I tend to rag on Thomism a bit on this blog, so I thought I would post an attempt to show how Scotus and Thomas actually agree on the issue of univocity. A modest olive branch, if you will.
This position is the sort of thing generally left out of the grand narratives of the decline of the West in general and scholasticism in particular, being as they are in a rush to jump to Ockham and link Scotus' voluntarism with Ockham's.
Petrus de Attarabia sive de Navarra, Sent. I d. 3 pt. 1 q. 1 a. 3 (ed. Sagues Azcona vol. 2, 189-92):
As far as the third [article], I say that, as it seems to me, the first [opinio Thomae] and second [opinio Scoti] do not in fact disagree (I speak of the principal doctors who posited the aforesaid opinion; but [if] some others have declared otherwise, I don't care).
For harmonizing therefore each opinion, it should be known that an univocal concept is understood in two ways. In one way an univocal concept is taken from the unity and indifference of those things to which it is common and a mode of conceiving. And in that way it is univocation properly said, and of such as many the philosophers speak, and in that way genus and species are called univocal and other universals and also the categories.
In the other way an univocal concept is received only from the indifference of the mode of conceiving. Example: some man is individual, vague, common, univocal to all individual men under individual differences; but to individuals as such nothing is common unless from the mode of conceiving. This univocal is not a real universal, but is common only by a community of reason and mode of conceiving, just as is posited in the divine that 'person' is something common by community of reason to the three divine persons.
To apply this to the matter at hand: by taking univocation in the first way, being is not univocal, because then it would be a genus, nor would the statement of the Philosopher be true, I Physics, where he says that "since being is said in many ways" etc.; nor his statement in IV Metaphysics "that being is said of beings just as health of animal and of medicine." And the arguments adduced for the first opinion efficaciously prove this. And I believe that it is impossible that being is univocal in this way, because God and creature are entirely distinguished; otherwise God would not be irreducibly simple.
Therefore by taking univocation in the second way, namely which is received from the indifference of the mode of conceiving, I say that being is univocal to God and creature, substance and accident, because our intellect conceives being under indifference, not that that indifference is from the part of the thing or things, but the intellect has this from its own nature. And in that way being is not a real universal or genus, but is said common by such unity that it suffices for preserving a contradiction and for avoiding equivocation in the middle term of a syllogism. And in that way common propositions and first [propositions] are one, and likewise the questions "is it?" and "what is it?" etc. II Posterior analytics. And in this way all the arguments of the second opinion conclude. All [doctors] have denied univocity in the first way, but not in the second way, at least some [have not denied it].
