Bruce Charlton's Notions

Christianity is based upon love and agency (that is, autonomy of free will); yet these concepts are often understood superficially. In fact, they are deep, metaphysical principles: they are, indeed, a polarity - which means that we can distinguish between love and agency, yet they cannot be divided (the one requires the other).

And this is important because love and agency are both active processes, and it is the interaction of these active processes of love and agency that we can call creation - which is what leads to more love, and more agency.

The importance of love to Christianity scarcely needs emphasis; but it is neglected that love entails agency. Love is not a state of being, rather love is a thing that happens (a process) between agents, and by choice of these agents.

Love can only be a product of free will, and if there is no choice there is no love. One thing cannot love itself, two things cannot love unless that is chosen - a coerced love is not love. So for Christians, for this reason alone as well as other reasons, agency is a necessity.

I think this is fairly clear; but the fact of agency being dependent on love is less clear; because we have tendency to emphasise that agency is not predictable from the causes impinging on an entity (agency entails an uncaused cause, an unmoved mover); and then this truth is misunderstood to mean that agency is arbitrary and 'random'. Then agency gets confused with the models of unpredictable randomness form science - such as quantum theory.

But agency is not randomness; agency comes from the self, it is an 'expression' of the self - indeed agency is when the self is active (not merely responsive). (We are not always agent; but it is only when we are agent that we are as we are ourselves.)

Indeed, agency comes-from the already-existing state of love - which is what binds the universe of agents.

Agency alone (a situation which is impossible) would indeed be randomness (indistinguishable from randomness) - it would be multiple selves simply doing unpredictable things for no reason comprehensible to anything else.

But agency is in a pre-existent situation of love - agency operates from a universe which coheres because of love; therefore agency is expressed from a background in love.

Love is what makes agency agent and purposive; without love there would not be agency but only unpredictability and meaninglessness.

We can indeed see that meaning and purpose are themselves dependent on the continued reality and interaction of love and agency - agency is what divides things so they can be in relation to one another (rather than just being the same thing) while love is what maintains these divided things into a cohesion which is not unity; agency points the direction while love makes coherent that which goes in any direction.

My impression is that most Christians acknowledge the reality of agency, but in a falsely superficial way; they see agency as a gift bestowed y God upon an already-existing situation; they regard agency rather as if it were an 'optional extra' for Man. Yet, if agency is understood as polar with love, then agency is built into the fundamental nature of reality - it is part of the basic design of the universe of creation.

Just as love without agency is not merely flawed but incoherent - not love at all! So agency without love is not merely flawed, but ceases to be agency.

Those (many) people and religions which tend to deny the one (whether it be love or agency) will find that they are gravitationally impelled towards denying the other; because that is the direction which explanation pushes them.

...Love and agency need to be held together in the imagination as a dynamic dyad - distinguishable, but indivisible.

It is an implicit assumption of modern culture and life that everything is caused - except what is random. 

Because everything is caused, it is assumed that these causes (if known) are like the 'laws of science' and entail exactly what happens. 

But there is also 'randomness', chance, the undetermined... Which is (somehow, in an unprincipled way) also incorporated into the 'everything is caused' determinism by means of statistical properties. 

If reality really is caused, then this fundamental incorporation of of randomness doesn't make any coherent sense (as Einstein clearly saw) - nonetheless, it has happened, randomness is incorporated into a deterministic world-view; and is justified on the basis that 'it works' to predict things... 

...Or rather, attributed randomness sometimes seems to work; because whether something 'works' depends on (essentially arbitrary) prior decisions about what counts as having worked, or alternatively failed to work.

(And this becomes even less precise when what counts as having worked gets defined retrospectively to include - or indeed be entirely - what has already happened; as with climate change 'predictions...) 

Yet, there is no such thing as randomness 'in real life' and therefore no 'probability'- these are actually just mathematical tools, that may be useful in particular situations; although the nature of scope of the situations in which it is valid cannot be known. In practice the validity of particular instances of statistical reasoning is a matter of 'common sense' - or more likely the exercise of power to control discourse.   

But what of free agency, free will - or what-you-call-it? I mean the thinking of Beings (especially Men); at those times when they are thinking with their real and divine 'selves'? 

(Accepting that Men may - often do - behave 'automatically; and are not 'free' at all times, but only potentially and some-times.)

Free agency cannot be either caused/determined, or random/statistical. Free agency must be something other, which is expressive of a Being itself, arises wholly from that Being - and not, therefore, a product of causes acting-upon that Being.  

To cut the argument short: I believe that genuine Free Agency is either an incomprehensible Mystery and gift from God (which is the mainstream/ classical Christian view); or else (as I believe) Free Agency is a property of Beingness, to be found to a greater or lesser extent in all Beings. 

Which means that all Beings have a divine aspect.

Which means that while there is one God who is creator of this creation we inhabit; creation itself consists of Beings who are all 'gods' in this vital sense of having some potential degree of Free Agency.   

In other words, reality is alive and conscious and consists of Beings/ gods that are in relationships with one another  (in some real way, but varied between Beings). 

If so, then what is the role of causation?  

My understanding is that causation is a series of hypotheses that are useful in inverse proportion to the exercise of free agency. 

In a world where free agency is seldom exercised; then causation is highly predictive. 

Here in mortal life upon earth; things are different according to different times and places, and among different individuals. But the more that agency is active, the less causality is operative. 

Bu, in a world where free agency is ignored or denied, and its effects are suppressed: causal thinking (and its bastard offspring 'randomness') appears to operate as a complete explanation of reality.

(Hence the common idea that - in principle - science can explain everything that is real.) 

In other words; Western Man has (for some generations) been living at, or near-to, an extreme where free agency is hardly a factor in life; and where, because of this exclusion, causal and determinative thinking seems to work very well as an explanation, for prediction, and to manipulate the world (including people). 

Conversely, in a world where free agency is highly frequent and determines thought; there is very little for causal thinking to explain. 

At the extreme - in Heaven - I assume that almost-everything is a consequence of free agency in the context of relationships between Beings; things happen because they are willed to happen. 

Therefore: in Heaven there is essentially no causation; but only free agency and relationships. 

There is a further aspect governing the operations of free agency; which is the extent to which it is groupish or individual. 

If we focus on Men, then in the past free agency seems to have been much more active than now. Hence prediction was 'anthropomorphic'; in terms of personal factors such as motivations, desires and relationships. 

But this ancient agency was not individualistic - it operated at a groupish level such as the clan, tribe, village, guild, or even (later) the nation. Thus, understanding and prediction treated groups as we might regard individuals, and focused on their attitudes to each other, strengths and weaknesses etc. 

Modern agency has, however, become very individualistic; and insofar as free agency genuinely exists and is deployed (which is apparently not much, very seldom), it operates at the personal level rather than in groups. 

What appears superficially to be group agency, is actually a product of causal and determinative thinking; manipulating individuals (eg. via laws, rules and propaganda) to conform behaviour to external will. 

Part of this manipulation is to encourage individuals to believe they are already living by free agency; when in fact they have 'switched-off' their own agency; and are thinking almost-entirely in terms of automatic, mundane, externally-inculcated and -imposed concepts and information.  

To conclude; the destiny which God wishes from Men is to live by free agency, individually exercised; and voluntarily to choose to align this free agency with God's desires for His creation. 

But this is a choice. Some choose not to use free agency, and even to deny its reality; while others use this agency to reject the divine hopes and plans - and instead to serve the adversaries of God. 

