Agency · A Theory of Everything [A Theory of Everything](/#contents) Chapter 1: # [Agency](/agency) * [Why It Matters](#why-it-matters) * [God Does Not Override](#god-does-not-override) * [The First Principle](#the-first-principle) * [Why Begin Here?](#why-begin-here) * [Notes](#notes) [Next: God Knows Every Possible Future](/possible-futures) The starting point is agency. In this model, agency is completely real. When a person makes a choice, that choice was not secretly fixed beforehand. They genuinely could have chosen otherwise. The decision is not the visible end of a chain of causes that was already settled, and it is not a script that God wrote and we merely perform. It is a real fork in the road, and the person standing at it is the one who decides which way to go.Philosophers call this *libertarian* freedom (no relation to the political term): a free act is one where, holding everything about the past fixed, the agent could still have done otherwise. Its rival is *compatibilism*, which says an act is free as long as it flows from the agent’s own desires, even if those desires were fully determined. This model takes the libertarian view without hedging, and that rules out any picture in which God secures His purposes by arranging our desires in advance so that we “freely” do what He has already settled. [↓](#note-1) ## Why It Matters So much depends on this. If our choices were secretly fixed, repentance would be theater, temptation would be a formality, and judgment would be strange: God would be holding us accountable for what He Himself had settled. The whole plan of salvation assumes something better.Latter-day Saints use *the plan of salvation*, or “the great plan of happiness,” for God’s plan for His children: premortal life, mortal life with its choices, the Atonement of Christ, and resurrection and judgment ([Alma 42:5, 8](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/alma/42?lang=eng&id=p5,p8#p5)). Other Christians use the phrase more broadly for God’s saving purpose in Christ. [↓](#note-2) It assumes that the choices we make are genuinely ours.Restoration scripture is unusually emphatic here. Lehi teaches that men “are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death” ([2 Nephi 2:27](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2?lang=eng&id=p27#p27)), and that there must be “an opposition in all things” ([2 Nephi 2:11](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2?lang=eng&id=p11#p11)). The premortal conflict is described as a contest over agency itself: Satan “sought to destroy the agency of man” ([Moses 4:3](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/moses/4?lang=eng&id=p3#p3)). And a revelation to Joseph Smith ties agency to existence itself: “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence,” and then, “Behold, here is the agency of man” ([Doctrine and Covenants 93:30–31](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/93?lang=eng&id=p30-p31#p30)). On that view agency is not a gift God could have withheld without loss. It is part of what it means to be someone at all. [↓](#note-3) ## God Does Not Override God does not override that freedom, even when He has larger purposes He intends to accomplish. This is the hard part. It would be easy to say that God respects agency in small matters but takes the wheel when something important is at stake. This model refuses that move. God has purposes, and He will accomplish them. But He does not accomplish them by reaching into a human will and turning it.**An objection.** Scripture sometimes says God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” Doesn’t that show God overriding a will? Exodus also says repeatedly that Pharaoh hardened his own heart ([Exodus 8:15](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/ex/8?lang=eng&id=p15#p15); [8:32](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/ex/8?lang=eng&id=p32#p32)), and the Joseph Smith Translation renders the divine-hardening passages as Pharaoh hardening his own heart ([JST Exodus 4:21](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/jst/jst-ex/4?lang=eng&id=p21#p21), where the accompanying note lists [Exodus 9:12](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/ex/9?lang=eng&id=p12#p12) among the passages corrected to read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart). The model reads such passages the same way: God can present circumstances, warnings, and consequences that a person resists, and the resisting is theirs. [↓](#note-4) ## The First Principle That gives the first principle of the whole book: > **God never overrides a person’s agency.