though the three persons all possess the essential attributes, and even though all three persons are active in one undivided action. The practice originates with the New Testament and is taken up by patristic authors.
- Ephesians 1:3, for example, speaks about “the Father . . . who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing,” an act that seemingly implies Christ and the Spirit as well.
- Similarly, Paul claims, in Romans 5:5, that “the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit,” even though this love of God is a grace given to us by the Father as well.
- The Prologue of John’s Gospel states, similarly, that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” referring here arguably to the person of the Word as the author of grace, but of course the gospel also insists elsewhere that grace stems from the action of the Father and the Spirit. Such examples are all concerned with a common action of the Holy Trinity, but sacred authors also attribute essential properties to distinct persons.
- A prominent example is found in 1 Corinthians 1:24: “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
- Similarly, 2 Corinthians 13:13 speaks of “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” distinguishing the persons by referring either to their actions or essential properties.
Aquinas on Appropriation of Essential Terms and Acts
In his mature thinking on the topic, Aquinas takes up, in ST I, q. 39, aa. 7–8, the question of the appropriation of essential terms and acts to the persons of the Trinity. Beginning with article 7, Aquinas gives various arguments for the appropriation of essential names to the persons.
The appropriation of various essential terms to the persons – names for God derived from creatures, such as power, wisdom, and goodness – allows us to better manifest the inner mystery of the Trinitarian life.
- Example from point of view of operation or causality: We can “appropriate” (1) power to the Father because all comes from Him as the principle without principle (efficient cause), (2) wisdom to the Son because He proceeds as the Father’s Word (exemplary cause), and (3) goodness to the Spirit (final cause) since He proceeds as the mutual love and gift of the Father & the Son.
- These examples of appropriations help us to grasp the unity of operation of the three persons. As noted above, it is all three persons who create and who sanctify, but according to a given order.
- Also. The created order is seen retrospectively in light of faith to bear the impress of the mystery of the Trinity. The very existence of the created order, in its vastness and grandeur, can be said to manifest the omnipotence of the Father, while the intelligibility of the created order manifests the wisdom of the Word, and the goodness of the created order manifests the eternal love of the Spirit.
Appropriations are NOT based primarily upon our limited manner of knowing and our subjective spiritual intuitions.
But rather on the objective basis in the relations existing within the mystery of the Triune God himself. They help us to see something real regarding the very mystery of the inner life of God.
Aquinas speaks of 4 different ways we can properly “attribute” to the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit respectively
- essential terms pertaining to the being and essence of God, such as simplicity, perfection, and goodness;
- terms of unity;
- terms of operation that denote God’s power, wisdom, and goodness; and
- terms pertaining to God’s relation to his effects in the creation and government of the world (the divine economy), as when we say that the Father created all things, the Son gives grace to all men, or the Holy Spirit will consummate all things eschatologically in God.
The doctrine of appropriations unfolds logically from an authentic Trinitarian monotheism.
- The use of the appropriations is monotheistic because all acts ad extra are acts of the one God.
- The use of the appropriations is Trinitarian because these acts are truly personal acts, which as such manifest the distinction of persons in God, their eternal processions, distinct modes of subsistence as God, and relational communion.
Christological Consequences: The Humanity of Jesus Reveals His Filial Mode of Exerting the Divine Action
The theandric actions that Christ performs as both God and man reveal his unity with the Father and the Spirit, but they also manifest his order of relationality: that he comes forth from the Father, and that with the Father he sends the Spirit.
Jesus Christ is one hypostatic subject, the person of the Word made flesh, who is truly God and truly human, possessing two distinct natures. The eternal Word subsists personally in a human nature so that all that he is as human pertains to him in his hypostatic mode of subsistence as the Son of God.
It is important to note what results from this: Jesus has one personal mode of being as the eternal Son, which pertains to him in both his natures. He is filial in his way of being God (as God from God, eternally begotten of the Father), and he is filial in his way of being human (as a man who is the eternal Son of God). As God he is personally from the Father and relative to the Father in all that he is, and as man, he is also only ever one who is from the Father and relative to the Father in all that he is. His human actions therefore reveal his personal relation to the Father as God… the distinctively human way Jesus acts manifests instrumentally the filial way in which he is God.
The eternal and incomprehensible mystery of the Trinity is truly revealed in the actions and sufferings of Christ, even particularly in his suffering, death, and resurrection. These latter actions are transparently expressive of the intra-personal communion that exists in God, which is their deepest grounding, but they are not constitutive of the communion that they reveal.
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