Ulrich of Strasburg (1225–1277) on Divine Univocal Causality

This article explores Ulrich of Strasburg’s teaching on divine univocal causality and finds therein both a point of continuity and discontinuity with the Dominican philosophico-theological tradition he inherited from his master, Albert the Great. Albert also makes reference to divine univocal causality, but develops his own account within the larger framework of his doctrine of the analogia entis. In contrast, Ulrich retools the Aristotelian notions of ‘univocal’ and ‘equivocal,’ in order to accommodate the pseudo-Dionysian metaphysical scheme of divine transcendence. Here, unlike his predecessor, Albert, and his confrère, Thomas Aquinas, Ulrich’s metaphysical vision of creation focuses on the nothingness from which creatures have been drawn and the means whereby they are able to enter into a metaphysical community with God.