Personal Properties, Notions, and Relations in the Trinity are the precise distinctions by which Catholic theology confesses the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three really distinct divine Persons who possess one undivided divine nature.[1]
The Persons distinguished by relation
The Trinity is not one Person wearing three names, nor three beings who share a class called divinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each wholly the one God, equal in eternity, power, knowledge, and glory. Their real distinction lies solely in opposed relations of origin: the Father begets, the Son is begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeds. Nothing in the divine essence is divided or multiplied by these relations.
A relation in God is not an accidental feature added to an already complete individual, as human relationships are. Because God is absolutely simple, the real divine relations subsist; the Father is not merely someone who happens to have fatherhood, but the unbegotten divine Person whose personal identity is expressed by paternity. This language safeguards both Divine Simplicity and the irreducible reality of the three Persons.
Properties and personal names
A personal property is what belongs incommunicably to one Person and identifies him in relation to the others. Paternity belongs to the Father, filiation to the Son, and passive spiration or procession to the Holy Spirit. Unbegottenness is also proper to the Father, although it is described negatively. These properties are not qualities that make one Person more divine than another; they express who each Person eternally is.
Notions and notional acts
In the Latin scholastic vocabulary, a notion is a conceptual mark by which a divine Person can be known distinctly: unbegottenness, paternity, filiation, common active spiration, and passive spiration. Generation and spiration are called notional acts because they disclose relations of origin. Common active spiration belongs to Father and Son together and therefore distinguishes neither from the other, while distinguishing both relationally from the Spirit.
What is common and what is proper
The divine essence and every absolute perfection are common without division. Omnipotence, eternity, wisdom, goodness, creation, and providence are not apportioned among three agents. Trinitarian Appropriation may associate a common perfection with one Person for a fitting theological reason, but appropriation never converts a common perfection into a personal property. The Father is not powerful in a way denied to the Son and Spirit.
The Incarnation is personally proper to the Son because the human nature is assumed into the hypostasis of the Word. Yet the divine act by which that nature is created and assumed is the one common action of the Trinity. The missions of the Son and Spirit reveal their processions without separating them from the Father or introducing change into God. Proper personal term and common divine operation must therefore be affirmed together.
Dogmatic boundaries and theological use
The Church's technical vocabulary serves revealed truth; it does not claim to comprehend God's inner life. Substance names the one divine being, Person names the real distinction of Father, Son, and Spirit, and relation names the manner of that distinction. Catholic theology rejects modalism, tritheism, subordinationism, and every account that treats the Persons as interchangeable roles, unequal parts, or three independent centers of deity.
These distinctions guide preaching and prayer. Christians address the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, are baptized in the one Trinitarian name, and receive Sanctifying Grace as participation in divine life. Exact terms prevent devotion to one Person from obscuring the consubstantial communion of all three, while ensuring that the revealed personal names are not reduced to metaphors for human experience or temporary functions in salvation history.[2]
References
- 1.Catechism of the Catholic Church, 232–267 — The revealed names, one divine substance, three really distinct Persons, relations of origin, personal properties, common divine action, and Trinitarian missions
- 2.Dominum et vivificantem — John Paul II on the Holy Spirit's eternal procession, personal distinction, mission in salvation history, and consubstantial communion with the Father and Son