Kosta: We are in agreement on this, Irish. I am not sure your Reformed friends here are, but the Orthodox and Catholic most certainly are.***
Irish: I am absolutely positive that most, if not all, of my “reformed” friends agree.
I certainly agree. The comeback is always that the Reformed do not believe in free will. But you and I know that that is only from a certain perspective. What I have found is that our friends cannot or will not accept the idea that free will and God's total sovereignty (control) can exist at the same time. To them, either man is in control of everything to do with himself or God is in control and creates evil. We know that neither of those is true. God is in full control AND man has a measure of free will, depending, as you laid out.
If God determined what out choices will be before the foundation fo the world, then we do not have a measure of free will, FK. We are (pre)destined to think and act as God programmed us. In your theology God lets us "feel" that we have free will, but in reality it is a deception. No matter how you turn it around, the Reformed God is either creating evil or deceiving.