At the beginning of one of his most important works, Sumu Contra Gentilates, St. Thomas seems to make, in passing, a very curious comment and a very bold claim.

He says that the intellect of an angel surpasses the human intellect, much more than the intellect of the greatest philosopher surpasses the

intellect of the most uncultivated simple person, where the distance between the best philosopher

and a simple person is contained within the limits of the human species while the angelic intellect

surpasses it. In other words, if we were to put the simplest person we could find, next to the smartest

person we could find, the difference between them would pale in comparison to the difference

between a genius and even the lowliest of angels.

We shouldn't overlook this insight.

I think it's meant to put us in our place

and to truly approach the subject of angels with great wonder.

This starting point perhaps already gives us a corrective to our typical way of imagining the angels.

We might be inclined to imagine the angels just as very smart

people without bodies, minds with wings. But with Aquinas' observation, we know from the outset that

there is something qualitatively different about ourselves and angels. It's not just a difference of

degree, it's a difference of nature.

The title of my talk this afternoon is,

Thinking Like Angels, The Spark of Reason and the Fire of Intellectuality.

I have three parts to this paper. The first part I'm going to compare, in contrast, human and angelic epistemologies, our ways of knowing.

And the result will be humbling.

I'm going to put us in our place as intellectually inferior to even the lowest angel.

In the second part, I'll also talk about the practical consequences this has for our lives,

especially for our spiritual lives.

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