Introduction · A Theory of Everything [A Theory of Everything](/#contents) Before the First Chapter # [Introduction](/introduction) * [The Shape of the Answer](#the-shape-of-the-answer) * [How to Read the Notes](#how-to-read-the-notes) * [How This Book Is Organized](#how-this-book-is-organized) * [A Word About Analogies](#a-word-about-analogies) * [A Word About Certainty](#a-word-about-certainty) * [Notes](#notes) [Next: Agency](/agency) Every attempt to understand God eventually runs into the same knot. Scripture speaks of a God who knows the end from the beginning.[Isaiah 46:10](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/isa/46?lang=eng&id=p10#p10): “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” [↓](#note-1) It also speaks of men and women who are genuinely free and accountable for what they choose. Pull too hard on one thread and the other snaps. Emphasize divine knowledge and control, and human freedom starts to look like an illusion. Emphasize freedom, and God starts to look like a spectator who is guessing along with the rest of us. This book is an attempt to hold both threads at once without cutting either. It begins from a single conviction: **agency is completely real.** From there it asks what God’s knowledge, His prophecies, His providence, and finally the Atonement of Jesus Christ must look like if that conviction is taken seriously all the way down.The knot is old. Christians have argued about it at least since Origen in the third century, and the main positions have names. *Theological determinism* secures God’s control at the cost of real alternatives. *Molinism* gives God knowledge of what every free creature *would* do in any circumstance. *Open theism* says the free future is not yet there to be known. The *Boethian* view places God outside time altogether. This book fits none of them neatly. Chapter Two compares it with Molinism and open theism, and the companion chapter “Echoes in Early Christianity” takes up Origen and Boethius. [↓](#note-2) ## The Shape of the Answer God knows every possible future completely. Free agents determine which of those futures becomes actual. God does not micromanage every event; instead, He establishes certain conditions that history must ultimately satisfy, pruning away futures incompatible with His purposes, while never forcing an individual choice. Because providence works on the whole of history rather than one moment at a time, it can operate across time. Earlier events can participate in answers to later needs. A prayer offered today can be answered by something that began long ago. The deepest example of this structure is the Atonement. In Gethsemane, Christ becomes connected to every human life, co-experiencing the history we freely bring into being. The Light of Christ is the other side of that same connection: Christ reaching into human consciousness, inviting and guiding, without ever overriding our agency. ## How to Read the Notes The main text of each chapter is meant to be read straight through. The numbered notes are where the book goes deeper: fuller arguments, the strongest objections and replies, parallels in early Christian writers, careful notes on the physics, historical background, and explanations of terms that may be unfamiliar.On a wide screen the notes sit in the right margin beside the line they belong to. On a phone, tap the small number to open a note in place, and tap again to close it. Each chapter also ends with all of its notes gathered in one list. Scripture references link to the verse in the Gospel Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and open in a new tab. [↓](#note-3) Skip them on a first reading, or follow the ones that catch your interest. A note on authorship. The ideas in Part One come from the author’s own summary of the model, and the main text stays close to that summary. The notes are largely editorial elaboration: connections, comparisons, and objections added to test and enrich the model, and they should be read that way.Chapters Five through Ten were reconstructed from the headings and recap sections of the original summary, and are marked as draft pending the author’s review. [↓](#note-4) ## How This Book Is Organized **Part One** lays out the model: agency, God’s knowledge of possible futures, prophecy and decree, foreordination, and providence as a global constraint on history, followed by three case studies and chapters on miracles, physics analogies, time, the Atonement, and the Light of Christ. **Part Two** gathers companion material: early Christian writers who reached for similar ideas, the forty days of the risen Christ’s ministry, and the open questions the model still has to answer. ## A Word About Analogies This book borrows language from physics: possibility and actuality, constraint, collapse, entanglement, the principle of least action. These are analogies, not claims that theology secretly *is* physics. They are offered because they give us pictures of how a whole can shape its parts without pushing each part around, and that is exactly the kind of picture this model needs.Analogies can mislead as easily as they illuminate. The rule followed here is that every physics term is explained in its own field first, accurately, before it is borrowed, and that the borrowing says which feature of the physics is being used and which features are being left behind. Where the physics is unsettled, as it is with the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the text says so. Chapter Eight is devoted to the most important of these borrowings. [↓](#note-5) ## A Word About Certainty Nothing here is offered as official doctrine. It is a way of thinking, an attempt to see how revealed truths might fit together. Where it helps you love God more and understand His dealings with you more clearly, keep it. Where it falls short, the scriptures and the living witness of the Spirit come first. ## Notes 1. [Isaiah 46:10](https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/isa/46?lang=eng&id=p10#p10): “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” [↑](#ref-1) 2. The knot is old. Christians have argued about it at least since Origen in the third century, and the main positions have names. *Theological determinism* secures God’s control at the cost of real alternatives. *Molinism* gives God knowledge of what every free creature *would* do in any circumstance. *Open theism* says the free future is not yet there to be known. The *Boethian* view places God outside time altogether. This book fits none of them neatly. Chapter Two compares it with Molinism and open theism, and the companion chapter “Echoes in Early Christianity” takes up Origen and Boethius. [↑](#ref-2) 3. On a wide screen the notes sit in the right margin beside the line they belong to. On a phone, tap the small number to open a note in place, and tap again to close it. Each chapter also ends with all of its notes gathered in one list. Scripture references link to the verse in the Gospel Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and open in a new tab. [↑](#ref-3) 4. Chapters Five through Ten were reconstructed from the headings and recap sections of the original summary, and are marked as draft pending the author’s review. [↑](#ref-4) 5. Analogies can mislead as easily as they illuminate. The rule followed here is that every physics term is explained in its own field first, accurately, before it is borrowed, and that the borrowing says which feature of the physics is being used and which features are being left behind. Where the physics is unsettled, as it is with the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the text says so. Chapter Eight is devoted to the most important of these borrowings. [↑](#ref-5) [PreviousTitle page](/)[NextAgency](/agency) 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)