This week on Things Unseen, we've slowed down on the breakneck speed of last week when we took a helicopter tour of the whole of Paul's letter to the Romans.

And this week we're going back to visit just one of the sites, Romans chapter

8, verse 30, and it's four big words, predestination, calling, justification and glorification.

Let's start with predestination. It means deciding on a destiny, deciding the destination of the journey, and doing that

before it actually begins. I think I've referred before to my old church history professor

in university. He didn't publish much, but he did write a book on the Scottish reformer John Knox. And one of its chapters

is on John Knox's teaching on predestination. In fact, the one real work of theology that

John Knox wrote was on the subject of predestination. As I recall, in that chapter my professor

said something like this.

The Bible is a book about predestination.

I recall how that simple sentence arrested my attention.

Of course.

God didn't just let creation happen.

That's an idea that's nonsensical.

I mean, it's nonsense.

God planned it.

That is to say, he predestined it.

He had a plan even before he created anything.

The cosmos didn't one day think to himself,

it would be a good idea if I existed, did it? That's a laughably

incoherent idea. But God's purposes, his plans, his predestination, involves more than the

original creation. It includes our existence, doesn't it? That wasn't our decision, was it? Not do we believe our existence

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