The Crux of Our Affairs

Brad Torgersen is a science fiction writer and a devout Mormon. He also supports a woman’s right to choose in the matter of abortion. Most Mormons don’t, as Brad admits on his blog. I don’t either, as even the most occasional reader here has probably figured out in short order. Torgersen’s rationale for supporting abortion rights is one I’ve never run into before. It’s scripture-based but logically faulty and biblically inconsistent, and worth a few minutes to consider.

It revolves around the matter of agency, one of my favorite subjects.

The Importance of Choice

Torgersen believes human agency is extremely important to God, as the following quotations from his post demonstrate:

“[P]reservation of agency — the freedom to choose — is paramount. It is absolutely essential to Christ’s plan.”

“To revoke abortion and criminalize it is to revoke the agency of the woman.”

“Again, I point back to the foundational doctrine of my faith: Christ came down on the side of agency, so that all men and women would bear the burden of their own choices; their own sins. If we decide to remove agency on the part of women to do what they choose with their own bodies, it seems a violation of that foundational doctrine.”

“If agency really is the crux of our affairs on Earth — and I believe it is, based on all that I have read and learned of my doctrine — then agency must be protected. Even if it means protecting abortion. Because the sin of abortion is the lesser sin — to my mind — than the sin of enforced morality.”

There’s more, but this serves as a fair representation of Brad’s views on the subject. You can read the whole thing here if you’re interested.

A Tentative Agreement

The scriptural basis for Brad’s love of agency is highly dubious, a muddle of LDS doctrine and allusions to things the Bible actually teaches (the casting out of Lucifer and so on) that I could spend a post dismantling if I were inclined. I’m not, because I completely agree with his conclusion that giving humans freedom of choice is important to God even if I don’t agree with the weird logic Brad uses to arrive at the same place. I’m not going to offer a more biblical argument for the importance of agency in this post because I’ve made it many times before, and you can read one of those here if you’re interested.

In any case, I’m much less concerned with that part of his argument than the next step, in which he makes unrestrained human agency the single most important thing to God: “absolutely essential”, “paramount”, “the foundational doctrine of my faith” and “the crux of our affairs on Earth”.

Agency Enthroned

If this is not idolatry, it’s as close to it as one can get. Yes, agency is important to God, but to call it the foundational doctrine of the faith or the crux of our affairs on earth is to assign freedom of choice a level of priority in God’s plans and purposes way beyond anything reasonable. The Bible states no such thing in plain language, or else the centuries-long divine determinism debate would have been a non-starter even for John Calvin. At best, we infer the importance of agency from other truths, such as the existence of the lake of fire despite God’s preference that none perish, or from God’s fondness for using delegated authorities. We get it from the fact that when mankind fell, our world fell with us, or from observing that God prefers to use persuasion over power most of the time. All these features of God’s dealings with us point us toward the reality of human agency rather than a deterministic view, but most Christians would simply see human agency as one of many methods through which God accomplishes his purpose, rather than the crux of our affairs on earth.

If you want to talk about a crux, how about a purpose scripture does state plainly, like uniting all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth? That’s what you call a crux. Preserving human agency is just a means to an end that allows God to unite all things in Christ without resorting to puppetmastery or micromanagement of the universe in the process.

Three Quick Points

Let me just make three quick points in response to Brad’s pro-abortion agency argument:

1. One can support the concept of agency and agree it is important without enshrining agency in the matter of abortion as a right. The step from “agency is good in principle” to “Women must be free to choose this option” simply does not follow. Lots of things are good and biblically supportable that we don’t enshrine as human rights. Equally, many things these days that are protected rights are not good — say, for example, protecting the newly minted right of a self-identified trans woman not to be offended or excluded at the expense of a biological women’s safety and/or comfort. Examples may be multiplied.
2. Freedom to choose is significant to the Lord, but it is neither limitless nor consequence-free. Since Torgersen introduced Lucifer into the equation, consider Lucifer’s fate during the millennial reign of Christ: bound with chains and hurled into a bottomless pit for 1,000 years. That definitely involves limiting his agency. Again, the existence of Hades points to a time in every man or woman’s life when, potentially at least, their agency will be severely curtailed, though weeping and the gnashing of teeth are still permitted. Finally, the Law of Moses reminds us that while agency was always important to the Lord, it was only important up to a point. Beyond that point, the privilege of agency was to be withdrawn permanently from those who violated the law in various ways, among them murder, kidnapping, child sacrifice, rape, witchcraft, blasphemy, false prophecy, profaning the Sabbath, violence against father or mother, adultery, bestiality, homosexuality and perjury. In short, agency in scripture is neither consequence-free nor limitless; God has always placed reasonable boundaries on it. Those who overstep will ultimately forfeit their agency.
3. Other than in the case of capital punishment, laws do not remove agency. All laws do is provide volitional beings with an incentive not to exercise our agency in a particular area and under particular conditions, one that is perfectly reasonable and which Brad accepts unquestioningly in every other area of life. This feature of the legal system can be readily observed in the fact that, despite laws against all manner of human choices, men and women opt to violate them all the time, and many get away with it for now at least. Laws against abortion have never stopped women seeking or obtaining abortions, they merely discouraged them from doing so in current numbers because there was a potential cost attached to the action if they were caught by those ordained by God to do the job of doling out consequences in this life for the destructive use of human agency.

In Summary

Why Brad Torgersen believes the right to end the life of an inconvenient unborn child should exist when there is no corresponding right to terminate an equally inconvenient adult remains a mystery. Brad accepted limitations on his own agency when in the military, including the violation of his person by the authorities under which he operated. He candidly writes, “I’ve never been much bothered by vaccines mostly because the military doesn’t give you a choice, and when they say it’s time to get stuck, you go get stuck.”

If such limitations on agency are acceptable in every other area of life, there is no magical reason a woman’s desire to control her own body for something less than nine months of her adult life should be the solitary exception, especially when the alternative involves ending the existence (and all prospect of precious agency) of another human being.