I talked on the phone the other night to my daughter Angelina who is away at university. Her student Christian Union group had stayed so late at someone's house that they missed the last bus.

"How did that happen?" I asked. She answered, "Because we got so involved in discussing the conflict between the Bible's teaching on free will and its teaching on predestination that it got very late."

My reply to that startled her, "There is no conflict because there is no teaching on predestination in the Bible." I anticipated what would be the response and, sure enough, she said, "But what about where it says 'whom He predestined, these He also called'" I replied, "I know that verse well and it isn't about predestination as we usually think of predestination." I then promised to explain this further and the following paragraphs are what I wrote to her.

The belief in a degree of predestination held by some in the Christian Church arises largely from a particular view of a passage in Paul's letter to the Romans.

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

Romans 8:29 - 30 - NKJV

As you see, the New King James Version of the Bible (as well as the traditional King James Version and subsequently a number of other translations) uses some form of the word "predestine" in verses 29 and 30 of Romans chapter 8.

Sadly, the translator's choice of the word "predestined" or "predestinate" has caused many to declare a doctrine of predestination. I say "sadly" because in declaring this doctrine it encourages an abdication of responsibility over where people are heading and, as your student group noted, seems to contradict the Biblical principle of free will. If only those who formed this doctrine had looked deeper. If only they'd considered the context of the scripture passage they were working from.

A deeper look at that scripture passage shows it refers to our destination in Christ. It speaks of the destination God has set forth within His plan for the one whom He saw would choose Christ as their Saviour.

What this means is that those of us who are in Christ have a life destination in Him. God has given us a destination ahead of time for which we have every equipping in Christ Jesus to arrive at.

Such a destination does not imply predestination as we understand it in modern English. In fact it says, "Here's the intended destination, choose it and aim for it." You see then it actually encourages choice. It's a call to exercise free will and reach for the destination God has planned for you.

This whole matter is a good illustration of the dangers of basing a doctrine on a single scripture passage or on one word used in a translation (even if it is the revered King James Version).

Indeed this topic we're looking at is a good one for looking at what makes for good doctrine and by this I'm talking about sound doctrine.

Sound doctrine is always based on the preponderance of scripture. In other words, it is based on what the great bulk of scripture points towards. One or two scriptures do not a sound doctrine make!

(It's worth at this point also recognising that neither is any doctrine a Christian holds sound in him - that is, soundly established in him - if he only has a couple of scripture for it that he can refer to. This reminds me of the protests I heard about a certain relatively recent and now popular Bible translation. They said it so worded certain scriptures that they could no longer use them to support their teaching on salvation. What they missed was that there were an abundance of scriptures still available to them in it. Clearly their little bag of salvation scripture references was not as big as it ought to have been.)

Let me just cover one further aspects of this matter before I end. Advocates of the doctrine of predestination might say that they have another scripture to support their case. They might point to 2 Peter 2:12

These, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption

2 Peter 2:12 - NKJV

Some advocates of this doctrine of predestination point to this scripture and say, "Look those spoken of here were 'made' to be caught and destroyed which like saying God destined them." In saying this they are unwittingly writing in words to the text that aren't there. They are in their minds adding "by God" after the word "made".

We all need to guard against inappropriately adding in words as we read scripture. It is easy to allow the mind to do this. The mind is trained to "fill in the blank spaces" and it tends to use the words that support its own theories when it does this. The word "made" in the scripture above does beg to have words added to it in order to tell us who or what did the making. The context, however, in this case suggests the addition "by their actions" rather than "by God". We then get "like natural brute beasts made (by their actions) to be caught and destroyed."

This scripture from Peter's second letter then is pointing once again at personal responsibility for actions and therefore towards choice in life. It highlights once again man's free will and the responsibility he has in the light of that.

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