Intelligences — What You Were Before You Were Born
You were not created from nothing — your eternal core is co-eternal with God.
The Standard Account of Creation — And Its Problem
The dominant Christian tradition holds that God created the universe ex nihilo — out of nothing. Before God spoke, there was nothing. No matter, no energy, no souls. God brought everything into existence from an absolute void. This is the classical view, hammered out by theologians in the early centuries of Christianity, and it carries enormous weight in Western thought.
But ex nihilo creation is not taught in the Bible. The word "bara" used in Genesis does not require creation from nothing — it simply means to create or fashion. The doctrine of creation from absolute nothing was systematized by theologians, not derived from scripture. And it creates a serious philosophical problem: if you were created from nothing, what is the ground of your agency? How can something that did not exist choose?
The Latter-day Saint position is different, and it comes directly from scripture revealed through Joseph Smith. It answers the problem of agency by locating something in you that was never created — and therefore never had a beginning.
What the Scriptures Actually Say
The Doctrine and Covenants contains one of the most philosophically significant statements in all of Latter-day scripture:
D&C 93:29–30
“Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as an agency unto itself; and inasmuch as any being sheddeth light and thine own understanding, this taketh away thy freedom.”
Intelligence was not created or made — and cannot be. Man was in the beginning with God. These are not soft claims. They are direct, unambiguous statements that something in you is eternal — not because God made it eternal, but because it simply is eternal. It had no beginning. It will have no end.
Abraham 3:18
“Howbeit that he made the greater star; as, also, if there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other, yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal.”
Spirits — and the intelligences that underlie them — have no beginning. The word used is gnolaum, an ancient Hebrew-derived term meaning eternal in both directions — without beginning, without end. You did not start. You will not stop.
What Is an Intelligence?
The scriptures do not give a detailed philosophical definition of “intelligence,” and Latter-day theologians have discussed the concept extensively. What is clear from Abraham 3 and D&C 93 is this: intelligence is the eternal, self-existing core of a person — the capacity to act, to know, to grow, and to choose — that existed before God organized it as a spirit.
Some Latter-day thinkers understand intelligences as distinct, individual self-existing entities before the spirit creation. Others understand the term as referring to the light of truth as a general substance from which spirits were organized. The scriptures permit both readings without fully resolving the question. What is not debated is the core claim: something in you is eternal and uncreated.
God did not create you from nothing. He organized, nurtured, and glorified what was already there. That is a different relationship between Creator and creature than anything classical theology imagines.
The Three Stages: Intelligence, Spirit, Mortal
Your existence, as taught in the restored gospel, has moved through at least three stages — and is moving toward more:
The Stages of Existence
- Intelligence — The eternal, uncreated core of your being; co-eternal with God
- Spirit — Your intelligence organized as a spirit child of Heavenly Father; you grew and developed in the pre-mortal life
- Mortal — Your spirit clothed in a physical body; the test of mortality
- Resurrected — Spirit and body permanently, inseparably joined; the glory of eternal life
Abraham 3 describes God seeing the intelligences before the world was, ranking them by their light and truth, and choosing the noble and great ones for particular missions. You were seen in that primordial state. God knew you before you were organized as a spirit child.
Abraham 3:22
“Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones.”
The intelligences were organized — arranged, developed, nurtured — before the world was. This is not a passive creation from nothing. It is an active process of development. God worked with what was there. What was there was you.
Why This Reshapes the Question of Free Will
Classical theology has wrestled for centuries with how a God who created everything, including your will, can hold you accountable for choices made with that will. If God made you — will, desires, nature, and all — from nothing, then in what sense did you choose independently of what He built into you?
The Latter-day answer is the doctrine of intelligences. Your agency is not a gift God built into a creature. Your agency is older than your relationship with God. It predates your spirit birth. It is the eternal light of truth that D&C 93 says cannot be created or destroyed. God did not give you agency — He found it in you, developed it, and invites you to use it to become like Him.
This is why Latter-day theology can speak with confidence about moral accountability. You are not a puppet whose strings were set before you existed. You are an eternal being who has been choosing since before mortality, since before your spirit birth, since the first moment of your uncreated existence.
You Are Eternal — What That Means
If you were created from nothing, your eternal life is something God grants you by special dispensation — a gift that could in principle be revoked, since it was given. Your existence is contingent in both directions: it started, and only God's continued will keeps it going.
If your intelligence is co-eternal with God, that changes everything. Your existence is not contingent. It is not on loan. The core of what you are has always been and will always be. God did not create you — He begat you, organized you, and is now glorifying you. The relationship is parental in the most literal sense: not a craftsman and a product, but a Father and a child who shares, in embryo, the same eternal nature.
That is what makes the invitation to become like God not arrogance, but family resemblance. Not theft, but inheritance. Not heresy, but the oldest truth there is.
You have always existed. You will always exist. What matters now is what you are choosing to become.