Appropriation to the Persons of the Trinity and the Visions of St. Gertrude

Orientation #

He does not refer to last time or next time. The class grows out of his own recent reading: Thomas’s first book of the Sentences on the Trinity (his copy “falling apart”, so he went to the internet), and then, “not thinking of Thomas at all”, the Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude, which “tied up so much with this.” The previous class treated the resurrection appearance in Matthew and the impossibility of envy between Father and Son; the next treats Augustine’s “no before and after” in the Trinity and Aristotle’s senses of “before”.

The class, in order #

1. How he came to the Sentences and to St. Gertrude (“first volume of the Sentences”) #

The point: the article on appropriation in Sentences I was fresh in his mind when he took up St. Gertrude as spiritual reading, and her visions turned out to illustrate it.

• Our Lord told someone, “Where can I find you?” — “in the heart of Saint Gertrude”; that, plus his mother and his father’s sister both being named Gertrude, drew him to her.
• He owns the Life and Revelations and her Spiritual Exercises (in Latin; one is “to regain the innocence of baptism”).
• Aside: his four feminine saints are Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Gertrude.
• Aside: a statue in the St. Paul Cathedral and a pamphlet started him; later Sister Gertrude, a nun at the parish school, gave him a relic of St. Gertrude with Vatican authentication because he was the only person who had ever talked to her about the saint.

2. The doctrine of appropriation reviewed (“power is what appropriated to him”) #

The point: appropriation assigns attributes of the divine substance to the persons because of a connection with what is proper to each.

1. To the Father, power; to the Son, wisdom; to the Holy Spirit, love or goodness (goodness being the object of love).
2. Reason for each:
   • Power, as Aristotle defines it, is the beginning, the ability to do or make; the Father is the beginning in the Trinity and of the whole creation, so power is appropriated to him.
   • The Son proceeds not as Son but as Word of God, i.e. by way of understanding; the Word is about God himself, who is wisdom itself, so wisdom is appropriated to him. “In the beginning was the Word”: Logos means thought, not spoken word.
   • The Holy Spirit proceeds by way of the will, so love, or goodness its object, is appropriated to him.
3. Why appropriate at all: one reason Thomas gives is that it leads us to what is more known — even the philosopher knows to some extent what power, wisdom, and love or goodness are, and by their connection with the persons we can use them to distinguish the three.

3. Appropriation by opposition to the earthly (“just the opposite of the little son”) #

The point: as theology uses negative terms (God is not composed), so appropriation can be explained by opposition between the earthly father, son, lover, and the heavenly.

• The earthly father (himself) grows old and weak; God the Father is the opposite, so power.
• The little son or grandson is foolish and runs around, “not wise at all”; the Son is the opposite, so wisdom. (Aristotle: the mind is best at 49; Thomas died at 49.)
• Human beings often go wrong in love, a great occasion of sin; the Holy Spirit is goodness itself, the opposite of our badness in love.

4. Appropriation must not be confused with antonomasia (“shouldn’t be confused with antonomasia”) #

The point: in antonomasia a common name is given to one who stands out; appropriation says nothing about one person excelling the others.

• Antonomasia, with examples: Aristotle in the Poetics calls Homer “the poet”; the Federalist Papers, quoting “a long farewell to all my greatness” [ed.: transcript has “readers”], say “in the words of the poet” — Shakespeare (his Henry [VIII (inferred)]); the Bible is “the book” among all books because it is the Word of God; the Gospel, “the good news” — and he notes we do not realize this when we say “gospel”; Christ, “the anointed” among the many anointed of the Old Testament; Aristotle called “the philosopher” by Averroes and by Thomas because he excels all others.
• Appropriation, by contrast: the Father is not more powerful than Son or Spirit; all are equally powerful. The Son is not wiser than the Father — “that’s a terrible mistake.” The Holy Spirit is not better than the Father. The reason: these things are taken from the substance itself, common to all three; the appropriation rests only on the likeness between the attribute and what is proper to the person.

5. Gertrude: the White Lily of the Trinity (“White Lily of the Trinity”) #

The point: her first vision (pp. 178-179) images the three appropriations in the Mother of God.

• Mary appears as a white lily with three leaves, one erect (the omnipotence of the Father) and two bent down (the wisdom and love of Son and Holy Spirit, “to which the Holy Virgin approaches so nearly”); she is called the White Lily of the Trinity because she contains the virtues of the Trinity more fully than any creature, never stained by sin. He had never heard the title; “apparently that was common.”
• Whoever salutes her as White Lily of the Trinity and Vermilion Rose of Heaven (rose, he guesses, a symbol of charity) will see how she prevails by the Father’s omnipotence, is skilful for salvation by the Son’s wisdom, and is filled with love by the Spirit’s charity — “some confidence in the Blessed Virgin.”

