a genuinely engaged theology, an aspect of theology which, unfortunately, did not always receive due attention from the later scholastic tradition. But St Thomas, in his commentary On the Divine Names, declares: ‘The learned person not only attains to knowledge of divine things, he also experiences [literally ‘suffers’] them, i.e. not only does he receive them as knowledge into his mind, he also becomes one thing with them by love and by affection.’21 The meaning Aquinas gives to the word ‘experience’