In other words such Men choose Not to be free. And probably this applies to most Men, at least in The West. 

At the most basic level, service to the Adversary entails opening one's own soul to thinking hostile to God; and this often takes the form of dishonestly pretending to an individual agency which is, in fact, being denied and suppressed. 

Thinking therefore (i.e. here-and-now, in this world that has rejected God) becomes a thing very much causally determined. 

Men's behaviours become understandable by reduction to to causal reasoning and statistics. 

Men become predictable and controllable.

In these times of astonishingly rapid reductions in our 'physical', bodily, personal freedom - the matter of spiritual freedom becomes ever more important. 

Important not merely because the spiritual is the proper emphasis; but because (as 2020 has shown) without individual spiritual freedom then people cannot/ do-not care for their personal or societal physical freedom. 

Lacking spiritual freedom; people invert Good and evil; fail to notice when they are being physically enslaved, lack the inner conviction that sustains courage - and have become the passive dupes and servants of evil.

 

The Christian understanding is (or ought to be!) that our personal freedom is vital to God. 

In particular, we must be free to in order that we can choose to follow Jesus Christ to eternal resurrected life in Heaven. Heaven is not a default state - Heaven is 'opt-in'; therefore Men must truly be able to 'opt'. 

And we are.

 

It was one of the important insights of Mormon theology that incarnation - i.e. being embodied, having bodies - is an important aspect of human freedom. Or, better, human 'agency'; because 'agent' is the term for a self-motivated entity, and that self-motivation probably a clearer conceptualisation than freedom of what is required. 

The essence of freedom is agency, which is something like the 'ability-to-choose from one-self' - and freedom is not (as sometimes mistakenly supposed) a freedom-from compulsion, nor the availability of many options. It is this agency which makes Man also a god; because agency is a divine attribute.

But agency is not categorical; it is a matter of degree. My understanding is that every-thing (i.e. every individual Being) has agency - including the 'mineral' and 'plant' worlds - because all things are beings; and agency is a part of being an individual and alive.  But the degree of agency in a tree is much less than in a child, and a child less than an adult Man

 

So, the purpose of creation is, in part, the development of agency. God wants more agency in creation, and especially in Men; because God wants Men (or, more exactly, some men) to become more divine, to be raised closer and closer to God's level of divinity and agency; so that Men may increasingly - and with greater individuality - participate in the world of creation.

My understanding is that incarnation is a concentration and boundedness of the spirit. The body, to a lesser or greater extent, is a concentration of our being, and the body is a (partial) boundary against our perception of the spiritual world.  

Before our life on earth, we were spirit beings; and on earth we attain a temporary incarnation of mortal life, our body being made of earthly and material things (which are prone to 'entropy'; hence are always changing). 

Even to be born in a body is itself a partial separation from the realm of the spirit - although as young children we are still spontaneously and naturally aware of the spirit realm. But as we develop and grow, we increasingly separate from the spiritual realm including the divine; until, typically with adolescence, we become fully separate from God and the spirit - and that point it requires our agency to re-acknowledge the reality of God and the spiritual.  

In other words, God wants us consciously to choose to believe in his reality - and not for this belief to be unconscious and unchosen. If we make this choice we are theists - God-believers - but not (yet) Christian; it is by the further choice to follow Jesus Christ to resurrection that we become Christian. 

This is why we must die to attain Heaven - the temporary mortal body must be replaced by a permanent Heavenly body. But it is this temporary mortal body that grants us the agency to make that permanent choice (and commitment) for God, divine creation and Heaven.

 

In our mortal incarnation we are uniquely 'located' in time and space; we have an unique experience (an unique experience that is continuously 'managed' by God through the continuity of creation); we are in a world of continual change (indeed, an entropic world of net decay, disease, degeneration - tending towards death). 

Thus our experience of mortal life is one of constant and unstoppable change - and this provides the continuously-varying experiences from which we can learn.  This learning is why some of us live as mortals for extended periods; while other individuals, who do not need this learning, experience relatively brief lives - and die after conception, in the womb, or soon after birth. 

When this mortal learning is (Christianly) orientated towards our eternal resurrected life; this constitutes that spiritual development that is variously termed theosis, sanctification, or deification; we are becoming more god-like (although this learning will not become permanent and fully effectual until after resurrection). 

In sum: this mortal body is derived from the earth; while our resurrected body is derived from Heaven. Our mortal body provides the freedom, or agency, required to choose Heaven; and our lived experience in this entropic world provides potentially valuable experiences that may enhance our agency in Heaven.

We are free to reject God, and beyond that - having accepted God to reject Jesus Christ. Or, to put it more exactly; it is necessaryfor Christians that we first actively choose to believe in the reality of God, and then actively choose to dwell eternally in Heaven. 

For Christians, the current rapid destruction of our physical freedom is therefore an experience; but the relevant experience is that which is from the exact perspective in time and space which we each - as individuals - inhabit. 

Loss of physical freedom does not reduce our agency; it simply provides experiences from which we need to learn. However, we cannot learn from these experiences unless we acknowledge and deploy our agency - which is itself a consequence of the divine within us. 

 

All of the time we are alive, we are being-confronted-by experiences which (for a Christian) need to be met by our personal agency. Our agency needs to be acknowledged and deployed; which means that we each need to take responsibility for our knowing and learning, and for our choices concerning God and Jesus Christ. 

I would hazard that a particular, general, lesson of these times, is related to this; in the sense that it is being made more-and-more difficult for a Christian to be unconscious and passive and remain Christian. 

It is becoming increasingly obvious that one who accepts external guidance is accepting the demonic (i.e spiritual powers that are anti-God, anti-creation) - since this external guidance is almost always (and more clearly) corrupted, and increasingly inverted in its values.  

 

My point here is that what we physically do in mortal life, about the events of 2020; need to be grounded in a conscious apprehension of our personal divine agency; which is itself the basis for discerning guidance from external divine agency - the Holy Ghost. 

The fact that we have physical bodies is an advantage. Yes, they make us vulnerable to physical intimidation; but they are also what enables us to be agents who can choose from-our-selves: from our True Selves. 

And that - whatever happens physically, and however we may choose to support or resist the various (better or worse - much and increasingly worse) powers of this world - our primary task is to learn from the exact situation in which we are placed - which situation is continually being shaped by God for our best learning in this mortal context.

Which is why we must remember to Trust in God, now more than ever; so that we are not afraid - and are able to retain our necessary focus on the spiritual. 

Continuing the theme of yesterday's post - I will try to show why there can be no agency or 'free will' within the mainstream, classical Christian theology of one God; omnipotent, omniscient, omni-present; who created everything from nothing. The Omni-God concept. 

It strikes me that - whether explicitly or implicitly - people are very keen to project and claim for themselves a lack of agency. 

In other words, people are very keen to explain human behaviour in terms that assume it is a consequence of environment: that human evaluations and choices have an insignificant role in determining behaviour.

That environment determines behaviour; or, in other words, Nurture is primary; Nature is malleable - and Men are (in effect) 'blank slates' upon-which society inscribes.  

On the face of it; it is a remarkable thing that so many people use their agency to deny agency - whether in themselves or in others! But there are many possible reasons for this, although perhaps (as I shall explain, below) these all reduce to a single reason...

For example; people often claim lack of agency for themselves when they wish to avoid responsibility and blame. 

And they do much the same when they wish to absolve some favoured group (a 'victim' group) from blame. 

