Free Will and Predestination
The theme of the Bible, from start to finish, is that man is free to choose good or evil. Adam and Eve were free to choose to obey God or to disobey him. Their choice carried with it consequences. Obedience would have meant immortality and fellowship with God. Disobedience brought alienation and death.
Joshua challenged the Hebrews to "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve..." (Josh. 24:15). Jesus says to all men, "Come unto me" (Matt. 11:28). This implies that we are able to do so. It would have been cruel for him to invite us to come knowing that we were incapable of doing so.
The idea that man is without free will seems to have originated with Augustine in the 4th century. John Calvin, the father of the Presbyterian and Reformed churches, adopted his teaching. Calvin's idea was that man has no free will. We are born sinners and cannot escape that reality. Some are predestined by God to be saved and others to be damned. Their destiny is not based on anything they have done or may do, but on God's sovereign decision to do so. That doctrine said, that man is so dead in sin that he cannot even believe or want to be saved unless God chooses to send the Holy Spirit into his heart and thus enable him to desire salvation and believe. So severe was this doctrine in days past that even folks who went to church, lived virtuous lives and desperately prayed for salvation were taught they could not be saved unless God had elected them and would send them a miraculous sign of his acceptance.
Most churches with historical links to Calvin have abandoned the strict application of his teaching and rightly so. Remember every commandment in the Bible implies that man is capable of obeying or disobeying it. In everyday life we all know that we have the freedom to make our own choices. You are free to buy a Ford or a Chevy, to order steak or shrimp. The same is true in the spiritual realm. The New Testament closes with an invitation, "And the Spirit and the bride say Come... he that will, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. 22:17).
As to predestination, this is another of the foundational doctrines of Calvinism. It too came from the mind of Augustine. Calvin taught what is often described as particular predestination. That is, God has predestines every particular of our lives. You can see how this ties in with his doctrine denying that man has free will. If God has predestined every thing, then man can choose nothing.
We will see that the Bible does not teach particular predestination. This erroneous doctrine appears to be taught in the King James Version's rendering of Rom. 8:29-30 & Eph. 1:5,11. That translation, done is 1611 was done by men, most of whom were disciples of John Calvin's doctrinal system. We would not deny that God can and sometimes does predestine certain things to happen. Yet we have seen that God endows all of us with freewill.
The solution is seen in Acts 13:48. "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed." God ordained, even before the world was formed, that sinners could and would be saved if they believed on his Son, Jesus. When we come have to faith in Christ then we are among those whom he ordained or predestined to eternal life. Rather than ordain that a particular person be saved and a particular person be lost, God ordained that any man who would believe in Christ could be saved and any that denied Christ would be lost (John 8:24).