6. Matins and the banquet between Father and Son (“placed it at a banquet”) #

The point: her prayer at matins adores the three attributes in the three persons, and a second vision shows the soul set between two of them.

• “Deus in adjutorium meum intende, Domine ad adjuvandum me festina”, repeated three times: she adores the infinite power of the Father, the impenetrable wisdom of the Son, the ineffable goodness of the Holy Ghost, “the Trinity in unity and the unity in Trinity.”
• The soul, clothed in white (innocence from Christ’s mortifications) and red (merits of his fasts) with many ornaments (his labours), is placed by the Father at a banquet between himself and the Son: the splendour of omnipotence on one side, the light of inscrutable wisdom on the other, with an opening between through which her humility is seen and wins the King’s affection. He again warns: this does not mean the Father is more powerful or the Son wiser; all three attributes belong to each.

7. Our Lord alone holds all three: the three fingers (“three different manners”) #

The point: when our Lord, not the three persons, speaks, he claims omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness all as his own — “see the difference,” so appropriation is not misunderstood.

• Gertrude prays for a woman who entered religion after spending her youth in the world; she sees her own heart as a little canal joined to the heart of Jesus. Our Lord gives the woman his left hand: “I will place you under the protection of my incomprehensible omnipotence, my inscrutable wisdom, and my ineffable goodness.”
• Three fingers, three rules of life: (1) beginning any duty, submit to the divine omnipotence as a useless servant; (2) protest before the impenetrable wisdom that she is unworthy of divine knowledge, having used her senses for pride, and so detach herself for contemplation and impart to others what she receives; (3) receive with thanksgiving the good will freely bestowed — “that goes back to the Holy Spirit’s appropriation” — by which she can observe the first two counsels. “A beautiful use of that thing.”
• Works of mercy for a nun who owns nothing: studying Scripture for others feeds him, reading for compunction gives him drink, an hour of recollection gives him hospitality, a new virtue clothes him, resisting temptation visits him sick, praying for sinners and the souls in purgatory visits him in prison; the reward comes from “my incomprehensible omnipotence, my inscrutable wisdom, and my most loving benevolence” — again not antonomasia but a connection between the person and the attribute.
• Satisfaction for all mankind (“poor woman”): five Pater Nosters for the five wounds and sins of the five senses; three for the three powers of soul — reason, the irascible (the English says “temper”, the Latin irascible), the concupiscible — for sins of frailty, ignorance, or malice opposed to his omnipotent power, inscrutable wisdom, gratuitous goodness. He connects this with Thomas’s prayer for confession, which speaks of the same three and of offending the whole Trinity.
• At the Ave Maria: three streams flow from Father, Son, and Holy Ghost into Mary’s heart and back to the source; she is most powerful after the Father, most wise after the Son, most benign after the Holy Spirit.
• Holy Thursday lamentations: she weeps before the Father for sins against omnipotence, before the Son for sins of ignorance against wisdom, before the Holy Ghost for sins of malice against goodness; at the Kyrie she embraces the heart of Jesus on behalf of the church. “Both Thomas and Gertrude have this connection of the three with the things you’re asking forgiveness for.”

8. Why corporal visions, and why Scripture uses metaphor (“no one should esteem spiritual things less”) #

The point: our Lord’s explanation to Gertrude matches Thomas’s account of why Scripture may use metaphors.

• Gertrude asks why she is taught by corporal visions (the closed gate of Ezekiel); our Lord: as he explained incarnation, passion, resurrection to the prophets by figures, so he uses sensible things for what surpasses the senses; no one should esteem spiritual things less for being under corporal images — because, he adds, the road for us is from the senses into reason.
• Thomas’s objection and reply (as he recalls it): metaphor is what poets do, the lowest teaching (infima doctrina), so why should the highest? Reply: both treat what is beyond reason, the poet what is below reason, Scripture what is above it. The poet gives a landscape more order than the original, a portrait (Titian [ed.: transcript “Tischer”], probably) captures a whole character in one expression as no real expression does — raising the below-mind up to the level of mind; Scripture brings the above-mind down through metaphor. “For the opposite reason they both use metaphors.” “Beautiful explanation.”

9. Thanksgiving before praise; the nest of the eagle (“Enter His gates with thanksgiving”) #

The point: Gertrude’s instruction to a soul seeking perfection adds humility as a third, prior step to the Psalm’s order of thanksgiving then praise.

