¹ Examples of recent literature on SP include: Alston, William, Perceiving God, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Greco, John, “Perception as Interpretation”, ACPA Proceedings 72 (1999): 229-37Google Scholar; the many fine essays in Gavrilyuk, Paul and Coakley, Sarah, eds., The Spiritual Senses, (Cambridge: CUP, 2012)Google Scholar; McInroy, Mark, Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses, (Oxford: OUP, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yadav, Sameer, The Problem of Perception and the Experinece of God, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² See e.g.: Braine, David, The Human Person. Animal and Spirit, (Notre Dame: UND Press, 1992), 70-73, 283-286, 309Google Scholar; Haldane, John, “The Breakdown of Contemporary Philosophy of Mind”, in Haldane, , ed., Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Aristotelian Tradition, (Notre Dame: UND Press, 2002), 57-58, 68Google Scholar; Milbank, John, “The Soul of Reciprocity Part One: Reciprocity Refused”, Modern Theology 17 (2001): 335-342, 349-350, 357-359, 365CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Milbank, , “The Soul of Reciprocity Part Two: Reciprocity Regained”. Modern Theology 17 (2001): 490, 501, 504-505Google Scholar; Spencer, Mark K., Thomistic Hylomorphism and the Phenomenology of Self-Sensing, (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Ph.D. Dissertation, 2012)Google Scholar; Spencer, , “Habits, Potencies, and Obedience: Experiential Evidence for Thomistic Hylomorphism,” ACPA Proceedings 88 (2014)Google Scholar.

³ This distinction draws on that given by Alston, Perceiving God, 21-22.

⁴ One example is the perception of the divine logoi in sensory things, as described e.g. by Dionysius and Maximus; see David Bradshaw, “The Logoi of Beings in Greek Patristic Thought”, in Foltz, Bruce and Chryssavgis, John, eds., Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration, (Fordham University Press, 2013), 9-22Google Scholar.

⁵ Examples are given by Hans Urs Von Balthasar; see McInroy, Balthasar, 122-133.

⁶ Examples are given by writers in the Carmelite mystical tradition; see Farges, Albert, Jacques, S.P., trans., Mystical Phenomena (New York: Benzinger, 1926), 279-289Google Scholar.

⁷ Examples are given by Gregory Palamas; see Lossky, Vladimir, Moorhouse, Ashleigh, trans., The Vision of God, (Leighton Buzzard: Faith Press, 1973), 124-137Google Scholar.

⁸ Scheler, , Frings, Manfred and Funk, Roger, trans., Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, (Evanston: NWU Press, 1973), 48-110Google Scholar; Stein, Edith, Reinhardt, Kurt, trans., Finite and Eternal Being, (Washington: ICS Publications, 2002), 314-323Google Scholar; Hildebrand, Dietrich Von, Christian Ethics, (New York City, NY: David McKay Company, Inc., 1953), 35-37, 53-5Google Scholar4. The phenomenologists disagree as to which and how many powers are involved here; one can accept this account of experience, but disagree as to the underlying metaphysics.

⁹ Marion, Jeffrey Kosky, trans., Being Given, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 221-247Google Scholar; Horner, Robyn and Berraud, Vincent, trans., In Excess, (Fordham: Fordham University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, especially chapters 3-5; Lewis, Stephen, trans., Negative Certainties, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2015), 51-82Google Scholar; Kossky, , trans., In the Self's Place, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 138-144Google Scholar. Marion's account is heavily influenced by Michel Henry and Emmanuel Levinas.