This is why people so often claim to be powerless, discriminated-against, excluded - they are claiming that they have no choice but to do whatever they are caused to do, and therefore cannot be blamed for it. Thus they claim that the effective answer to this particular problem is that I (or my favoured group) ought to be better treated!

Such people (or groups) are, in effect, asking to be 'rescued' from a situation that they did not choose, and cannot escape from. They are like sentient cattle who are starving and miserable, crying-out for a kind farmer to drive them to another, and better, pasture. 

Elites, however, tend to claim agency for themselves (at least, up to a point); while denying it in the masses whom they seek to control. 

This, indeed, is the implicit basis for elite legitimacy, and the reason why They claim the right to control Others/ Us. 

The idea is that We cannot understand or make wise choices, because We are passive creatures who behave 'automatically' as a consequence of incentive and sanctions. Whereas the elites stand above this, outside of the determining causes; elites therefore make up their own minds, achieve understanding and make choices - and therefore have the authority to shape society for its own good (because mass-society cannot do this for themselves, lacking agency). 

Society is thus divided into the controllers and the responders; those who stand outside the societal causes and those who are trapped-within them.

In other words, since the masses cannot decide for themselves (because they lack agency); then those who do have agency must necessarily do the deciding for them. 

The only question then is who - among those agent elites - ought to do this deciding? And this is where 'elections' come-in. 

Elections assume that there must be controllers; and (since they are devised, administered and interpreted by the elites) elections comprise the various arrangements by which the elites determine who, among themselves, gets to do the controlling. 

The mass/ electors regard themselves as have just enough agency to be sufficient to pick their favourite controller among the elites. 

Election voting is done to choose who gets to shape my behaviour.  

Behind these various claims of lack-of-agency is the desire for a better world, in a Godless and de-spiritualized universe. 

In a strange and paradoxical way; the claimed lack of agency of many or most people, is the only way that hope for betterment can be found; in a world where all meaning is understood to be manufactured by Men. 

If everyone was happy and hopeful; then they would take responsibility for their choices; but the pervasive dissatisfaction and alienation of modern societies means that people seek life satisfaction in social arrangements. 

For there to be a Good Society actually requires that Men are passive products of society. 

That is, for there to be a better world entails that Men must be shaped-by society, and thus Men must lack agency. 

I think we can see that the - apparently absurdly irrational! - structuring but implicit ideology of the world in 2022 - is a consequence of a deep yearning for a better world. 

(That is, a world 'better' in a material sense: a world where everybody might be happy and nobody suffers).

For this to happen, absolutely requires that Men are passive responders. 

And, for such a world to be the object of hope; it requires that there be some Men who are active controllers, who have agency and take responsibility (including blame), and who stand-outside of the environmental networks of incentives and sanctions that cause the behaviour of 'everyone-else': the passive masses. 

The passive masses therefore create and sustain the elites as repositories of existential hope - and typically regard the elites as a contested zone, an arena of conflict between the Good agents, who are trying to make a better world for Us Masses; and the bad elites who are trying to use the masses for their own satisfaction. 

This explains the partisan nature of politics; and the experience-proof fashion in which the masses recurrently invest hope in elite-led 'salvation'. 

If the claim of lacking agency is indeed central to most people's hopes for a better world; then we can see why the (more cynical) idea that the elites are not really partisan but all-one, that elites are essentially and overall a collusion not a competition, is a thing that people can adjust-to - albeit it is resisted strongly, and partisanship is still normal. 

The masses can cope with the idea that elites are short-termist and selfish so long as the elites are also regarded as lacking agency! 

This seems to be the case in our advanced (in degeneracy!) democracy. 

The elites increasingly demand victim status and deny their own agency. And this is broadly accepted! - Because, in principle, it might be possible to set-up a System of incentives and sanctions that include the elite. 

Such a System would then impose long-termist and altruistic goals on the elites (as well as the masses), who - lacking agency - would be bound to follow them. 

And, once set-up, a totally-embracing-system that rewarded long-termism and altruism might be expected to be self-sustaining... 

Some such notion is at the heart of most of the ideologies of the past century-plus. The idea that a better world is a consequence of a better System. 

And for a better System to do its job, Men must lack agency. 

The only problem - albeit it is a huge one! - is how to get from here to there; from our current condition, to one in which The System Makes Men Good*. 

When there is no faith in Men, all faith is in The System. 

Only if The System is good, can Men be made good - therefore, if there is to be a better world; everything-else than The System (including Men) can and must be sacrificed to the making and sustaining of The (Good) System.   

Totalitarianism is the envisaged method. 

How to get from here to there; from where we are to the Good System - is a problem. 

But water path, the method must surely be via totalitarianism; which is why totalitarianism is so widely embraced and supported in the world today - as being 'a step in the right direction'. 

Since hope is invested in a single Good System; then whatever the answer it must be totalitarianism. That there will be one, global, an all-powerful System is a given requirement. The only legitimate debate concerns the specific content of that System.

Such is the nature and scope of debate among todays globalist elites.   

The one thing that cannot be tolerated by the masses is if the elites are regarded as 

1. essentially collusive rather than competitive, 

2. possessing agency, and 

3. also (by choice, from that agency) fundamentally evil in motivation.

In a God-denying and anti-spiritual secular society; such an insight would destroy human hope, and lead to despair. 

Unfortunately, this seems to be exactly what is true. There is a broadly-cohesive elite, with agency, and they have (overwhelmingly) chosen to serve the goals of evil. 

But that situation is exactly the one that cannot be acknowledged without inescapable despair - unless, that is, Men first recognize God and the primarily spiritual nature of this reality. 

*Note: In 1934 TS Eliot wrote:

They constantly try to escape 

From the darkness outside and within 

By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.

*

The following is adapted from a comment I made on the blog of WmJas

https://wmjas.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/philosophically-anarchic-vs-dysfunctional/#comment-992 

*

Once the decision has been made that free agency is necessary and real, then various consequences are implied which I think do not usually tend to be followed up.

In fact, one of the things I find most impressive about Joseph Smith's Restored Christianity, is the way in which he - step by step, and not without faltering, but with great determination and completeness - follows up the implications of human free agency for our fundamental status in the Christian world.

(In what follows I use God to refer to the one God the Father, creator of Heaven and Earth; and lower case god to refer to the many Sons of God' of the same 'kind' as Jesus Christ - to which status Christians believe humans will be resurrected. This use of lower case god is mainstream Christian and occurs frequently in the Bible - perhaps sometimes also referring to the angels, whose status in relation to God and Man is scripturally ambiguous.)

*

It is hard to make sense of free agency without also acknowledging that humans are of the same 'kind' as God - are minor or flawed/ corrupted gods, but of the same general kind.

Free agency is such an astonishing thing, implying such qualitatively superior powers on the part of humans, that something of this sort seems to be implied (I'm not saying it is entailed, but it is at least potentially implied).

*

Because free agency cannot work in a void - but also goes with knowledge/ intelligence and reason - which both enable learning from experience, and provide or supply the basis for free agency.

And for the 'triad' of free agency, intelligence and reason to be able to operate under widely varied and often hostile mortal conditions, and for learning to occur; seems to imply an autonomy from these mortal conditions. 

It seems to imply the autonomy of the soul (or unique personal spirit).

*

And, in turn, such autonomy seems to imply 'eternal' existence - in the sense of pre-existence of the soul (before mortal life) and well as its persistence after death - otherwise (it seems!) the free agent soul would be subject-to the conditions of mortal life, and therefore unfree.

