Aquinas on the Light of Glory

Abstract

In this essay, I examine Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of the light of glory (lumen gloriae). I begin by describing the function of the lumen gloriae in Aquinas’s account of cognition and his broader teaching, thereby indicating what is at stake in the success of this doctrine (section two); then I attempt to solve two difficult problems that arise from Aquinas’s teaching on the light of glory (sections three and four).