predestination vs freewill

There is a tension in my mind in attempt to grasp these. If there is freewill, it means your actions determine your outcome. If there is predestination, it means no matter what you do, you cant alter the outcome. But both above are mentioned in bible, which contradicts one another. Someone pls enlighten me thanks.

One is predestined once they are "in Christ." My destination has been determined, the adoption is going to happen now that I am in Christ. How did I get in Christ? By believing the gospel of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ for my sins.

Predestination is a beautiful doctrine when you allow Scripture to define it.

@John you didn answer my qus directly. Bible did say God has chosen some people to be saved, didnt mention all. So my question is, if these chosen ones are going to heaven after accepting Christ, does that mean that their subsequent actions will not alter this outcome of entering heaven? And if that happens, what is the purpose of freewill?

Agreed, the "tension" we feel on the matter is largely derived from our modern conflation of predestination with determinism and real free will with an absolute and abstract natural right paradigm.

There is a reason why philosophy ought have remained the handmaiden of theology and not the other way around.

So...tempted. I'll let John146 answer and chime in if I must.

He was addressed directly and seems to be a greater mind than me.

As far as Christianity is concerned ones beliefs and who One trusts determines the their eternal outcome..

God can predetermine because God has foreknowledge of all History.. Down to knowing each and every human beings response to His will before they even existed... This does not take away our free will.. We live in the here and now of universe space and universe time.. God is not bound by either universe time or space.. Indeed God existed before the universe and created the Universe so He is not and never will be dependent or bound by the laws of the universe.. So God can see all our times from His eternal perspective.. God knows the Beginning and the End....

So both our free will and Gods predestination exist together... They can exist together because God being God is not bound by His creation...

And they must exist concurrently if we rely totally upon scripture.

But again, terms and definitions are all-important.

"""""@John you didn answer my qus directly. Bible did say God has chosen some people to be saved, didnt mention all."""""

Yes God has chosen some to be saved .. from his foreknowledge of them..

Romans 8:KJV
29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

There are no idol words in scripture.. His Foreknowing comes before his predestination in the verse for a reason..

@Desdi I dont get what you mean. I dont understand those terms, can you bring your msg down to my level? Simple english expalnations?

The fact that He knows ahead, whats the piont of giving us freewill that wont alter the outcome anyway? Isnt it like a false sense of freewill?

John146 said it correctly but a person would have to define free will in respect to a new creature ,Christian. To them free will is to do the will of God.(the father) Man lost that in the garden when he did the will of the father of lies. Rather than doing the pleasure of the will who created him he did the pleasure of Satan.

By doing the will of God we are in effect eating the meat of the word.The spiritual food that was hidden from the apostles in the parable .Where drinking the milk of the word... it teaches us God is gracious.The grace of God is our teacher.

In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat?J Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.Joh 4:34

It is a not a contradiction. Let me give you an example...

Say I'm standing in front of train tracks. I see a train coming up fast. Right before it passes me I KNOW that it WILL pass me. Now does my knowing this before it happens mean that the driver of that train did not have a free will choice to drive that train? Of course not.

Or again, if I hear the cookie jar rattle in the other room, I know I when I enter that room I will find a cookie in my daughter's mouth. I knew before she put the cookie in her mouth that she would, does that mean it was not her free will choice or actions? No.

Yes God knows all things, even before they happen. But just because He knows what we will choose does not mean we did not have a choice to make.

We must understand God knows everything that we will do from birth to death. God has Predestined everybody to accept Him as their Lord and Savior. God knew even before He created anything that Adam and Eve will sin.

God knows if you will accept Him or Reject Him even before you were born. Does this change our choosing or rejecting of Him? No, it does not.

Predestined means God chose you first. You did not chose God first. Does this violate your free will? No, it does not. You still have the choice to chose Him after He calls you, or reject Him. Just because God knows what you will do does not violate your free will. You still have your free will to chose what you want.

Your actions do determine what happens to you, but God knew before He created anything what you will do.

Its like us watching a movie and seeing what happens in the end. Does this alter how the movie ends if you watch it again? No.

We have the free will to accept or reject God. God has predestined those who He knows will accept Him to accept Him. So yes we still have free will.

Yeah. There have been changes in philosophy over the years that blind us to what Free Will and Predestination actually mean.

Predestination is a chiefly a concept dealing with God's salvation and redemption of Man.

Determinism is the idea that everything is pre-determined. This concept eludes the entire concept of free will and can have many different sources (biological determinism, theological determinism, sociological determinism). Determinism as we know it is actually a fairly modern concept though people have held it to varying degrees.

The Biblical concept of Free Will has been distorted by more radical elements of humanism. In our modern world we've canonized it, equating political freedom with an absolutized free will we actually do not have as humans, especially as believers. Particularly in Western churches.

This makes any discussion on Predestination as the Bible describes it difficult to say the least. The seeming contradiction isn't as stark when we leave our post-Enlightenment baggage at the door and do what the Reformers did- read the text in its proper context.

So we can make our own choice in regard to His will.. Just because He already knows if we are going to accept His will or reject His will does not mean we are unable to make that choice.. For His judgement of humanity to be Justified We must have the free will to either embrace the will of God as truth and good or reject the will of God as lies and evil.... Whilst we can never conform and do the will of God 100% because we are faulty human beings with a sin problem we can still believe that Gods will is good and true and trust in His solution to our sin problem..

The next scripture hints at the reality of the break between our time and Gods time..

2 Peter 3:KJV
8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Note it does not just leave it as One God day is as 1000 years to us.. But it says also that 1000 years are as one day to us.. Gods time is totally un-geared to our universe time..

I must be off to bed IVON i am in Australia and it is 1.20AM ...time goes by so fast when your having fun..

Sleepy sleeps in Aussieland.

@Trail, like the train scenario you gave... It makes some sense but not to a full extent. You see, if we were to use ur train example as comparison, its in a way that saying God has predestined the train driver to drive that train on the track that God has already laid ahead right? Then no matter what the train driver does, he still has to go pass that track God has laid for him. Ok then you will say train driver drvie still has freewill isn it? Because he can choose to brake the train, then here is the problem, what is the point for God to predestine something then if it will not work 100% or it still has to depend on the person's accomodating action to make it work?

"Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." (2 Timothy 2:19)

There are two matter's to this seal of God; first that He knows them that belong to Him, which makes it clear concerning predestination (Ephesians 1); secondly part of departing from iniquity is demanded by Christ to anyone that would follow Him and belong to Him, that we must deny ourselves, which is to deny our own will. (Matthew 16:24) Note: departing from iniquity is not just one single thing, but many.