Michael M. Waddell argues that rapture—the temporary, supernatural vision of the divine essence—deserves a central place in interpreting Aquinas’s account of human knowledge. In the Disputed Questions on Truth, Aquinas presents it as an elevation above ordinary sense-dependent cognition, made possible by the light of glory without separating the soul from the body. Rapture differs from the permanent beatific vision but anticipates it during earthly life.

Aquinas’s relational understanding of truth contrasts rapture’s immediacy with the mediation of reason and faith. Waddell answers objections that rapture is too rare, merely scriptural, inconsistent with Aquinas’s theory of cognition, or marginalized in the Summa theologiae. Its placement among the gratuitous graces reflects the Summa’s pedagogical structure rather than diminished importance. Attention to rapture reveals the mystical and Neoplatonic dimensions of Aquinas’s thought alongside its Aristotelian elements.