• Psalm 99 (his numbering): “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise” — thanksgiving is before praise, and by the one you enter into the other.
• The instruction: like a noble bird (nobilis avis, probably the eagle) she must make a nest at his feet of the branches of her own nothingness and the palms of his greatness (humility: man inclines to evil unless prevented by grace; reflect on his mercy and paternal readiness to receive the fallen); to seek food she flies into his bosom to reflect with gratitude on his blessings (thanking, not praising); then, on the wings of desire, like an eagle and like St. John, supported by seraphim on the wings of charity, she gazes on the glory of the King of Kings (praise). Since she cannot stay an hour in contemplation, she returns to the nest by thinking of her nothingness and renews the flight by thanksgiving — “same three things.” “Beautiful, that order.”
• Objection he puts to himself: the Hail Mary praises Mary first and asks second — contrary to this order? Answer: you praise Mary first so as to realize why she should be asked.

10. Closing: other appropriations, effects of sin, his prayer (“May God the Father strengthen you”) #

The point: a student asks whether there are other appropriations; he says this triad is the standard one.

• Student: are there other things in creation appropriated to the Son? He: Thomas did not treat that in the article; maybe, but this seems the standard one. Other names for the Holy Spirit (love, goodness) come to the same since goodness is the object of love; and there is appropriation by negation (as in segment 3).
• Effects of sin, as Bonaventure says: from turning away from God — from power, weakness; from wisdom, ignorance; from goodness, malice; and from turning to creatures, loving them too much, in three kinds: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life — “one way to understand the whole dynamic of the effects of sin.”
• His prayer for his 19 grandchildren: “May God the Father strengthen you, may God the Son enlighten you, and may God the Holy Spirit fill your heart with his love” — he now says it more firmly.
• Student: the end harmonizes with Catherine of Siena’s insistence on knowledge of self and of God’s mercy. He: his feminine saints are Gertrude the Great, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux [ed.: ASR gives “Bridget the Great” and “Teresa of Siena”; his earlier list is followed], plus Mary Magdalene, “the Apostle of the Apostles”, present at Crucifixion and Resurrection; among the men, Dominic, Albert, Thomas, Augustine.

His words #

• appropriation: assigning an attribute of the divine substance (power, wisdom, love or goodness) to one person because of a connection with what is proper to that person.
• power: as Aristotle defines it, the beginning, “the ability to do something, to make something” [ed.: principle of action].
• Word / Logos: “thought, not spoken word”.
• appropriation by negation / by opposition: explaining an attribute by contrast with the earthly father, son, or lover.
• antonomasia: a name common to many given to one who stands out (the poet, the philosopher, the book, the good news, the anointed).
• infima doctrina: the lowest teaching, poetry, in the objection to Scripture’s metaphors.
• irascible, concupiscible: the two appetites, with reason, the three powers of soul; the English “temper” renders the Latin irascible.
• nobilis avis: “noble bird”, which he takes to be the eagle.
• frailty, ignorance, malice: the three kinds of sin opposed to power, wisdom, goodness.

Texts #

Read in class

• St. Gertrude the Great, Life and Revelations, pp. 178-179 (the White Lily) and several following passages (matins, the banquet, the three fingers, works of mercy, Pater Nosters, Ave Maria, Holy Thursday, the closed gate, the eagle’s nest).
• Psalm 99 (his numbering), “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise.”
• His own prayer for his grandchildren.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences, Book I, article on appropriation.
• Thomas Aquinas, prayer for confession.
• Thomas Aquinas on why Scripture uses metaphors (Summa theologiae I q.1 a.9, inferred).
• Aristotle, Poetics, Homer “the poet”; Aristotle’s definition of power; Aristotle on the mind at 49.
• Federalist Papers, quoting Shakespeare (Henry VIII, inferred) “in the words of the poet”.
• John 1, “In the beginning was the Word.”
• Ezekiel, the closed gate.
• Bonaventure on the effects of sin.
• St. Gertrude, Spiritual Exercises.

His questions #

• What’s the reason for this appropriation? A connection between the attribute and what is proper to each person: the Father as beginning, the Son as Word, the Spirit by way of will.
• Power, as Aristotle defined, is the beginning of what? The ability to do or make something.
• Does it mean the Son is wiser than the Father and the Holy Spirit? No — “a terrible mistake”; the attributes are taken from the common substance.
• Why do we appropriate? One reason of Thomas: it leads us to what is more known, since even the philosopher knows power, wisdom, goodness.
• Have you heard “White Lily of the Trinity” before? Neither he nor the class had; apparently it was common.
• How should the highest doctrine use metaphors, when that’s what the poets do? Both treat what is beyond reason — the poet what is below, Scripture what is above — so for opposite reasons.
• Is the Hail Mary contrary to the order of thanksgiving before praise? No; you praise Mary first to realize why she should be asked.
• Are there other things in creation appropriated to the Son? (student) Thomas did not treat it in the article; maybe, but power–wisdom–goodness is the standard one.