*

But while mainstream Christian thought has tended, often, to regard incarnation of the soul and the added factor of the body as yet another disadvantage which limits agency (the body's needs and weaknesses are seen as a constraint on agency) - JS saw the body as an enhancement of agency, by (as it were) concentrating the diffuse matter of the soul/ spirit into a form that is capable of controlling matter in a proto-god-like manner (en route to full godhood).

*

I have extrapolated, but the main point was the first - that the reality of free agency is not just god-like, but evidence of god-status - and not just potentially, but here and now, actually, in mortal life.

Which implies that we are already Sons of God here and now on earth, that is our status - but at a developmental stage which is yet incomplete and un-perfected, at least partially-corrupted, and indeed preliminary.

(And, because of free agency: capable of rejecting further development or  indeed denying our Son of God status; we can freely chose to sell ourselves into slavery, and thereby to ally with the other spirits, the fallen Sons of God, who have already done so.)

*

A full recognition of the reality/ necessity of free agency at the core of Man, therefore leads onto many other plausible inferences - not compelling entailments, since they can be and are usually denied; but inferences which seem to flow naturally-enough from the structure and inclinations of the human mind.

And if the human mind is regarded as capable of free agency (and has knowledge and reason, thus can learn) then what results is a higher estimate of Man's capability and autonomy, hence mortal Man's status, role and evaluative ability - than in most versions of mainstream Christianity.

*

It seems to me that most Christians are not, and never have been, sufficiently 'bothered' by the absolute requirement in Christianity that each Man personally must be able really to make the choice for Jesus Christ. 

It is this requirement for agency which (as far as I know) sets Christianity apart from the other religions: Christians must believe-in the reality of free will - and, in practice, that means that Christians will usually need a coherent explanation of how free will is possible. 

The Big Problem is that the standard theology enforced by the Catholic and Protestant churches has no place for human agency. 

By which I mean - all will correctly assert that free will is real and necessary - but none have a coherent explanation of how it is possible. 

All the 'usual' explanations are wrong - make no sense - and many are just dishonest...

('Kicking the can further down the road' type explanations - which just delay the point of explanation, in hope the enquirer will get fed-up and go-away!)

The problem is that if there is (as all mainstream Christian denominations assert) one God, omnipotent, omniscient and who created everything from nothing; then every-thing is God; and the whole of creation is Just God's Puppet. 

There is nothing else for it to be. 

God made every-thing, God gave every-thing all of its characteristics, God made all the laws by which every-thing happens... 

All is accounted-for by God and there is simply No Room For Personal Agency. There is nowhere other than God for personal agency to come-from. 

I do not regard this as a proposition for debate - once one has seen this incoherence, it is as clear a 'fact' as any. 

I realize that there are many, many people who do Not 'see it' - but that is simply an omission or failure on their part. The world is (and always has been) full of people who do not see problems - especially when not-seeing has important advantages. 

But once seen, one knows.

And from then it is a matter of honesty.   

This elimination of the possibility of agency is just a plain and unavoidable consequence of the concept of God that has been accepted and enforced (apparently) since early in the history of the Christian Church.   

Thus we have a truly colossal flaw at the very heart of mainstream Christian theology - moreover one that is very obvious to anyone who takes seriously the need for free agency. 

It has never been solved, never been explained by classical mainstream theology; it can only be obfuscated or made into a mystery - by asserting that both God is Like This and also There is Free Agency - and how it works is a mystery that must be accepted. 

Much hinges on whether a person is happy to accept that the core necessity of Christianity does not make common sense and cannot coherently be explained - but must be accepted as a mystery. 

Apparently there are plenty of Christians who simply see no problem in this state of affairs. And cannot be made to see that it is a problem - despite that it is (perhaps?) the main reason why non-Christians cannot become Christian. 

But once one has seen a vast incoherence at the root of the religion - as commonly expressed; it does not go down well to be told either that it doesn't exist or that one should not worry about it! That does not create a 'good impression'! 

What is the conclusion? 

Well, if you agree that personal agency/ free will is absolutely necessary to Christianity - that people really Must be able to make the choice of Jesus from themselves - then you cannot accept the assumptions of mainstream, classical, traditional Christian theology - whether Eastern or Western Catholic, or Protestant. 

(You may well accept the religions, the denominations, the churches, their practices - but you cannot in honesty accept as necessary and true the assumptions of their theology.) 

Because these systems have no space for agency; they simply Must Be Wrong - and once one has known this for oneself, it does not matter how many hundreds of years they have been wrong, nor how many great theologians have been wrong in this way. 

Then one must either find or devise a coherent explanation for how real personal agency/ free will is possible. 

Find or devise a Christian theology which includes and entails agency*.  

And, as usual; this is a matter of absolute importance and extreme urgency. 

+++

* For instance.

Note: It is a secondary issue - but it may be regarded as important to have some reasonable explanation as to why so many people have been so wrong for so long - how it is that they apparently could not see this 'fatal flaw' in mainstream Christian theology. I believe the answer is to do with the development of human consciousness; and that Men of the past thought and experienced differently from us. In particular, they did not experience themselves as distinct individuals but instead (to a significant extent) as secondary-to, derived-from, the group to which they belonged. For Men of the past, mostly, group identity came first; and much of their knowledge came unconsciously, passively, absorbed from the group as tradition. In such a world, obedience and loyalty to the group/ church were primary -  and regarded as sufficient for salvation. Such questions as the necessity and consequences of individual free will were much less obvious, and were often neither spontaneous nor urgent. Indeed, Men of the past did not experience - and in that sense did not possess - personal agency to the same extent that modern alienated Man does (whether we like it or not!). This difference in consciousness is why it was possible, and probably inevitable, that the idea arose and was accepted that a Man could not relate directly to God, but must be mediated by a group: i.e. by the church of which he was a member. Salvation was then seen and experienced in group-terms. Modern Men are different from this (and by God's destiny); so we now perceive and experience differently; and we cannot honestly pretend otherwise. 

My answer is metaphysical - that is, a matter of primary assumptions.

It is that agency is a divine and indivisible attribute. (Coleridge/ Barfield is clear that some things which can be distinguished - discussed separately - such as existence and agency - cannot be divided: this is a characteristic of 'polarity'.)

Indeed, one of the very primary attributes, maybe even the most important.

*

I therefore think of agency as a primary attribute of the essence of the self that - from itself - it can originate. What does agency originate? Thought.

(This derived from Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom.)

So the agency we are concerned with is thinking (not doing stuff, not actions).

Some thinking is just a consequence of previous causes; but when it is divine, our thinking is an aspect of our primary essence. This is possible because we are - by origin - eternal intelligences: i.e. divine. This is what makes agency possible.

So, from eternity we have existed and had thoughts originating in our selves. I imagine, as a picture, an immaterial thinking entity; thinking things from itself, not in response to anything at all - this thinking entity would still have thoughts even if nothing else existed.

From this primal state, we have been built-up by the agency of the creator and by various accumulations and modifications - but everything ultimately depends on the fact that we are micro-gods by origin, generating our own realities by thinking. This also means that thinking (cognition) is primary, comes first for us as individuals.

*

The above is, of course, a pluralistic universe, because there are many other entities in the same basic situation; including God. God's role is therefore 'secondary' for us - we do not depend on God either for our primary existence or for agency/ thinking; but of course without God is a very simple state of aloneness.

One consequence is that rejection of God could mean simply declining to 'join' the shared and complex created reality - the economy of love - which was made by God - and this choice is not necessarily evil: we could choose silence, simplicity, aloneness, lack of self-awareness - just being, in our own world of thinking.

