The Doctrine and Covenants includes discussion about agency and free will. A volume from the Maxwell Institute’s Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants series looks at what agency means, the extent to which it exists, and what that means for disciples of Jesus Christ. In this interview, author Terryl Givens discusses his new book, Agency.
What is agency?
Terms like agency, freedom, and free will can be differentiated by theologians and philosophers. Latter-day Saint scripture uses those terms interchangeably for the most part, so I use agency in the general sense of the ability to choose among options, with such freedom of choice that after the fact, it makes sense to say we could have chosen differently.
What are some of the schools of thought about agency and determinism?
Determinists believe we are material beings caught up in a chain of physical causes and effects, such that free will is an illusion. Physical entities, including the constituents of the mind, follow deterministic physical laws.
Compatibilists (in the theological sense) believe we are free to act according to our nature. Since our nature is fallen and our free will is essentially destroyed, we are only free to sin. Without “prevenient grace,” we cannot even will to will differently. They believe that the definition of freedom is too narrow to be meaningful.
Libertarian free-willers believe that since we can always assent to or resist our inclinations, we can reshape our desires and nature.
How does repentance relate to agency?
It seems to me that the imperative to (and therefore possibility of) repentance—metanoia, or change of heart—by definition assumes the reality of free will.
Repentance is a life-long (and beyond!) process. It is assisted by divine grace, reshaping our desires and inclinations as we cooperate deliberately with God, step by step and decision by decision, to reshape our own nature.
How did Augustine influence the discussion about agency in Christianity?
Augustine of Hippo, in the late fourth and early fifth century, developed the doctrine of original sin. He taught the will was thereafter not just impaired but also incapable of choosing the good. Until Augustine, free will was a foundational principle of the gospel. Augustine denied free will and affirmed predestination.
In 529, the church tried to thread the needle by affirming both free will and absolute grace—thereby taking a compatibilist position. Prevenient grace (God’s gift of the power to choose the good) and original sin became official doctrines of Catholicism and, later, received even greater emphasis in Protestantism.
(Martin Luther and John Calvin spearheaded the sixteenth-century Reformation, and one of their principal purposes was to affirm the Augustinian position against free will.)
What debates about agency took place in Joseph Smith’s time?
The Reformation was largely shaped by Luther’s discovery of Augustine’s work, and it received renewed prominence in Christian thought at his hands. Luther and Calvin gave particular emphasis to predestination.
By Joseph Smith’s day, Methodists and some Baptists were pushing for an increased role for free will. The battle lines between “willers” emphasizing personal agency (like the Methodists and other Arminians) and those holding fast to Calvin’s unqualified grace (like most Presbyterians of the era) had been the principle backdrop to Joseph’s personal religious wrestles.
Fun Fact. Arminianism is named after Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), a Dutch theologian who advocated a position closer to libertarian free will.
As Joseph Smith recorded,
Some were contending for the Methodist faith [the “willer” or Arminian position], some for the Presbyterian [“all free grace”] and some for the Baptist [which were split between “free will Baptists” and “Reformed” or Calvinistic Baptists].
Joseph Smith – History 1:5
Thus, this was the major conflict Joseph referred to in the disputes between the Calvinist Presbyterians and the Arminian Methodists.
How is agency relational by nature?
Agency is hardly conceivable outside of a community in which we influence one another for good or for ill. The Doctrine and Covenants frequently frames agency in terms of gifts we choose to receive and to give. We do not choose in an impersonal vacuum. We choose in response to words, enticements, counsels, and actions of others.
What this means in practical terms is that agency operates relationally. It is interpersonal. Agency is manifest in how we choose to influence others and how we choose to let them influence us. Thus inextricably situated in the community, agency carries communal responsibilities.
When Joseph Smith said that every soul is “susceptible” to enlargement, he was reflecting this principle of mutuality and reciprocal influence that are the conditions under which agency operates.
How does the Far West cornerstone ceremony demonstrate the ability of humans to be co-participants with God?
