There are a number of places in his works where Thomas Aquinas writes about teaching and learning. Following a summary account of his understanding of education, this paper presents and discusses a neglected source on these matters. The sermon Puer Iesus, probably preached in January 1271, contains thoughts on pedagogy that are, in the words of its Leonine editor, ‘original and of great interest’. The sermon offers a broad sketch of human development in which the adolescence of Christ, the ‘most excellent of teachers’, is appealed to as an inspiration and an example. It raises Christological and pedagogical questions and it is the latter that are considered here. Encouraging his student congregation to listen generously, enquire diligently, respond prudently and meditate attentively, Aquinas outlines for them a practical method of learning that is at once critical and contemplative.

It is a pity that The Price of Peace, resulting from a prolonged transatlantic dialogue between theologians and academics, should begin with a flawed section on modern ‘just war’ thinking which fails to recognise the difference between: 1. war between states, in which, international law having failed, the objective is to render the enemy powerless so that the victor can dictate what happens next; and 2. global criminality, as in the terrorism of gangs like al-Qaeda, which requires to be dealt with by a global police force designed precisely to restore the rule of law for the sake of the common good of all humanity. Pace authors like George Weigel, thinking about the justice of armed force cannot remain what it was: it needs to develop, as the papacy has long taught, to take full account of the fact that crime is today replacing war as the prevailing international evil.

Scientific disciplines seek a truthful description of how things are. One way to think of the way that science does this is to say that science seeks to show how things fit together. In doing this the scientist implicitly makes use of aesthetic and ideal categories, such that aesthetic relationships of things to each other in thought somehow stand for the actual relationships (involving energy, charge, mass and the like). This relationship of ideal thought in the medium of human language to the reality of the world is remarkable. Why is it that we can know anything truthful about the world on the basis of the way we talk to each other? Why is there anything instead of nothing? Scientific practice suggests ways in which these are the same question. It may be that the createdness of the world underlies all truthful human discourses, whether artistic or scientific, mechanical or philosophical.