¹⁰ Marion's view has been criticized in the literature on SP by Yadav, Problem of Perception, 139-187, who contends that in order to be aware of anything, the content we receive must fit with and be able to correct our conceptual schemes. For this to be the case, the world must be normatively and conceptually constituted. We cannot receive a given that exceeds our concepts, as Marion thinks; we cannot make sense of anything that exceeds our concepts. But Yadav overlooks that on Marion's view, the world is normatively structured, but this structuring is more than conceptual. Normatively-structured phenomena account for my having a conscious, concept-using self in the first place. Marion's view is close to that of Aquinas, for whom what is given in sensation is structured so as to fit with our powers, and correct our concepts, but also always exceeds those concepts, and is the source of those concepts. Our powers are capable of receiving phenomena structured in non-conceptual ways, and concepts are themselves actualizations of what is potentially contained in given phenomena. See Hibbs, Thomas, Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 64-66Google Scholar; Marion, Jean-Pierre Lafouge, trans., Givenness and Hermeneutics, (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Philip of the Trinity, Summa theologiae mysticae, (Lyon: Borde, Arnaud, and Rigaud, 1656), 299Google Scholar; Antony of the Holy Spirit, Directorium mysticum, (Venice: Pezzana, 1697), 5-6, 49-5Google Scholar8; Poulain, Augustin, The Graces of Interior Prayer, 6th ed., Smith, Leonora L. Yorke, trans., (London: Kegan Paul, 1921), 88-113Google Scholar; Tanquerey, Adolphe, Branderis, Herman, trans., The Spiritual Life, (Tournai: Desclee, 1930), 632Google Scholar; Farges, Mystical Phenomena, 279-289.

¹² Saudreau, summarized at Farges, Mystical Phenomena, 288; Richard Cross, “Thomas Aquinas”, in Gavrilyuk and Coakley, eds., The Spiritual Senses. See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Three Ages of the Interior Life, v.2, 12-13, who thinks that SP talk is symbolic for a mystical experience, in which God's presence is inferred. On this view, one could not literally perceive God, due to His immateriality and simplicity.

¹³ In III Sent., d.13, expositio textus; In Phil. 2:12, lect.2.

¹⁴ See also ST III q.8, a.1-2.

¹⁵ See In Eph. 8 lect.1 for more on how Christ gives spiritual senses to His body. That these are not merely metaphorical is supported by the fact that Aquinas worries about the dangers of losing these senses, at In 2 Cor. 11 lect.1, n.379.

¹⁶ This list summarizes the attributes of each sense from the texts in In Sent and In Phil.

¹⁷ In Psalms 33[34].9. One can lose this taste by connaturality through the vice of foolishness: ST II-II q.46, a.1.

¹⁸ In II DA lect.21.

¹⁹ ST II-II q.45, a.2-3.

²⁰ DV q.1, a.1; De ente et essentia.

²¹ In I Sent., d.31, q.2, a.1, ad4; ST I, q.5, a.4, ad1; I-II, q.27, a.1, ad3; In IV DDN lect.5-6. See Maritain, Jacques, Art and Scholasticism, (New York: Scribner, 1930), 24-33, 166-167Google Scholar.

²² In I Sent d. 19, a. 5, a. 2; In De Heb lect. 2; De substantiis separatis c. 3; ST I q. 44, a. 1. See Doolan, Gregory, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes, (Washington: CUA Press, 2008), 195-212Google Scholar.

²³ ST I q. 79, a. 3, ad2; In II DA lect. 14.

²⁴ Beings, in virtue of their forms, have a multiplicity of intelligible contents formally contained in them, and they can manifest these contents individually; this is true even of God Who is one simple form: He can manifest Himself according to different contents formally contained within Him (ST I q. 12, a. 6; q. 13, a. 4.) The objection (made e.g. by Palamites like Bradshaw, David, Aristotle East and West, (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 242-265CrossRefGoogle Scholar) that on the Thomistic view of divine simplicity, God could only manifest Himself in an all-or-nothing way misses Aquinas’ view of many intelligible, perceivable contents being contained in God: even in the beatific vision, God only manifests some but not all of these contents; see Farges, Mystical Phenomena, 289-90.

