Talk:Agency

T&S comment on the post: Notes on the Saturday Afternoon Session http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2010/10/notes-on-the-saturday-afternoon-session/

Mark D. 10/4/2010 at 11:33 pm (Edit)

“Agency”, in the sense we mean it in, has a considerable history of theological usage in circles beyond Mormonism. It is one of the key features of a debate between Arminianism and Calvinism that has been going on for at least four hundred years, and that is almost certainly where we imported the term from.

There appear to be a number of objections to the term “free agency”, perhaps the most persuasive is that “free agency” appears nowhere in the scriptures. Usually it is just “agency”, and in one place it is “moral agency”, but nowhere “free agency”.

The theological objection seems to be the assertion that agency isn’t free, and further involves a great deal more accountability and less license than the term “free agency” tends to imply.