*

Often, in not understanding the possibility of agency/ free will, people are making a metaphysical assumption which is dominating.

Something like: everything that happens must either be caused by something else or just happen for no reason, 'randomly'.

But this does not exhaust all possibilities, and indeed is probably not a natural or spontaneous way of thinking. Indeed, randomness doesn't really make sense at all, at any level. It is just a pragmatic mathematical tool.

So, to simplify, most people are probably assuming that everything which happens is caused; a consequence of something else, back to infinity...

But then that doesn't make sense either - as Thomas Aquinas perceived. An infinite regress means that nothing could ever happen, or else everything just makes a gigantic circles of causes.

So, neither randomness nor all actions being consequences of prior causes is imaginable.

*

The way out of this impasse is probably by imagination - if an alternative can be imagined then he can be felt as real.

 If a self can be imagined that is a real self (and not just consequences) then it must have the power to be an uncaused case (a first mover).

Such primary causes must be the causes of everything - I don't see that there just has to be one such cause (God) - rather I think the totality is full of such first causes (pluralism) - these are why things happen rather than nothing.

This is a situation I feel I can imagine, which is why it satisfies me. Therefore I accept it as assumption.

By contrast, universal causality, or randomness, don't make sense to me.

The basic problem here is how to do metaphysics, how to evaluate rival metaphysical assumptions...

I don't think we can go deeper than what we can imagine: imagine in a thorough kind of way, when giving it our best shot.

Regular readers will know that I regard the characterisation of 'an omni-God' - that is a God described in terms of abstract absolutes such as omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence - as a wrong, tendentious, harm-tending error of mainstream Christianity. God is not all-knowing, not all-powerful - and one major and vital limitation on God is agency, or Free Will.

God's knowledge and power is rooted in his being The Creator; and the crux of the problem for mainstream Christianity is that if God created Free Will, if he created the 'mechanism' of agency - and because creation is something on-going and continuous (not something done once in the past then left), then God would have knowledge of and power over Free would... But then agency would not be truly autonomous and free: merely just another expression of God's ongoing creation...

To me, the above mainstream Christian explanation is seriously incoherent; and given the importance of Free Will to Christianity, we need to try and do better... 

Since (as I assume) agency is real and will is indeed free; then these need to be regarded as Not having been created and sustained by God. But instead, agents with free will are pre-existent to God's creation - already-there when creation began - used-by God in doing creation, but not made-by God.

So; the nature of reality is that God's creation is the means by which he pursues his divine plan, a plan to have children and to raise them to become divine like himself (and this has now been fully accomplished by Jesus Christ - so all Men have a model and method) - working-around the constraint, a 'constraint' which is itself necessary for full divinity, of Man's agency.

Thus we have God's creation, inhabited by living, conscious agents with (various degrees of) Free Will - God controlling many aspects of the situation, but neither knowing nor controlling the 'inner workings' of agency.

In other words the real-self is divine, and opaque to God the creator. God must therefore pursue his goals 'indirectly'. However, this indirectness is a feature, not a bug, since it is only genuine free-agents who can fulfil God's plan.

(The alternative being a universe of unfree, wholly-controlled automata; fake/ simulated persons merely.) 

And insofar as reality consists of many agent beings of many kinds - including what we currently (mainstream) think of as minerals, vegetables, and animals; which are alive and conscious to different degrees and in different ways - the nature of reality consists of God setting up situations and responding to the consequences of agency, in a continually purposive but not-predetermined fashion.

It explains why Free Will is a necessary part of the plan; God had to work-around agency in order that the plan could be achieved; and without Free Will there could have been no plan for divinisation.

This description seems to me an exact fit for the nature of reality as I perceive and understand it; which is why I share it here.

It seems to be accepted that it is either impossible, or at least rare and difficult, for a soul in Hell to repent and then be resurrected into Heaven.  

Well, it is. And the reason is that the initial intervention is assumed to be uncaused - hence undetermined - while everything after that point is assumed to be determined (albeit in a non-linear fashion).

So, the flapping of a butterfly's wings is implicitly supposed to be uncaused - by the free will and agency of the butterfly; but from the moment those wings have flapped there is assumed to be no further agency, but events unroll inevitably (e.g. toward a hurricane somewhere else...). 

This bizarre assumption probably comes from the origins of the Butterfly Effect in computer programming - including analogue computing: the programmer (implicitly assumed to be an undetermined agent) stands outside the system he is manipulating, but his set-up and interventions unroll deterministically.

In the real world, however, the validity of the Butterfly Effect depends on agency. In the first place, the Butterfly wing-flap may not be an act of agency, but may itself be a determined consequence of prior causes - in which case, the Butterfly wings do not cause anything at all - they are merely one link in a multi-factorial causal chain of unknown origin.

On the other hand, if the Butterfly Wing-flap was due to Butterfly agency, hence uncaused; then we have acknowledged the reality of agency in the world, and cannot afterwards coherently assume that agency is necessarily absent from the system from that point (i.e. we cannot assume that the entirely of the system is deterministic if the programmer is not).

(In computer programming terms, if the initial programmer has the free will/ agency needed to set-up a deterministic system and set it into motion; then other programmers may be a part of the system and divert it unpredictably (because interventions were uncaused) - or further programmers may intervene from outside the system to make changes to the outcome.) 

In a softer version; the Butterfly Effect is mistakenly used to refer to the ancient observation that small causes may have large outcomes, and large outcomes may depend on small causes; as in the old nursery rhyme 'For want of a nail' - which traces the death of King Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth to the lack of a single horseshoe nail.

But even here, the Butterfly Effect gets misused and generally misleads. What is valid about the Butterfly Effect is to explain one reason why empirical and statistical methods that work well over the short term become worthless, rapidly as the timescale is extended. The longer-term is therefore either unpredictable; or else requires the measurement of entirely different variables.

For example weather forecasting, in the UK, sometimes works well over a few hours or a day, based on measures such as wind speed and direction and satellite pictures (and predictive programming); but becomes useless over a few days, and is worthless for medium- and long-term forecasting. Medium/ Long term forecasting either can't be done at all, or seems to be done better by focusing on different measures; for example the activities and doings of the sun and moon, somewhat as Piers Corbyn does. And the worthlessness of standard weather forecasting methods for medium/ long term forecasting based-on wind etc is utterly unaffected by the use of ever bigger superexpensive supercomputers (which are periodically successfully demanded by the state funded forecasting services, and which never work because they never can work). 

On the whole, however, it is clear that the Butterfly Effect has approximately zero real-world relevance or validity - whether defined strictly, or as the term is used in pop culture.

The problem with the Omni-God concept comes (and this seems to have happened in many times and places, and to be a tendency in many denominations - Catholic and Reformed) when Christians in practice value their concept of God's power above the absolute requirement for free will/ agency.

It is implicit in the ideas of Owen Barfield, and indeed in many others with an interest in consciousness, that to be aware is a higher state than to be un-conscious. Because to be a psychologically-mature adult is to be conscious of many things that in a child are unconscious. But why is it better to be conscious?

A first answer refers to agency - or 'free will'. Thus the adult may have agency, may control thinking, only because the adult is aware of what he thinks. He satnds outside of, observes, his thinking. By contrast, a young child is largely immersed-in his world, and (in his thinking) more-passively swept-along by it - there is little scope for agency. He thinks - but does not know that he thinks.

But even if agency requires consciousness - self-awareness; why is consciousness better than unconsciousness, why is agency better than being immersed-in and swept along?

