Can God Make a Picasso?

That God ultimately produced everything besides himself mediaeval philosophers had no doubt. But precisely what this creative act amounts to, whether and in what way it is ongoing, and how divine production relates to, say, human production—all these were important open questions. The title of this article is meant to focus our attention on one of the most interesting of these open questions, as it was discussed by Oxford philosophers Walter Chatton (d. 1343) and William Ockham (d. 1347). For while Chatton and Ockham would certainly have agreed that God is ultimately responsible for the existence of the works of Pablo Picasso (and indeed Picasso himself), they would not have agreed in precise detail about how to answer the question I intend in my title, that is: Does it violate God’s omnipotence to say that he cannot make something that Picasso made—for example, the painting Guernica—without using Picasso himself as an intermediate cause?

Rondo Keele. "Can God Make a Picasso? William Ockham and Walter Chatton on Divine Power and Real Relations". http://muse.jhu.edu/article/218279/pdf.

Constituent Versus Relational Ontologies

Since the relationship between God and universals is one factor in the controversy over divine ultimacy lurking behind the classical theist versus theist personalist dispute I discussed here, here and here, it seems fitting to review this old entry. 

Debates over the difference between Platonism and Aristotelianism, and the respective merits of each position, are likely to continue for as long as Man philosophizes. This post does not seek to take a stance on which position is correct but to provide clarification on an issue which is too often lumped into this debate, that is the way in which particulars are related to their universals.

I contend that many of the superficial charges Platonists and Aristotelians, particularly those who adopt such position in virtue of the role they play in wider philosophical systems, lay at one another's feet really relate to the alternative and more fundamental differences between constituent and relational ontologies. This entry is intended to give a brief run-through of these two approaches to ontology. To do so I will look at two claims attributed to each position, at least in popular presentations (let us call their proponents the ‘pop-Platonist’ and ‘pop-Aristotelian’ respectively).