Thanks, Marc for the introduction, and for the opportunity to converse with friends old and new at T & S. Before I annoy (at least some of) you with some political reflections, let me run past you some\u00a0thoughts on agency and atonement that occurred to me in trying to teach Religion 121 (Book of Mormon Part 1) to BYU students.\u00a0 I’m not sure I connected with many of themwith these ontological meditations on Second Nephi 2, but I’m hoping somewhere out there in this cyberspace I might find some interested interlocutors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I review the question of agency with reference to 2 Nephi 2, I notice three aspects of a rich and distinctive teaching on agency in the Restored Gospel:<\/p>\n
1) agency is redeemed<\/p>\n
2) agency is bodily & fruitful<\/p>\n
3) agency is a principle of reality<\/p>\n
\u00a01) Agency is Redeemed<\/span><\/p>\n The Fall is finally good news (22-25) because it opens up the possibility of redemption through the Father\u2019s loving sacrifice of His Son.\u00a0 The joy that is offered through the Son\u2019s infinite atoning sacrifice is a joy of infinite possibility, the possibility of acting for ourselves and not being acted upon (v. 26) in the meaningful context of eternal life.\u00a0\u00a0 In the present mortal probation we exercise our agency most fully by responding to this Sacrifice with our own gift of \u201ca broken heart and contrite spirit\u201d (7), and this free response opens the possibility of freedom on another order:\u00a0 we are \u201cfree to choose liberty<\/em> and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men\u2026\u201d<\/em> (27).\u00a0 That is, the exercise of agency in offering our broken heart and contrite spirit \u2013 in repenting and embracing the Atonement \u2013 affords us the possibility of a richer, eternal agency:\u00a0 in this way we are free1<\/sup><\/em> to choose freedom2<\/sup> <\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 This \u201csecond order\u201d freedom might be called \u201credeemed agency.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0This is why we have a doctrine of a \u201cFortunate Fall\u201d (compare Milton\u2019s \u201cfelix culpa\u201d) in which redemption not just a repair, but a new and richer good.\u00a0 Thus the atonement is not merely instrumental or extrinsic to the meaning of freedom; the redemption of agency is intrinsic its very meaning, to the choice of \u201cliberty\u201d itself.<\/p>\n \u00a02) Agency is Bodily and Fruitful.<\/span><\/p>\n Next I notice that the development or unfolding of our agency is somehow deeply connected with our bodiliness and with the powers of procreation.\u00a0 Our \u201cinnocent\u201d state, prior to the possibilities of joy\/misery and good\/sin (23), seems to be associated with man\u2019s pre-procreative condition.\u00a0 \u201cAdam fell that men might be\u2026\u201d (25): The Fall may be seen as a choice to become fruitful and to need redemption.\u00a0 (See J. Holland, Christ & New Covenant<\/em>, p. 204).\u00a0 The eternal meaningfulness of agency seems to be connected at once with its being bought with an infinite sacrifice and with its expression in the generous fecundity of procreation. Thus in Moses 5 Adam, in rejoicing in the redemption, \u201cbegan to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth,\u201d and declares that \u201cagain in the flesh<\/em> I shall see God.\u201d (10)\u00a0 And Eve immediately associates the joy of redeemed agency (\u201cwe should never have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption\u2026\u201d) and eternal life with the possibility of having seed. (11)<\/p>\n (Note then in v. 13 that there occurs what might be called a \u201csecond Fall,\u201d not apparently a necessary consequence of the first, in which men \u201cloved Satan more than God\u201d and became \u201ccarnal, sensual, and devilish.\u201d)<\/p>\n This corporeal quality of agency might be correlated with scriptures in the Doctrine and Covenants that express the eternal significance of our bodiliness: such as: \u201c\u2026spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fullness of joy.\u201d \u2013 93:33.<\/p>\n \u00a03) Agency is a Principle of Reality<\/span><\/p>\n This is a very striking feature of 2 Nephi 2: Without the plan of salvation, directed as it is towards redeemed agency, everything falls apart \u2013 or, in the event, and what comes to the same thing \u2013 everything falls together into \u201ca compound in one\u201d in which \u201call things have vanished away.\u201d\u00a0 (11-12)\u00a0 This seems indeed to indicate that agency is not simply a deep principle of human meaning, but is in fact at the heart of reality, of the very possibility of the Being of beings.\u00a0 The very existence of \u201cthings\u201d as distinct and meaningful, the very heterogeneity of existence could not \u201ccome to light\u201d and thus could not in fact be <\/em>except for beings capable of meaningful (thus, redeemed & fruitful) choices.<\/p>\n \u00a0Agency thus may be understood as the \u201cwonder that is keeping the stars apart\u201d (a strangely evocative phrase from some e.e. cummings poem),the deep meaning that sustains the very \u201cthinginess\u201d of things that allows them to exist and stand forth or shine.<\/p>\n \u00a0It is this third point that offers me a direct point of engagement with the Western philosophical tradition.\u00a0 For it is clear that every significant philosophical standpoint must articulate some connection between human meaning (\u201cethics\u201d) and the way things are (\u201cmetaphysics,\u201d or \u201contology\u201d).\u00a0 My proposition is that nowhere in the philosophical tradition can we find an adequate account of human agency.\u00a0 Every philosophy attempts to articulate human meaning within some understanding of a larger reality, but each finally explains it away or otherwise undermines it.\u00a0 Rather than subjecting human freedom to some prior interpretive scheme, some understanding of being, Redeemed Agency should be considered a guide or a touchstone in seeking philosophical approximations of a truth that will always exceed any philosophical (not to mention scientific) categories.\u00a0 There is no insight more originary than the meaning performed in accepting and freely responding to the gift of Atonement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thanks, Marc for the introduction, and for the opportunity to converse with friends old and new at T & S. Before I annoy (at least some of) you with some political reflections, let me run past you some\u00a0thoughts on agency and atonement that occurred to me in trying to teach Religion 121 (Book of Mormon Part 1) to BYU students.\u00a0 I’m not sure I connected with many of themwith these ontological meditations on Second Nephi 2, but I’m hoping somewhere out there in this cyberspace I might find some interested interlocutors.\u00a0 As I review the question of agency with reference to 2 Nephi 2, I notice three aspects of a rich and distinctive teaching on agency in the Restored Gospel: 1) agency is redeemed 2) agency is bodily & fruitful 3) agency is a principle of reality \u00a01) Agency is Redeemed The Fall is finally good news (22-25) because it opens up the possibility of redemption through the Father\u2019s loving sacrifice of His Son.\u00a0 The joy that is offered through the Son\u2019s infinite atoning sacrifice is a joy of infinite possibility, the possibility of acting for ourselves and not being acted upon (v. 26) in the meaningful context of eternal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12664,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12663\/revisions\/12664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}