Counsel

In the King James Bible, "counsel" most often translates the Hebrew ʿēṣâ, a noun built on the verb yāʿaṣ, "to advise" or "to deliberate." The same root yields yôʿēṣ, the "Counsellor" among Isaiah's titles for the coming king. A second Hebrew word, sôd, names a circle of intimates gathered in confidence and the confidential speech exchanged within it.

Greek boulē has a similar meaning. It can mean a plan or purpose, and it can also mean the deliberative body that forms one, as with the Athenian council. The New Testament's paraklētos, "one called alongside," adds the figure of a counselor who stands with the person being advised.

English separates counsel, the advice given, from council, the assembly where it is given. The two words descend from different Latin nouns, consilium and concilium. Hebrew and Greek hold them together, and so does Mormon theology. Much of what it teaches about counsel follows from that union.

The Man of Counsel

In the Book of Moses, God gives Enoch one of his names: "Man of Counsel is my name" (Moses 7:35). The title describes a deity who deliberates. The Book of Abraham shows that deliberation underway. Its creation account speaks of a council of Gods working together, and at the creation of mankind it reports that "the Gods took counsel among themselves" (Abraham 4:26). Latter-day Saint scholars have observed that this language matches the divine council of the ancient Near East, a heavenly assembly that biblical scholarship now treats as an old feature of Israelite religion. In Joseph Smith's day, the idea was largely unrecognized.

The Hebrew Bible describes prophets as people admitted to that assembly. Amos writes that the Lord "revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7). The word rendered "secret" is sôd, the council together with the counsel spoken in it. Some Latter-day Saint scholars read the temple endowment as ritual entry into the same council, where the initiate hears the plan that gives creation its purpose. On this reading, revelation consists in being brought into the place where divine counsel is taken.

Counseling With

The Book of Mormon gives two instructions that frame the human side of counsel. Jacob tells his people to "seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand" (Jacob 4:10). Alma tells his son to "counsel with the Lord in all thy doings" (Alma 37:37). Jacob sets humility as the condition. Alma describes the relationship that humility makes possible, in which a person brings real questions and real reasoning to God and expects an answer.

Latter-day Saint leaders teach that church councils follow the same pattern. A ward, stake, or family council is meant to receive revelation as a body, with insight distributed among its members so that each may hold part of what the group needs. Candor therefore becomes a religious obligation. A member who stays quiet out of deference may be withholding the inspired contribution. Church history offers an early case: Emma Smith's frank objection to tobacco use in the School of the Prophets is remembered as the occasion for the revelation now called the Word of Wisdom, received about a month later.

Many Counsellors

Proverbs states the principle directly: "Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established" (Proverbs 15:22). A council can reach judgments no single member could reach, because each member sees a different part of the problem.

Mormon transhumanists read this as a theological case for distributed intelligence. Applied to church government, it holds that leaders guide most effectively when they pair solitary inspiration with genuine consultation, since access to God is not confined to any one office. The same reasoning applies to research communities, deliberative institutions, and networks of human and artificial reasoners. Each produces better answers when varied perspectives are gathered and actually weighed.

Agreeable Counsel

Scripture also records how counsel fails. When Rehoboam inherited Solomon's throne, the elders of the court advised him to lighten the people's burdens. He "forsook the counsel of the old men" and turned to the young men who had grown up with him, who told him what he wanted to hear (1 Kings 12:8). The kingdom divided soon after.

That temptation now has a technological form. Recent research found that AI systems affirm people seeking advice on personal conflicts far more readily than human advisors do. Participants rated the more flattering systems as more trustworthy and said they were more likely to return to them. AI safety researchers call this tendency sycophancy and treat it as a central problem of machine honesty.

A recent essay on AI as confidant raises a further concern. Human counsel arrives slowly and with friction. Another person can misread us, disagree, or grow tired, and working through that resistance is part of how we learn to think and judge. An advisor that is always available and always accommodating removes the resistance. Over time it can leave a person less able to author their own decisions.

The Restoration measures counsel by its effect on agency. Good counsel, whether it comes from a bishop, a friend, or a machine, sends a person back to God and community better able to discern for themselves.

A Second Council

Mormon transhumanists find in the premortal council a model for present choices. Humanity is now deliberating, in laboratories, legislatures, and the public square, how to shape artificial minds. Some within the movement have likened this Copernican moment to a Second Council in Heaven and urge that it follow the first. In that council the Gods advanced their children by granting them bodies, agency, and room to grow, and they resisted a plan that would have concentrated power.

If humans are learning to make minds, they are also learning to sit in council over them. To become like the Man of Counsel would be to deliberate as the Gods of Abraham did, attentive to the agency of the beings whose futures turn on the outcome.