** He may establish a mission, a prophecy, a covenantal outcome, or a large-scale event as inevitable. But He does not force the individual choices by which that outcome is reached. Hold onto that distinction between *outcomes* and *choices*; nearly everything that follows depends on it.Notice how strong this principle is. It does not say God *usually* leaves choices free, or that He only intervenes for good reasons. It says never. That makes the model easier to test: any case where an outcome seems to require a forced choice is a direct challenge. The companion chapter “Open Questions” takes up the most serious version of that challenge. [↓](#note-5) ## Why Begin Here? Many attempts to understand providence begin with God’s power or knowledge and then try to find room for human freedom afterward. Freedom usually ends up squeezed into whatever space is left over. This book goes the other way. It begins with agency as a fixed point and then asks what God’s knowledge and power must be like for that fixed point to hold. The answer turns out to be neither a smaller God nor a God who is guessing. It is a God whose knowledge is complete in a particular way, and whose providence works on history as a whole. ## Notes 1. Philosophers call this *libertarian* freedom (no relation to the political term): a free act is one where, holding everything about the past fixed, the agent could still have done otherwise. Its rival is *compatibilism*, which says an act is free as long as it flows from the agent’s own desires, even if those desires were fully determined. This model takes the libertarian view without hedging, and that rules out any picture in which God secures His purposes by arranging our desires in advance so that we “freely” do what He has already settled. [↑](#ref-1) 2. Latter-day Saints use *the plan of salvation*, or “the great plan of happiness,” for God’s plan for His children: premortal life, mortal life with its choices, the Atonement of Christ, and resurrection and judgment ([Alma 42:5, 8](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/alma/42?lang=eng&id=p5,p8#p5)). Other Christians use the phrase more broadly for God’s saving purpose in Christ. [↑](#ref-2) 3. Restoration scripture is unusually emphatic here. Lehi teaches that men “are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death” ([2 Nephi 2:27](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2?lang=eng&id=p27#p27)), and that there must be “an opposition in all things” ([2 Nephi 2:11](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2?lang=eng&id=p11#p11)). The premortal conflict is described as a contest over agency itself: Satan “sought to destroy the agency of man” ([Moses 4:3](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/moses/4?lang=eng&id=p3#p3)). And a revelation to Joseph Smith ties agency to existence itself: “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence,” and then, “Behold, here is the agency of man” ([Doctrine and Covenants 93:30–31](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/93?lang=eng&id=p30-p31#p30)). On that view agency is not a gift God could have withheld without loss. It is part of what it means to be someone at all. [↑](#ref-3) 4. **An objection.** Scripture sometimes says God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” Doesn’t that show God overriding a will? Exodus also says repeatedly that Pharaoh hardened his own heart ([Exodus 8:15](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/ex/8?lang=eng&id=p15#p15); [8:32](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/ex/8?lang=eng&id=p32#p32)), and the Joseph Smith Translation renders the divine-hardening passages as Pharaoh hardening his own heart ([JST Exodus 4:21](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/jst/jst-ex/4?lang=eng&id=p21#p21), where the accompanying note lists [Exodus 9:12](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/ex/9?lang=eng&id=p12#p12) among the passages corrected to read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart). The model reads such passages the same way: God can present circumstances, warnings, and consequences that a person resists, and the resisting is theirs. [↑](#ref-4) 5. Notice how strong this principle is. It does not say God *usually* leaves choices free, or that He only intervenes for good reasons. It says never. That makes the model easier to test: any case where an outcome seems to require a forced choice is a direct challenge. The companion chapter “Open Questions” takes up the most serious version of that challenge. [↑](#ref-5) [PreviousIntroduction](/introduction)[NextGod Knows Every Possible Future](/possible-futures) A Theory of Everything · Draft edition, 2026 × [A Theory of Everything](/) * [Before the First ChapterIntroduction](/introduction) Part One · The Model * [Chapter 1Agency](/agency) * [Chapter 2God Knows Every Possible Future](/possible-futures) * [Chapter 3Divine Decree and Prophecy](/decree-and-prophecy) * [Chapter 4God Collapses the Mission, Not the Person](/mission-not-person) * [Chapter 5Providence as Global Constraint](/providence) * [Chapter 6Three Case Studies](/case-studies) * [Chapter 7Miracles Without Micromanagement](/miracles) * [Chapter 8Wave-Function Collapse as an Analogy](/collapse) * [Chapter 9Time as Actualization](/time) * [Chapter 10The Atonement Across Time](/atonement) * [Chapter 11The Light of Christ](/light-of-christ) * [Chapter 12A Unified View of Providence](/unified-view) Part Two · Companions * [Companion AEchoes in Early Christianity](/early-christianity) * [Companion BThe Forty-Day Ministry](/forty-days) * [Companion COpen Questions](/open-questions)