It depends what is meant by 'better' - what is being asserted is that consciousness is indeed higher than unconsciousness - as an adult is higher than a child, and a human than a cow; but a young child may be (usually is) a morally-better person than an adult; and a cow may be a nicer creature than many humans.

What then does higher mean? The answer must refer to God's wishes and plans for people: divine destiny. My assertion is that God has various interlinked hopes and plans - some are moral, and some have to do with consciousness.

We can only talk in generalisations, and for some individuals divine destiny may be Not-growing up, and Not becoming conscious (for example, they may die as a child, or may have a mental handicap - and this experience may be a part of their soul's eternal destiny; intended from before mortal life for their benefit, to learn from it something vital). But on the whole, many humans are meant to go through adolescence into adulthood, to move from being unconscious to being conscious; and ultimately to become conscious in the divine way (to become Sons of God).

And divine consciousness is assumed to be most-fully self-aware, because fully agent: fully free.

So, as God is higher than mortal Man; divine consciousness than human consciousness; so higher consciousness is such because it is closer to the divine consciousness. Consciousness can be seen as a ladder from least to most, from (presumably, one average) the (supposedly) 'unalive' mineral world, plants, non-human animals, children, adolescents, sexually-mature adults - and more and more conscious adults.

The degree of consciousness constrains (that is it both makes-possible and also limits) the degree of agency, or freedom; and (I assume) God wants us each, enentually to become god-like in our agency; by choice, and apparently by incremental stages, throughout eternity; but also (usually, but not invariably) partially to experience divine consciousness, briefly at least, during our mortal lives here on earth. (This is theosis - the intention of becoming more god-like, during mortal life.)

In the end, whether we regard consciousness as higher than unconsciousness, freedom higher than passivity; whether we indeed regard thinking as primary, and ultimately more important than behavioural actions, depends on whether we choose to ally and align with God's hopes and plans - or not. Salvation, or not.

First salvation - at align with God's purposes; then theosis - to become more divine in our being and thinking.

As usual for Christians; we find that everything eventually depends on faith, trust, love - the first 'commandment' (to love God) is first for this reason: everything is built-upon it.


(Note: If we do not love God - then none of these distinctions matter. Perhaps only current happiness matters; and if current happiness is enhanced by the destruction of consciousness, or by destroying the capacity to think, to be agent and free in thought - or by being evil, according to God's distinctions ... well so be it.)

It doesn't much matter what people say; but if you observe what they do, advocate, approve - it seems that many or most people favour totalitarianism.

All they really want is totalitarian in-line with their own ideology or religion.

And this applies to many or most Christians too - e.g. they dream of a society in which all discourse is Christian, minds are filled with the message - and opposition to this is excluded.

By totalitarian, I mean a political system that tends towards total thought-control: that is to inculcating favoured thought and prohibiting all other thought - by whatever systems and technologies are available, effective, practical.

Many societies of the past were totalitarian in this sense that it was what they wanted - but effectiveness of imposition was limited by primitive technologies of surveillance and propaganda, or the presence within society of effective opposition, or simply by disorganisation and corruption.

Why is totalitarian thought control so common a goal, even among Christians? I think the reason is that people wrongly value action above thought (just as, in practice, so many Christians behave as if action is ultimately more important than motivation).

In other words, the 'supporters' of totalitarianism are often being, as they suppose, 'practical' and focusing on what they suppose will be most effective at controlling social behaviour.

This contrasts with the intentions of those who are behind totalitarianism, which are directed at thinking rather than action.

So - on the one hand the theory of totalitarianism, its appeal, is practical effectiveness; but the actuality of totalitarianism is that it is focused on minds and interested in practicalities only as an excuse for mind-control!

The Christian message is clear that thinking is more important than action; but clearly the two interact - and actual Christians often lose sight of this fact... they become focused on 'society', on what people do - and lapse into short-cut thinking which is coercive. It has, indeed, been quite common to Christians to lose sight that they cannot impose Christianity, it is not so much forbidden as utterly impossible.

However, what happens is that the use of coercion creates a system of interpretation that is focused on actions (eg what people say, what people do) - and once this refocus has happened then totalitarianism is appealing to Christians; since it sets no limit on the totality of surveillance and control.

Whether the system is overall physically or psychologically coercive is a matter of expediency; but both are used.

My point here is that totalitarianism has a much broader appeal than commonly realised - totalitarianism is a subtle trick of the evil demonic ruling elites. They want to control minds, to induce damnation - but they offer the promise of controlling behaviour. 

Can damnation really be induced? Well it can't be caused, but it can of course be encouraged. Agency (free will) is potential in everyone - but it may be rejected. We can allow our minds to become ruled by 'automatic' processes, we can refuse to engage our agency.

And that refusal to use agency - and instead to use superficial, inculcated, or not-human types of thinking - is exactly what the demonic powers aim-at. They aim to fill minds with thoughts that deny agency; they suppress ideas of agency, autonomy, inner reality; and at the end of this people will live and die disengaged.

Disengagement is the aim of totalitarianism - disengagement of agency. To have people so harried and trammelled that they just behave - and they never think. What such people imagine to be their own thinking is not their won - it is just some kind of superficial, robotic, habitual processing which has been drilled and applied.

In a materialist world view, totalitarianism makes perfect sense - and the desire for totalitarianism is a sign of covert materialism in Christians.

Totalitarian thinking is a kind of test - a test of our fundamental assumptions: a test of metaphysics. Most people nowadays have rotten metaphysics - and that is why totalitarianism is currently so popular among so many types of people. And that is why we have such a lot of it.   

(For my previous discussions of prophecy follow this link...)

When it comes to prophecy, and taking into account the nature of most true prophecies; there is disagreement as to how this is (or may be) possible. 

Precognition

For some reason, many people seem to regard prophecy as a form of 'precognition' - which entails 'seeing the future'. The idea is that, in some sense, the future has already happened and can therefore be perceived. 

This would entail that - from here and now, and by common sense analysis - the future is determined, and free will/ agency is unreal. 

This is then 'explained' by positing weird stuff about Time; such that there is ultimately no such thing as time, the linear sequential time of our mortal lives in this world is an illusion; and from a divine or real perspective - everything that has happened, is happening or can ever happen, is actually simultaneous. 

This philosophical idea dates back at least to Plato, and is famously deployed by Boethius to 'explain' the paradox of God's omniscience and Man's agency. 

The question is whether this really is an explanation at all. 

It posits weird abstract properties of Time that are counter-intuitive and incomprehensible to ordinary people; leads to the innumerable 'time paradoxes' of science fiction; and purports to explain the specific observation of prophecy by such a vast metaphysical assumption that it explains everything - hence nothing. 

In essence; it purports to explain evidence with metaphysics - which is the wrong way around. Metaphysics comes first (or should come first); observations may be consistent with metaphysics, but can neither confirm nor refute it; and changes metaphysics should therefore not be used expediently as a convenient way of accounting for observations. 

We ought first to establish our metaphysics assumptions - on grounds of intuition and coherence - and then use these to explain observations. My metaphysical assumptions exclude precognition rooted in weird-Time. 

Therefore - explaining prophecy by precognition I regard as illegitimate, invalid, Not really-real.  

Karma

I use the term Karma for the idea that that is derived from understanding the consequences of present metaphysics, attitudes and actions. 

In other words; by knowing and understanding the present situation; it is possible to predict what these will (sooner or later) entail. 

