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Thank you, Father Reginald. Thank you, Father Dominic, for the invitation.

Thanks to the Thomistic Institute in the House of Studies.

One of the disadvantages of going last is you've had listened to

two other fine papers and had plenty of time to reconsider all the mistakes you've made

in your own. So this is all very provisional. So for Thomas Aquinas, for Thomas Aquinas, contemplation is thought in bliss,

an anticipation of the eternal beatitude to which we aspire in hope while now pilgrims,

but will one day delight in as comprehensors. As Thomas puts it in the sumacontrogentiles,

in this life, there is nothing so like this ultimate imperfect happiness as the life of those who

contemplate the truth as far as possible here below. For contemplation of truth begins in this life,

but will be consummated in the life to come.

I want eventually to talk about how contemplation fits

into Thomas' understanding of the task of theology.

But before getting to theology,

I want to begin with philosophy, indeed with the philosopher, Aristotle himself.

More specifically, I want to draw upon Jonathan Lear's study, Aristotle the desire to understand,

to suggest that the Aristotelian notion of contemplation is a kind of spiritualizing of material substances

in which the knower comes to knowledge of both self and God can help us understand Thomas's approach to theology.

As Jonathan Lear puts it, for Aristotle, the human person is, by nature, a systematic

understander of the world.

This will hardly come as news to any reader of Aristotle who understands what it means to say

...