- Is happiness something uncreated?
- If it be something created, is it an operation?
- Is it an operation of the sensitive, or only of the intellectual part?
- If it be an operation of the intellectual part, is it an operation of the intellect, or of the will?
- If it be an operation of the intellect, is it an operation of the speculative or of the practical intellect?
- If it be an operation of the speculative intellect, does it consist in the consideration of speculative sciences?
- Does it consist in the consideration of separate substances viz. angels?
- Does it consist in the sole contemplation of God seen in His Essence?
"It is because the contemporary alternatives seem so one-sided and are not more evidently solutions to the problems which Thomas faced, and partly solved, that we return to him and to the tradition of theology and philosophy in which his Summa Theologiae appears: theology as the science of the first principle and this as the total knowledge of reality in its unity." -- Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself (Oxford University Press, 1987), p.159.