Exemplary cause
Exemplary cause
(Lat. exemplum, pattern or example) A form of causality resembling that exercised by the Ideas in Platonism, the rationes aeternae in Augustinianism and Thomism. The role of an archetypal, or “pattern” cause is much discussed in Scholastic metaphysics because of the teaching that the universe was created in accord with a Divine Plan consisting of the eternal ideas in the Mind of God. — V.J.B.