Agency

Agency is the capacity to act⁠—to make meaningful choices that shape one’s own destiny. In Mormon theology, agency is a load-bearing principle: the precondition of mortality, the axis of personhood, and the very thing that makes theosis possible. Strip away agency, and you strip away virtue, sin, growth, and joy with it⁠— leaving nothing but blissful ignorance. Doctrine and Covenants 93:30 declares that “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.”

The Mormon tradition distinguishes agency from “free will” in a philosophically important way. Agency is not the absence of constraint⁠—it is the power to act within one’s sphere. One gains a greater sphere through obedience and development, not by escaping all limits. Scripture describes this as a progression from moral innocence to fuller participation in divine glory: “He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things.” Agency, then, is something that can be cultivated, expanded⁠—and lost.

The War That Never Ended

Mormon cosmology places agency at the center of a primordial conflict. In the Grand Council in Heaven, the Father presented His plan — a plan that preserved agency and invited each spirit toward shared Godhood. Lucifer did not present an alternative plan of his own; rather, he rose in opposition to the Father’s plan, proposing to amend it by eliminating risk — and with it, agency — in exchange for a guaranteed universal salvation he could not actually deliver. Heavenly Father saw through Lucifer’s ruse and chose Jesus Christ to accomplish his salvific work: a deliberate choice that was a clear rejection of determinism in favor of true becoming.

The War in Heaven did not end with the defeat and banishment of Lucifer and his followers; it continues to this day. Every system that centralizes power in one way or another recapitulates Lucifer’s plan. The fundamental drive of evil, scripture suggests, is the usurpation of agency. Mormon theology is incompatible with coercive power⁠—any concentration of authority that effectively nullifies real choice for those under it⁠—and therefore points instead toward the diffusion and decentralization of power.

Agency as Prophetic Demand

Prophets in the Hebrew and Christian traditions did not merely predict⁠—they forth-told: they called upon communities to exercise agency prudently and warned against the danger of diminishing one’s power to choose by yielding to the enticings of evil. The Book of Mormon illustrates this repeatedly: nations fall not because God abandons them but because they surrender their agency to pride, wealth, greed, and power. Prophecy in Mormon theology presupposes that choices remain open, that the future is not sealed⁠—because if it were, the warning would be senseless.

This prophetic logic maps directly onto a Transhumanist concern. Technology does not arrive as a neutral force; it arrives as a set of choices about power. Who controls it? Who can access it? Who is enhanced by it, and who is diminished? To treat these as predetermined outcomes⁠—whether through techno-optimist inevitability or through techno-pessimist despair⁠—is to abandon agency in precisely the way that prophetic tradition warns against. The prophetic demand is to choose well, now, while meaningful options remain open.

Enhancing the Sphere

Cognitive enhancement, neuroprosthetics, brain⁠–computer interfaces, and AI-assisted decision-making can each expand the sphere within which a person can act. Someone who cannot remember, communicate, or perceive clearly operates within a narrower sphere⁠—not necessarily less free in principle, but less able to exercise agency in practice. Tools that restore or amplify these capacities are therefore, in functional terms, tools of agency.

Because these tools so powerfully expand our capacity to act, they also heighten the stakes: the same technologies that extend agency can, when misdesigned or abused, limit its use. Enhancement, with all its benefits, could potentially erode agency: surveillance technologies track and manipulate behavior; algorithmic recommendation systems narrow rather than expand genuine choice; AI systems, if centralized, could become the most powerful instruments of Luciferic coercion ever built. The question is not whether to use technology, but whether its design and distribution promote or undermine decentralized humanism.

Toward the Fulness of God

Mormon theology anticipates a fulness of joy: a state in which intelligences have grown, through grace and good works, into something akin to the divine. 2 Peter 1:4 speaks of becoming “partakers of the divine nature” as a very real possibility. Mormon Transhumanism understands this trajectory in naturalistic terms: the same physical universe that produced human intelligence can, in principle, sustain its further development toward something that approaches deity.

Agency is the common thread that runs through this entire process. It is why the cosmos exists in its current open-ended form rather than as a simpler, more predictable system. It is why Christ said “thy will be done” rather than insisting on a predetermined outcome. And it is why the practical work of expanding human capability is harmonious with the divine mandate to become co-creators with God. To preserve and expand agency, in oneself and others, is to participate in the ongoing work of creation.

See also: Accountability, Agency, Conscience, Covenant, Ethics, Free, Law, Liberty, Power, Responsibility, Salvation