²⁵ In IV Sent d. 49, q. 2, a. 1, ad15; DV q. 18, a. 1. See Farges, Mystical Phenomena, 266. On this view of signs see John of St. Thomas, Cursus philosophicus thomisticus, v.1, Logica, p.2, q.21, a.2, ad1, (Paris: Vrin, 1883), 572-3.

²⁶ Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, 392-6.

²⁷ ST I-II q. 28. Thomists, beginning in the seventeenth century, speak of God's experienced penetration (illapsus) into the soul through love, which is felt in a manner similar to touch or taste: Antony of the Holy Spirit, Directorium, 5-6; Salmanticenses, Cursus theologicus, v.5, De beatitudine, (Paris: Palme, 1878), 206Google Scholar; Poulain, Graces, 88, 90.

²⁸ Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, trans., The Glory of the Lord, v.1, Seeing the Form, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012), 235-41Google Scholar.

²⁹ ST I q. 16, a. 1; I-II q. 15, a. 3; John of St. Thomas, De donis, a. 4, s. 11-13 (p. 166-7).

³⁰ Intellectual perception is called “experiential” by analogy with the act of the cogitative power, the internal sensory, non-conceptual power whereby we grasp that some particular is an instance of some kind, is good or bad for us, or is otherwise relevant to our bodily lives. Many such acts lead to a reliable act of this power, called “experience.” See ST I q.78, a.3-4; I, q.86, a. 1; In II DA lect.13-15; In III DA lect.1-6; Haan, Daniel De, “Perception and the Vis Cogitativa”, ACPQ 88 (2014): 397-437Google Scholar. Such acts of perception can have acts of judgment, discursive reasoning, background beliefs, and intellectual virtues like prudence and art as their motivation. But prudence (and one's background beliefs) can also change on the basis of that sort of perceptual experience. See ST II-II q.47, a.1-4, 15.

³¹ ST II-II q.45, a.2, ad3. On this and other aspects of knowledge by connaturality see Rafael-Tomas Caldera, Le Jugement par Inclination chez Saint Thomas D'Aquin, (Paris: Vrin, 1980), especially 59ff. While Caldera (especially 70-71) stresses that this experience is an active intellectual judgment, not a purely receptive perception, he also notes that it is inferential, experiential and taste-like, intuitive or similar to the experience of the senses in that it yields awareness of a thing as concrete and present to one, with a certain immediately grasped value. On the Thomistic view, judgment, while active, can be perceptual in the sense of a non-inferential, non-constructive, awareness of a things as it actually is.

³² See e.g. Greco, “Perception.”

³³ Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 23-27, 160-165; Jaroszyński, Piotr, MacDonald, Hugh, trans., Beauty and Being: Thomistic Perspectives, (Toronto: PIMS, 2011), 171-188Google Scholar. See Trapani, John, Poetry, Beauty, and Contemplation: The Complete Aesthetics of Jacques Maritain, (Washington: CUA Press, 2011).Google Scholar

³⁴ This analysis of the order of the intellectual process is John of St. Thomas and Jacques Maritain's interpretation, drawing on ST I q. 79, a. 4; q. 84, a. 6-7; In III DA lect. 10. See Heider, Daniel, “Abstraction, Intentionality, and Moderate Realism: Suarez and Poinsot”, in Salas, Victor, ed., Hircocervi and Other Metaphysical Wonders: Essays in Honor of John Doyle, (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2013), 185-6Google Scholar; Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 162-3.

³⁵ The later Thomists adopted the Scotist and Ockhamist language of intuition, as an awareness of the presence of some individual being. But this adoption is rooted in Aquinas’ view (In De Trin., q.6, a.1) that all rational thought begins in and aims at an act of intellectus or simple intellectual perception of some being.

³⁶ Maritain, Art and Scholaticism, 28, expresses the experience of perceiving beauty as a perception of mystery. Aquinas describes poetic experience, in which one experiences less-than-fully-conceptual intelligibility, through the medium of the senses at In I Sent, q. 1, a. 5, ad3; ST I-II q.101, a.2, ad2.

³⁷ ST I q.77, a.7.