Thus, we might prophesy that if Men believe X, then (sooner or later) this-kind-of-thing will come to pass; or if Men do Y, then these will be the effects. Or (as a metaphysical example) if many Men's fundamental understanding of reality excludes God and assumes that all of reality is material - then such and such a human society will (sooner or later) happen. 

Much valid prophecy seems to be of this kind. 

Destiny

The cause of destiny is that God wills some-thing, and (sooner or later) arranges divine creation so that it happens. 

The free agency of Men (and other Beings) may thwart God's will again and again; yet if God continues to provide opportunities for Men to choose to do God's will - then eventually some Man will make the right choice, and the thing will happen. 

*

We can see that the two valid explanations for prophecy - Karma and Destiny - have no problem about free will or human agency; because they do not state any particular time or date for the fulfillment of prophecy. 

But as soon as a prophecy is particular and exact; then we run up against the reality of agency, which may tend to thwart such specific prophecy.

Presumably, then; in principle exact prophecy can only be real insofar as it has nothing to do with free will or agency...

But in a living 'animistic' universe - consisting of Beings in relationships - this can never truly be the case; since everything that happens in divine creation must involve the choices of beings. 

1. I define evil as opposing God, creation and The Good - 'the good' existing only within God's creation; and God's creation being a consequence of Love (initially, the love between our Heavenly Parents, which was the motivation for creation). God created The Good - so, to oppose God and creation is to be evil. And evil is the rejection of Love.


2. All Beings, including all Men, have existed from eternity - initially as primordial Beings, later these primordial Beings were procreated as sons and daughters of God, in the form of spirits (without bodies).


3. Evil in the universe comes from Men, and was always present from eternity. It could be thought of as a disposition, a character trait: the trait of Pride, which is broadly in favour of the self and its satisfactions at the expense of others; and specifically therefore against being a part of the familial ideal of God's creation harmonised by love.


4. When we became children of God we lived initially as spirits in Heaven, with very little agency - we were immersed in God's Goodness and the life of Heaven - therefore (somewhat like young children) we had very little capacity for expressing the evil that was within us.

Probably all pre-mortal spirits (excepting Jesus) will 'contain' evil, but they will not always express evil - because all are immersed-in Goodness and without a boundary between God and himself or herself.

(Analogous to a young child immersed in the loving kindness of a perfect family - in such conditions, few young children will express evil.)

However, some pre-mortal spirits had so much evil in them - from eternity - that (even with the limited agency possible in pre-mortal spiritual life) they opposed God, creation and The Good. They chose to express this opposition in Heaven;  and so were cast-out of Heaven. These were Satan and the many other demons, now eternally active (because eternal Beings) outside of Heaven; and including this world.


5. In order to develop towards being fully divine Children of God, we had to become more and more fully agents; and part of this development is incarnation into this world.

By incarnation (getting 'solid' bodies) we became separated from God (incarnation can be seen as an increased boundary between our-self and God); and for the first time then able to express our distinctive selves, including the propensity for evil.

Thus Men (each of us) brought primordial evil into this world, and by being-incarnated enhanced our agency; and this increased agency 'unmasked' this always-present evil, and enabled it to be expressed.


6. We (here and now, in this world) each find ourselves living adult lives in a situation of evil from demons, from other men, and in our-selves; in which situation we must choose either for or against God/ Love, creation and The Good.

Those who, after this life, choose For God and wish to participate in the work of creation will (thanks to Jesus Christ) be resurrected into Heaven; as wholly-Good agents, like God.

Those who choose God and The Good but do not wish to participate in creation will be allowed non-participatory, non-agent union with deity impersonally known (approximating to the pre-mortal spirit condition); and dwell in a 'timeless', static state of abstract bliss or Nirvana - within the scope of Heaven.

Those who reject and oppose God, who are active against creation, have chosen to reject Love (this called the sin of Pride)... will thereby choose to enter one of the many cut-off personal Hells, which each will 'rule as his own supreme deity. 


7. Thus evil is only present in this world because Men bring it here; as well as because of demonic presence and activity. Evil is in all Men from eternity (but to greater or lesser degrees, and of different types and emphases); and this evil is expressed because of our agency.

Also, this agency also allows us to choose to express evil or not. Thus all expressed evil is a choice and a collusion, and the rejection of evil is a refusal of assent to collude. In sum - evil versus good is about inner choice, that is, about collusion versus repentance.

Good and evil are therefore essentially a matter of taking-sides, choosing either for or against God, his creative work and plans; and for or against the basis of creation in Love.


Note; the above is, in essence, my interpretation and extrapolation (and to an extent correction) of Mormon metaphysical theology. 

Although all Christians 'believe' (in some sense) that after death, at some point, Men are resurrected- this fact has not permeated very deeply into Christian reflection - because there is almost always an implicit assumption that it is better to be a spirit than to have a body.

Yet, if that was so, why would the Creator our loving Father have resurrected us, when he could instead have had us reborn as immaterial spirits?

Maybe many Christians would deny that that they have the built-in assumption spirit-good-body bad - but it is all over the place. Christ is seen as decending into incarnation in a human body, and many are amazed that a pure spirit would condescend to do this.

Going back to the first philosophers of Ancient Greece - the body is seen as subject to disease, corruption, ageing and death... naturally the spirit was more highly prized; naturally the eternal real was seen as immaterial spirit, where there could be no decay because no 'matter'...

Yet Christianity insists we will be resurrected into bodies - albeit perfected bodies that are immune to decay, destruction or death. But why? Why bother mucking-around 'confined' in bodies when we might we free-ranging spirits...?

Mormonism goes a considerable way towards explaining this, by the insight that God the Father (as well as Jesus Christ) is embodied - and that this is a necessary part of attaining the highest level of creative divinity. (For example, while creation does not require a body, and Jesus Christ created - or co-created - this world; divine procreation - the begetting of spirit children - requires the body; in some way.)

But there is not much indication of why this should be - why 'bodies are better' - whereas three thousand years or more of philosophical and religious history suggest that bodies are a limitation, not an advantage.

Why, then, are bodies better - as it seems they must be?

To answer this seems to require a sense of divine limitation which is anathema to most Christians - even though the Bible is full of it... full, that is, of an apparently accepted implicit assumption that God can only achieve certain purposes by certain linear and sequential actions - that God is limited in how he can achieve things, and that God achieving things requires time as well as the consent of Men.

Well, it looks-as-if God cannot achieve the highest level of divinity, even for Jesus Christ, without incarnation and death followed by resurrection; because, of course, Jesus was resurrected - and that was how he attained his perfection.

(Interestingly, Jesus was not the first Man to be resurrected, he was the first 'god' to be resurrected; Lazarus, who was resurrected by Jesus and before his own resurrection, was the first Man. This fact seems very significant - and it is given great significance in John's Gospel - but its implications seem under-appreciated.)

My conclusion is that - even despite all their disadvantages which we know so well - bodies are better than spirits; when 'better' is understood as developmentally or evolutionarily more-advanced.

Why? I think the reason is related to agency; that an incarnate has greater agency than a spirit - that somehow the diffuse and unlocalised nature of a spirit means that a spiritual being cannot fully discriminate between self and not-self - and therefore there is a limitation and impairment of agency, or 'free will'.

A spirit, I suggest, cannot exclude causes from his or her thinking; the spirit mind is permeable. So, when a spirit thinks, the thoughts may not be his or her own thoughts. (Note that spirits, like bodies, are always either male or female.)

