About the year 1341 he was sent to Paris. There he became one of a number of brilliant Augustinian teachers and scholars who taught in Paris at the studium generale (international house of study for Augustinians), which was a section of the University of Paris. Following in the academic footsteps and reputation of
Giles of Rome O.S.A. who had been taught there by Thomas Aquinas, there were the Augustinians Gerard of Siena (died 1336), Prospero of Regio Emilia (d. after 1332), Michael of Massa (d. 1337),
Henry of Friemar (d. 1340) and Thomas of Strasburg (d. 1357).
As a teacher and commentator, Thomas of Strasburg adhered closely to the doctrines of Giles of Rome O.S.A. (Ægidius Romanus, or de Columna), who since 1287 had been recognized as the doctor ordinis of the Augustinians.
He opposed the innovations of Henry of Ghent and the abstruse distinctions of the Scotists. For example, on the question of the distinction between the nature of God and the Divine attributes, he taught that there can be no formal distinction, nor any distinction of any kind except by comparison of the external effects of those attributes. Similarly there is, he maintained, no formal distinction between God and the Divine ideas; whatever distinction exists among the ideas themselves or between the ideas and the Divine essence is the work of the Divine intellect.
In regard to the origin of the universe, he maintained that the doctrine of creation can be proved by strict demonstrations, the starting-point of the proof being the fact that the power of God, being unlimited, could not postulate a material as a necessary condition of action: just as the existence of God does not postulate any other being, so the Divine action does not postulate a material on which to act.
This refers, however, to creation in general. Whether the material universe was created in time or with time, or, on the contrary, was created ab aeterno, is a question which, he believed, the human mind cannot solve without the aid of revelation.
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