³⁸ ST I q.78, a.4; q.81, a.3, ad2.

³⁹ Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 160-162.

⁴⁰ In II DA lect.13.

⁴¹ The language of “intertwining” comes from the Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Smith, Colin, trans., Phenomenology of Perception, (London: Routledge, 2002), 319, 352-3, 382, 530Google Scholar; Lingis, Alphonso, trans., The Visible and the Invisible, (Evanston: NWU Press, 1969), 49, 133-Google Scholar9.

⁴² In IV Sent., d.49, q.2, a.2.

⁴³ ST III q.45, a.2.

⁴⁴ ST II-II, q.45, a.2. See John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus In Iam-IIae, De Donis Spiritus Sancti, (Quebec: Mathieu and Gagné, 1948), a.2, s.10, n.118 (p.35-6Google Scholar).

⁴⁵ Poulain, Graces, 95-97 discusses degrees of this taste of God in memory and in actual experience.

⁴⁶ In I Cor. 12:17 Reportatio Reginaldi di Piperno and In I Cor. 12:17 Reportatio Vulgata lect.3, n.741. See Poulain, Graces, 112-3.

⁴⁷ Philip of the Trinity, Summa, 179; Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 163; Scheler, Formalism, 63.

⁴⁸ ST II-II q.8, a.7; q.45, a.2, ad3.

⁴⁹ ST I-II, q.69, a.2, ad3; q.180, a.5

⁵⁰ ST I q.12, a.2; I-II, q.3, a.8.

⁵¹ DV q.8, a.3, ad17.

⁵² DV q.10, a.8. This is very much like the saturated phenomenon of the flesh.

⁵³ In IV Sent d.49, q.2, a.2, ad4; q.5, a.2.

⁵⁴ John of St. Thomas, De donis, a.3, s.46, n.414 (p.119).

⁵⁵ SCG III c.53-55.

⁵⁶ In I Sent d.1, q.2, a.2, ad2; d.14, q.2, a.2, ad3; d.15, q.2, a.1, ad5; d.15, q.4, a.1, ad1; d.15, exp.text.; d.16, q.1, a.2; ST I q.43, a.3-5, esp. a.5, ad2, and a.7, ad6; I-II q.112, a.5; In Jn 1:39, lect.15, n. 292. See Giles Emery, Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 393-410; Farges, Mystical Phenomena, 268.

⁵⁷ In II Sent., d.23, q.2, a.1; DV q.18, a.1; ST I q.56, a.3; q.89, a.1. See Farges, Mystical Phenomena, 272.

⁵⁸ Farges, Mystical Phenomena, 269.

⁵⁹ In IV Sent., d.11, q.1, a.3, qc.3, ad3; De virtutibus, q.1, a.10, ad13.

⁶⁰ See Philip of the Trinity, Summa, 283, 310-20; Antony of the Holy Spirit, Directorium, 56-58; Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, 274-8. This reading softens the strong divisions between angelic and human cognition presented e.g. at ST II-II q.180, a.6.

⁶¹ ST I-II q.69, esp. a.2, ad3.

⁶² ST II-II q.173.

⁶³ See John of St. Thomas, De donis, a.2, s.30, n.176-8 (p.53-4), drawing on Cajetan In I-II, q.68, a.1, n.3.

⁶⁴ John of St. Thomas, De donis, a. 3, s. 67-84 (p. 139-53).

⁶⁵ An earlier draft of this paper was presented at a symposium on spiritual perception at the American Academy of Religion conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 20, 2015. I am grateful to Paul Gavrilyuk and Frederick Aquino for organizing that symposium, and to the other participants for their feedback, especially to William Abraham, Sarah Coakley, Richard Cross, John Greco, Amber Griffioen, John Martens, Mark McInroy, and Ann Taves. The writing of this paper was also supported by a faculty reading group at the University of St. Thomas, which was funded by the Experience Project, which is conducted by the John Templeton Foundation, the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.