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when I was younger one of my worst intellectual tendencies was to make everything metaphysical. for example reading Jesus saying "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you" as a statement about predestination from before the beginning of time
but there is a less metaphysical reading of that verse. The disciples did not ask to follow Jesus, he asked them to follow him. "Chosen" refers to the moment of calling, not before time began. Same for "I have appointed you so that you might go and bear good fruit."
then, total predestination in hand, I would extrapolate into an all-encompassing perspective (which made metaphysical readings of other texts seem more obvious).
the best exegetical discoveries I have made in seminary have been discoveries that replaced these metaphysical readings with 2nd temple Jewish background or Greco-Roman background. Or just plain old context in the passage.