The essence of incarnation is the possibility of full agency - presumably that is what bodies ultimately are: methods or mechanisms by which minds are 'insulated' from other minds, and concentrated.

I say possibility, not necessity - because agency may be feeble, is infrequent, may be displaced by external causes - including 'possession'.  

But without full agency, hence incarnation, the higher levels of divinity are unattainable.

So, bodies are better - which is why our eternal life is to be spent incarnated - and not as spirits...

When people talk about 'free will' they are implicitly referring to an uncaused cause - in other words, the ability to act (e.g. to think a thought) without that act being caused but coming from within.

This can be termed Agency - the property of an entity being an Agent, which is self-motivated (in which motivation originates from within, and is not merely passively caused-by something acting upon the entity.

If this is accepted, then it can be seen that free will and agency are not attributes of the 'material universe' of mainstream modern discourse (nor of science - in which everything either has a cause or else is 'random' and presumed to be unmotivated - like some aspects of quantum physics).
*


For Christians, indeed, free will and Agency are divine attributes; attributes characteristic of divinity.

Since, for Christians it is assumed (on the basis of revelation), that Men have free will and therefore Agency - this implies that Men are to this extent divine; by which I mean actual mortal incarnate Men are divine.

Which means that God made us as little gods - partial gods, gods in embryo: this is simply a fact, and neither a cause for pride or despair.

For mainstream Christians adhering to Classical theology, this implies that God created us ex nihilo (from nothing; presumably at some time between our conception and birth) as Agents , as beings whose wills are independent from him - so, to that extent, we are mini-gods who are out-of-control of God.

The aim is (by theosis) to become more like God but - since we are created/ creatures - theosis can never go very far towards God-ness. It is an eternal fact that only God can create from nothing, and the main fact of our relationship with him is that asymmetry.
*


For Mormon Christians, Agency is explained by our essence having been in its origins eternal and independent of God - we 'later' became God's spirit children in a pre-mortal life, and then were (voluntarily) incarnated as mortals.

God as the Creator is a shaper and organizer - he does not (because it is impossible) create from nothing.

Because we were agents from eternity, theosis is seen as an (in principle) unbounded process of progression towards becoming the same as God in nature.

The asymmetry between God and Man that remains eternally is not in terms of creative potential - since Man may become a creator in the same sense as God - but a difference of relationship. An earthly Father and his Son may be of the same nature, but the Father remains the father.

Thus: For Mormonism, relationship has an ultimate, vital and structuring metaphysical role.

This is an essentially unique attribute of Mormonism (unshared with any non-Christian religion and un-shared with any pre-Mormon Christian heresy) and this needs to be understood if Mormon theology is to be understood.

I have very often used Owen Barfield's categories to describe the evolution of consciousness over the past three years. These are Original Participation (OP), the Consciousness Soul (CS) and Final Participation (FP).

However, I have not been happy about the actual names, which are partly uninformative and, as I now have come to feel, somewhat inaccurate.

Original Participation is not truly a participation in reality and creation because it is a passive and unconscious state. The Consciousness Soul (this term comes from Steiner, rather than Barfield) is simply uninformative. And  the term 'Final' in Final Participation is not descriptive - but rather it informs us that this is the qualitative mode of divine consciousness, and therefore no further evolution (except quantitatively) is possible.

So I will be trying-out a new set of terms: Original Immersion, Detached Agency and Agent Participation.


This refers to the original state of consciousness for Man. Original in the sense of its being both the mode of consciousness of young children, and also of early tribal man - foragers/ hunter-gatherers.

It is a state of passive and unconscious immersion in reality - 'animistic', regarding the world as alive and conscious.

There is little in the way of a separate self - therefore little in the way of agency. The content of thought is mostly caused.

The child's thinking is therefore essentially a consequence, rather than being internally-generated. So, the child is not 'creative' - does not originate or generate thinking. 

It is also something of a 'twilight' state, in some ways intermediate between the awake and asleep state of modern Western adults - and a modern adult can experience Original Immersion in some altered states of consciousness such as trances, delirium and certain 'drugged' states and psychosis (for example).


This refers to the characteristic state of consciousness of an awake, alert, modern Western Man.

Our self is detached from the world, observing it through the senses; and we are strongly aware of this separate self and its agency in thinking.

The evolutionary step is in agency - thinking becomes a primary cause, self-caused: thinking emerges-from the self intrinsically. Thinking need not be a consequence of external factors.

With detached agency, Man becomes creative - originates thinking. However, this thinking is at the level of ideas and imaginations. These thought must be translated into the external world - by 'actions'. And actions are known only via sensory perceptions.

Therefore in the stage of the process is indirect. Thinking does Not participate in reality 

Initially the self may feel cut-off, and doubt the reality of the world ('solipsism'); and ultimately - by inference - may doubt its own reality.

The agent self experiences the world as perceptual/ sensory input that is made-sense-of by reasoning - i.e. a matter of facts and theories. Thus is it is literalistic, scientistic, materialist and reductionist. Reality is dead/ not-alive.

There is no experience of objective meaning nor purpose nor relationships: these are just theories.
Subjectivity is the dominant experience; objectivity is conceptualised sensation.


The thinking of the creative and agent self participates in reality - directly. This is the divine mode of thinking.

That is, thinking is real, and reality is thought - and there is a unity, no separation - therefore reality is changed (expanded) by thinking.

So, with Agent Participation, the Man directly knows reality - not indirectly via senses and reason or facts and theories. Direct knowing means there is no mediation, which means that there is unity.

For a divinity, reality is 'made' by thought; and known directly because the reality is the divine thought.

However, Agent Participation is partial, from a perspective. Thus some of reality is known directly, and creativity has also a limited scope. 

Thus, in Agent Participation, everything than can be thought is real - but only some things can be thought. Everything than can be thought is known - only some things can be thought.

And in Agent Participation with respect to creativity: everything that can be thought is original, uncaused and self-generated (although, naturally, it may and probably will use the existing knowledge of that self).

Everything that can be thought is participated-in, and therefore this thinking is directly creative (without mediation) - but only some things can be thought and only some kinds of creativity are possible.


The idea is that scheme describes the (ideal) development of a child to an adult who is divine - being a son or daughter of God: Original Imersion being young childhood, transforming to Detached Agecy at Adolescence. Most modern men are arrested at this adolescence of consciousness, but almost all will have periods of Agent Participation - even though they may be brief, feeble, and not taken seriously.

The scheme also describes the development of human society from earliest Man through modern Man to the divinely destined future of man. And it describes states of consciousness which we each may move-between - even during one day of our lives.

But the main 'lesson' or value of these categories is that Agent Participation is what we ought to - and need to aim at in our lives - as indeed the primary aim of a Christian.

In other words, these categories are a description of spiritual progression, theosis, sanctification or divinisation. Therefore, Agent Participation cannot be achieved except insofar as a person is Good and motivated by Love.

Because to participate-in creation is to participate in the loving work of God, it is the most profound alliance-with God.

Hence the absolute nature of the first and second commandments: Love of God, and of Neighbour (our neighbour being our co-participant). Only thus may creation proceed.


Note: These three states are - strictly speaking - 'polarities' in the sense that although they can be objectively distinguished (as above) they cannot be fully separated or detached one from another. For example, even a young child is not fully without agency or creativity; and certainly some hunter gatherers display these traits at some times.  

In other words, these are extremes or emphases of a unitary process of human consciousness. Any categorical scheme, when applied to a process, can only result in such polarities - because ultimately the unity cannot be divided without destruction of its nature.