Comments on: Devils and their agency

By: rob osborn

rob osborn — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 07:34:19 +0000

I believe that agency= liberty to make choices and then act upon them. Imprisonment takes away liberty which in turn takes away ones ability to make choices and act on them. The first thing to go is liberty.

For a man to even have agency he must be reasonably free to do so, and a prisoner is not reasonably free to do that.

By: Mark Butler

Mark Butler — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 08:35:45 +0000

Rob, you have just described taking away ones liberty. Agency is more than liberty, it includes moral responsibility. i.e. not just to not not break laws, but responsibility to do many good things of ones own free will, as “agents unto oneself”. So indeed imprisonment constrains both agency and liberty, but the former is more than the latter.

By: rob osborn

rob osborn — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:23:55 +0000

the scriptures say that God gave unto man his agency. I believe that you can take away agency which is taking away ones ability to choose and act out what he chooses-= just lock them in a padded room strapped down to a table and pump them full of sedatives all the while against their will!

By: Mark Butler

Mark Butler — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 04:23:09 +0000

Agency != Free Will

Agency is stewardship
Free will is not

Agency is a gift
Free will is not

Agency is inter-personal
Free will is not

Free agency is redundant
All agency entails freedom within certain bounds, like liberty under law, except with the added concept of responsibility.

By: Bret

Bret — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:31:32 +0000

Also, just because a gift is given does not mean it can then be taken away. (We used to call that “Indian giving” back in the innocent days of my youth when I didn’t know any better:)

Anyway, wouldn’t that make God a liar if He did take a gift away? If you can take away a gift, it shouldn’t given that designation. Sure, there are gifts that have conditions before we can have them (i.e. exaltation) but after we gain them, they cannot be taken away. We can give them away (through our agency>:) but they cannot be taken.

By: don

don — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:37:19 +0000

rob, I agree with Bret, that agency is an eternal principle. Where does it say it is a gift? A gift can be given and it can be taken away. I don’t think agency in it’s internal sense can ever be taken away.

Sometimes you can force people to do things physically, so it appears you control their agency, but they have not changed, or agreed to that internally.

You can put me in prison which restricts my physical choices/movements, but you can never take away what I feel, how I think, or who I am.

By: rob osborn

rob osborn — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:48:02 +0000

Agency: The ability and privilege God gives people to choose and to act for themselves.

(Guide to the Scriptures | A Agency.:Entry)

The gift of agency is just that- a gift. It can be taken away though. You can lose your control of that agency by yeilding unto Satan. Sure you use your agency to choose evil, but after so long you no longer are in the drivers seat. Satan usurps your agency from you.

agency is the “ability” to act and choose when “freedom” already exists. A prisoner’s agency is severly limited because his ability to choose has been taken from him to some degree.

Surely if agency is a gift God gives us, it is something we recieve after a certain time just like a child growing up gets more and more agency as he learns knowledge and understanding. Take your 2 year old son- you make him go to church, you make him eat and drink, you even make him obey to some degree. You do this because he lacks the knowledge to understand consequences. You have thus effectivly limited his agency. But when he begins to grow up and learn about things you give him agency or the ability and freedom that he can choose and act for himself with full knowledge of the consequences.

It is with that logic that I state that Adam recieved his agency from Father only after Father had taught him sufficiently and he had matured with age. It was at that point that God realized he could be accountable for his own actions and so therefore he gave adam have the ability to make his own choices in full freedom to do so- this is called agency!

By: Bret

Bret — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:26:42 +0000

So is it safe to say that Agency is an eternal/absolute truth? It cannot be taken away at anytime from an intelligence in their whole existence, even from an omnipotent being? That seems to be the argument and I tend to agree.

The only problem I see is that I don’t think Lucifer would be stupid enough to try to take away something he certianly would have known was impossible to take. The only solution I see to THAT is that his plan was rather to restrict our choices so much so that we could ONLY choose betwen good and good, not good and evil.

By: don

don — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:00:22 +0000

I find it interesting that Satan uses our agency, the very thing he wants to take away or control, to get us to follow him. And no matter what we choose we never eliminate, or lose our agency.

By: Geoff J

Geoff J — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:54:58 +0000

Rob: agency is so closely related to “freedom” that they truly are synonomous.

I don’t think so. Viktor Frankl disagreed as well and he spent time in a Nazi concentration camp. While here on earth one can give away much of his/her free will to things like addictions, but other people can only curtail what some have called a person’s “liberty” — not their freedom to think and be exactly as they choose to think and be. In the end we are judged by what we are and that remains in our control.