On July 8, 1838, the Twelve were directed to depart the next spring from the spot of the Far West temple cornerstone. The next spring, however, found the Saints as destitute exiles in Illinois. Return to Missouri was to court death at the hands of those who expelled the Saints months earlier.
However, Elder Wilford Woodruff expressed in his journal that the commandment, like any prophecy of the future, “had to be fulfilled.” The remarkable development at this point was that Woodruff did not anticipate that God would do the fulfilling.
And so, at great risk, seven of the available apostles made the hazardous journey so that in taking their departure from Far West, they would bring God’s word “to pass.”
From their perspective, the fulfillment even of divine promises or predictions may wait upon those willing to exercise their agency in co-participation with God’s designs.
What does obedience mean to you?
Obedience, to me, suggests an alignment or attunement to the way truth and beauty course through an otherwise chaotic universe. God and scripture and prophets merely give clarity and articulation to what early Christians meaningfully referred to as “The Way.” We are drawn to Christ to love and imitate and, yes, obey because His love is non-coercive.
In the book, I quote the Catholic bishop Timothy Radcliffe:
The obedience of faith is more like listening expectantly to a Beethoven string quartet than to obeying a police officer. It’s a response to the authority of its meaning.
Timothy Radcliffe, Alive in God: A Christian Imagination, p. 28.
No one compels us to love the music of Beethoven. If we are attentive and open, susceptible to its beauty and power, we respond to its sway over us.
What is kintsugi and how does it relate to agency and forgiveness?
Kintsugi describes a Japanese art whereby broken shards of ceramic are reassembled with gold highlighting rather than masking the breaks. The image has become popular in reference to human woundedness and healing.
The present can literally change the past.
I push the metaphor further because the breakage demonstrates possible futures—only one of which is realized by the repair with gold highlighting. At that point, the moment of breakage assumes a particular meaning that it did not until that moment have.
In other words, the present can literally change the past. All our life is a narrative. But no meaning or significance of a past error, sin, or injury is ever unalterable.
What did you learn while working on this book?
As I have studied the theological history of free will debate, I have come to a greater appreciation of how unique was Joseph Smith’s articulation of the principle. He equated agency with existence itself, situating it in a collective rather than individualistic framing and making its preservation the nucleus of our whole cosmic narrative.
What do you hope people will take away from this book on agency?
Cognitive science and philosophical currents continue to chip away at the claim that humans are free, self-determining creatures. It can be healthy to come to terms with ways in which our genes, our environment, and our mental wiring may predispose us in certain ways and directions.
As Kant affirmed, however, the frequent experience of feeling bad because we know we could have acted in a better way is a reminder that at the core of our being, despite all the forces and white noise that dull our agency—it is never extinguished without our consent.
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About the Interview Participant
Terryl L. Givens is the author of Agency: Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants, published by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. He is a senior research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University (BYU). Until 2019, he was a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond, where he held the James A. Bostwick Chair in English. Givens has authored or edited several related works, including 2nd Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction; Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity; and The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism.
Further Reading
- Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants: A Maxwell Institute Book Series
- Come Follow Me 2025: Doctrine and Covenants Resources
- Does Atonement Theory Matter to Latter-day Saints?
- Let’s Talk About Faith and Intellect with Terryl Givens
- Terryl Givens and the Maxwell Institute on 2nd Nephi
Agency in the Doctrine and Covenants
- Agency: Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants (Maxwell Institute)
- “This Perfect Atonement” Agency, Law, Theosis, and Atonement Theology in the Doctrine and Covenants (University of Illinois Press)
- Shards of Combat: How Did Satan Seek to Destroy the Agency of Man? (BYU Studies Quarterly)
- Beethoven and Jesus (Wayfare Magazine)
- “Moral, Responsible, and Free” Mormon Conceptions of Divine Justice (Terryl Givens)
One reply on “Agency: Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants”
Has anyone ever tried to understand scriptural agency by using the definitions in the dictionary rather than the philosophical idea of free agency?