¹ Augustine, , De magistro 11. I quote from Augustine: ‘Against the Academicians’ and ‘The Teacher’, translated, with Introduction and Notes, by King, Peter (Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis, 1995), p. 139Google Scholar.

² Augustine, Retractationes, 1. I quote from p. 94 of King op.cit.

³ Cf. Summa Theologiae Ia, 117,1: ‘Knowledge is acquired both from an internal cause (as is clear in the case of those who acquire knowledge through their own research) and from an external cause (as is evident in the case of one who is instructed). For there is in everyone a kind of cause of knowledge, namely the illumination of the active intellect (intellectus agens), through which all the universal principles of all the branches of knowledge are known naturally and immediately. When, however, people apply these universal principles to particular cases, the memory and experience of which they get through the senses, then they acquire knowledge by their own research of things of which they were ignorant, thus proceeding from the known to the unknown. So anyone teaching leads learners on from what they already know to knowledge of what they did not know before…Teachers lead learners on from the already known to the unknown in two ways: first by putting before them certain means which their minds can use in acquiring knowledge…Second, by aiding the mind of the learner…in so far as teachers set out the relationship of principles to conclusions before the learner…Those who provide a demonstration make their listeners know’. With slight emendations, I quote from Volume 15 of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa Theologiae(Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, and McGraw‐Hill Book Company, New York, 1970), pp. 133 and 135Google Scholar.

⁴ For a more detailed and nuanced account of Aquinas on scientia see Scott MacDonald, ‘Theory of Knowledge’ in Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993). I am in no way here to be taken to be disagreeing with MacDonald's account of Aquinas on scientia. I am simply, for present purposes, seeking to paint in broad (but not, I hope, misleading) strokes.

⁵ In his sermon‐conferences on the Apostles’ Creed Aquinas writes: ‘But our knowledge is weak to such a point that no philosopher would be able to investigate perfectly the nature of a single fly’. For the text see The Sermon‐Conferences of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed, translated and edited by Nicholas Ayo (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1988), pp. 20–21.

⁶ Clifford, W.K., ‘The Ethics of Belief’ in Clifford, W.K., Lectures and Essays, 2^nd edition, edited by Stephen, Leslie and Pollock, Frederick (Macmillan, London, 1886)Google Scholar. I quote from the reprint in Davies, Brian (ed.), Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000), p. 35Google Scholar. With respect to religious matters Clifford's position is echoed by Antony Flew in The Presumption of Atheism and Other Essays(Elek Books, London, 1976)Google Scholar.

⁷ For a development of these points see Anscombe, G.E.M., ‘What Is It to Believe Someone?’ in Delaney, C.F. (ed.), Rationality and Religious Belief(University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1979)Google Scholar. See also Malcolm, Norman, ‘The Groundlessness of Belief’ in Brown, Stuart C. (ed.), Reason and Religion(Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1977)Google Scholar.

⁸ See, for example, Aquinas, De Potentia 10,4, ad. 13. Here we read: ‘The doctrine of the Catholic Faith was sufficiently laid down by the Council of Nicaea: wherefore in the subsequent councils the fathers had no mind to make any additions’. I quote from p. 208 of volume 3 of the translation of the De Potentia by the English Dominican Fathers (Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd, London, 1934)Google Scholar.

⁹ When it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, Aquinas goes so far as to say that its truth is demonstrably something which cannot be demonstrated. See Summa Theologiae Ia, 32,1. Here we read: ‘It is impossible to come to the knowledge of the Trinity of divine persons by natural reason…He who tries to prove the trinity of persons by natural powers of reason detracts from faith in two ways. First on the point of its dignity, for the object of faith is those invisible realities which are beyond the reach of human reason…Secondly, on the point of advantage in bringing others to faith. For when someone wants to support faith by unconvincing arguments, he becomes a laughing stock for the unbelievers, who think that we rely on such arguments and believe because of them’. I quote from Volume 6 of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa Theologiae(Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, and McGraw‐Hill Book Company, New York, 1965), pp. 103 and 105Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, 2,1.

¹¹ See, for example, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae, 10,12 and Summa Theologiae 3a, 68,10.

¹² See my ‘Is Sacra Doctrina Theology?’, New Blackfriars, March,1990.

¹³ See Summa Theologiae 3a, 7,7. See also Summa Theologiae 3a, 9 ad. 1 and Commentary on the Gospel of John, Lecture 1.

¹⁴ Aquinas was a Master of Theology in Paris during these periods. But he also functioned as a teacher of sacra doctrina at other times – for example between 1265 and 1268 in Rome, more of which below.

¹⁵ For an English translation of Aquinas's 1256 lecture see Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings(translated, edited, and introduced by Tugwell, Simon OP, Paulist Press, New York and Mahwah, 1988), pp. 355–360Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Smalley, Beryl, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages(3^rd edn., Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1983), p. 303Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See Summa Theologiae Ia2ae, 102, 6, ad 4.

¹⁸ Smalley, op.cit., p. 306.

¹⁹ Leonard Boyle, ‘The Setting of the Summa Theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas’(Etienne Gilson Series, 5, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 1982). Boyle's essay is reprinted with some revisions in Stephen N.J. Pope (ed.), The Ethics of Aquinas(Georgetown University Press, Washington D.C., 2002), to which my references below refer. For a position that differs from Boyle’s, see Jenkins, John, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997), Chapter 3Google Scholar.

²⁰ Prologue to Part One of the Summa Theologiae. I quote from Volume 1 of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa Theologiae(Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, and McGraw‐Hill Book Company, New York, 1964), p. 3.Google Scholar

²¹ Boyle, p. 7. Boyle notes, however, that there was at least one Dominican contemporary of Aquinas who seems to have shared his sense of the need to adjust the curriculum for Dominican theological teaching – Hugh Ripelin, who wrote a Compendium Theologiae Veritatis. See Boyle, pp. 7 f.

²² As Boyle notes, it was the moral sections of the Summa Theologiae that proved popular with Dominicans. See Boyle, pp. 11–13.

²³ I am not at this point attributing to Aquinas a way of thinking which he develops specifically with an eye on teaching and learning. I am drawing on things Aquinas says in various places which amount to the approach to teaching and learning that I am now ascribing to him.

²⁴ For Aristotle, see Nicomachean Ethics I, 1. You can find Aquinas echoing Aristotle at, for example, Summa Theologiae Ia, 5,1 – though he endorses Aristotle's equation of goodness and desirability in many places.

²⁵ This article is an annotated version of a lecture delivered on June 24^th 2004 at the 8^th Biennial Dominican Colleges Colloquium held at Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois. I am grateful to Sr Janet Welsh OP for inviting me to deliver the lecture and for organizing my visit to River Forest.