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Hmmmm...very mechanistic world isn't it? Kinda like a clock...or maybe a puppet? ~ Vernon

You argue and react like a rebellious brat that needs a good spanking.

The stripping of predestination and election of their full force of meaning does not accomplish what the Arminian wishes. Indeed, he is left with the same difficulty. If God knows what I am going to do, whether or not the cause of my action is His preordination, then it must be certain that I will perform that action, make that decision, speak those words, etc. The Arminian, then, is faced with the same lack of freedom that he finds so abhorrent in the concepts of predestination and election. The only difference is that, when he strips the LORD of sovereignty in election, he has now lost not only his freedom, but also the very existence of a completely sovereign God.

I think it educational to see that this is exactly what galls Greg Boyd:
I believe the impossibility of changing the past is one of the strongest philosophical arguments showing the incompatibility of libertarian free will and EDF. Let three things be granted:

a) the past by logical necessity cannot be changed;

b) we are not free in relation to what we cannot change; and

c) we cannot change God’s knowledge (which, by definition, is perfectly accurate).

According to the classical view, from these three premises it follows that humans can be no more free regarding any future event (including their own chosen actions) than they are regarding any past event. For, if God possesses EDF, among the totality of things at any given moment in the past which we cannot change are the facts of all our future actions.
My, my, but don't he chafe against His light burden. Here is some more Greg Boyd on the Libertarian free will.
P1) Self-determination means that the self determines its actions, or it has no clear meaning. Regarding any genuinely free act, in other words, by definition the free agent ultimately determined that an action within the category of possibilities (“possibly this or possibly that”) would become something within the category of actualities (“certainly this and certainly not that.”)

P2) Retroactive causality does not occur.

P3) Hence, the determinateness given to an action by a self-determining agent cannot precede that agent’s self-determination (let alone eternally precede it!). Conclusion: The determinateness of the acts which an agent self-determines cannot exist before the agent gives these acts determinateness. Hence the determinateness of such acts are not there to be known by God or anyone else as anything other than possibilities prior to the agent’s act of self-determination (let alone an eternity prior!).
So, IOW, in order for the will to be free in any sense of how the Arminian uses it, you must first strip God of His Omniscience and reduce Him to the sad pathetic caricature of Greg Boyd. Either the determinate ness of your actions comes from you, in which case you are self-determining, or it does not, in which case God is the determiner of your actions. If the determinate ness of your actions proceeds you in eternity, then it is certain that God, not you, has written your book. Greg Boyd sees this as crystal clear as we Calvinists. Whereas we Calvinists have chosen to fall down and worship our Maker, Greg Boyd has decided to shake his fist at God.

But, it is a certainty that you must choose whether you will fall into "free will theism" and concede that if your actions were known by God before the first word of creation was ever spoken (Omniscience) and He had freedom of action (Omnipotence) to either create you the way He saw you or choose to create you differently, then it is certain that you will act and behave exactly as you were foreseen to be. Hence, no self-determining "free will."

The only difference between you and Greg Boyd is that he is not afraid to take his Arminianism to its logical end. You are. You have a cowardly Arminianism, not up to half the standard of even Wesley, who himself was a Middle Knowledge Molinist or the disciples of Arminius himself, who were also Middle Knowledge Molinists.

Here is some more of your wonderful Arminian thought on the Omniscience of God and "free will."
"Obviously God must know all things that can be known and know them truly. To be able to know all that can be known is a dimension of God's power….omniscience need not mean exhaustive foreknowledge of all future events. If that were its meaning, the future would be fixed and determined, much as is the past. Total knowledge of the future would imply a fixity of events. Nothing in the future would need to be decided. It also would imply that human freedom is an illusion, that we make no difference and are not responsible." ~ Clark Pinnock, The Openness of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 121

"It would seriously undermine the reality of our decisions if they were known in advance, spelled out in a heavenly register and absolutely certain to happen. It would make the future fixed and certain and render illusory the sense of our making choices between real options…This implies that God learns things…If this matter of God's learning surprises anyone, be reminded that simple foreknowledge also implies that God learns from what creatures do. I am not speaking in a temporal sense now but in the sense that part of what God knows depends on what creatures do." ~ Ibid., 123-4.
Wee doggies, but I wouldn't want to be any of these "free will theists."

Now that your Arminianism has been exposed, I will now proceed to thrash your original complaint. Because there is a Sovereign, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Creator of the human will, and is, thus its first cause, there can be no such thing as a self-determining "free will." Everything stems from a first cause, just exactly as Alamo-Girl said.

Grant God’s perfect Foreknowledge of All Potentialities, and Sovereign Freedom of Action, and you have just given the Calvinist the entirety of the debate. For if God, alone in Eternity, perfectly Foreknows all possible Creations, and perfectly Foreknows the operations of Free Will in each, from Beginning to End, and with Sovereign Freedom of Action Wills (first cause) to give Actuality to the Creation of His choosing, then simply by the Act of Creation, He has Predestined all that will occur in that Creation -- having chosen to give Actuality to That One, in preference to all other Potential Creations which He could have willed into existence instead.

Grant God’s Omniscience -- that is, not only His perfect Foreknowledge of all that Is and Will Be within the context of Creation, but also, Alone in Eternity, having not yet spoken Light into existence, His perfect Foreknowledge of All Potentialities -- i.e., Alone in Eternity, God’s perfect Foreknowledge of an infinite number of possible Creations, His perfect foreknowledge of the operations of Free Will in each and every possible Creation, from Beginning to End.

This is not to deny God’s capacity for Miraculous Intervention, for we worship a dynamic, Living God; but it does establish that God’s Interventions are themselves Predestined by Him from the Beginning, for He has Foreknown all possible Creations, and could have given Actuality to a Creation in which He would not intervene, or would intervene differently; But He Sovereignly Willed to give Actuality to the Creation (foreknown from beginning to end) which He chose, including therein His Foreknowledge of all Interventions which He would Effect.

Grant God’s Omniscience and Omnipotence, and the Augustinian/Calvinist will win the debate at its very root, every time. The Pelagian heretics knew this, which is exactly why they sought to deny God’s Omniscience -- they rightly knew it to be the anvil upon which Augustine would break them! And so it is with the ("Arminian") Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heretics infesting the Church of Christ today.

It remains only to be seen if you will figure out that you can't get where you want to be theologically as long as God is still Omniscient and Omnipotent.

However, all of this talk about the human will entirely avoids the crux of the real issue anyway. Man's fate is not determined by his will. I think it should be obvious, given all that I have clearly demonstrated regarding the LORD's freedom of choice, but, to the scriptures we go:

For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For I allow not that which I do: for what I would, that do I not: but what I hate, that I do. If I do then that which I would not, I consent to the Law, that it is good. Now then, it is no more I, that do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know, that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing: for to will is present within me: but I find no means to perform that which is good.
(Rom 7:14-18 GB)
To be quite honest, this single verse alone shipwrecks ANY theology which purports man to be self-determining as to his eternal destiny. For to will is present within me: but I find no means to perform that which is good.

It is doomed. Your Titanic is sinking underneath you and you don't even know that it is beyond repair. Paul specifically states that the willing is present. But, even granting that will, Paul still testifies that he does what he does not will to do and doesn't do what he specifically wills to do.

Man's will is NOT the agency which determines his eternal fate. Paul has spelled it out in simple ABC's.

Woody.