 One of the reasons why Aquinas’ political theory departs significantly from Aristotle’s is that Aquinas believes he has access to facts and considerations unavailable to Aristotle, namely to the public divine revelation completed in the works and sayings of Christ, founder of a spiritual community, the (Catholic = “universal”) Church. When political life is really well-ordered, therefore, each member (citizen) of a state will be also a member of this other “complete community” and subject to its laws as well as to the state’s. The function of this other community is to transmit the divine promise or offer of eternal life, and to help people help each other, through their own individual free choices, to become ready for that life. With the establishing of this community (in continuity and discontinuity with the older religious community of Israel), human associations are henceforth of two fundamentally distinct types: (i) temporal or secular, worldly, civil, or political, and (ii) spiritual. Correspondingly, responsibility for human affairs is divided between (i) secular societies, especially states and families, and (ii) the Church. The distinction between secular and spiritual tracks that between natural and revealed knowledge.