A Consideration and Critique of David Griffin’s View of God’s Power

This paper considers and examines Griffin’s view of God’s power. I deploy a descriptive-analytic method to consider his view in terms of his process theology: God’s power is limited, inciting, and motivating, encouraging creatures to move toward initial and ideal goals. To substantiate his claim, Griffin makes recourse to metaphysical necessity and the meaning of real entities. He concludes that all beings enjoy intrinsic power and God cannot have unilateral control over them. Instead, He can influence them with His power to incite. There are foundational and marginal objections to Griffin’s view—critics have challenged his framework and presumptions. First: his view is vague; second: he has an exclusivist view of having power; third: he takes the control of creatures to be merely physical; fourth: in addition to internal inconsistency in the view, he treats God’s power to be equivalent to creatures.