"Causation" language, in the sense of an irresistible compulsion, isn't even relevant to the argument I am making here. It is enough simply to consider the matter in terms of statistical certainty (that is, 100% perfect, precise, and infallible foreknowledge of the different Choices which Men will make in response to different Elections of Divine Action).
Ergo,
Prior to these Men ever having been born -- God's pre-creative Election to NOT perform the salvific Miracles therein, predestined as an absolute certainty the fact that they would NOT REPENT.
In the sense that God's election is God's choice (not properly the Calvinistic doctrine of Unconditional Election), yes, God's choices in this case determined what man would do. However, this does not mean that God's knowledge of this fact was causative. It would be either man freely responding to God's actions that caused God to know this, or else it would be God's power which necessarily caused the men, were they not free moral agents, to react as they did. Any way we go, though, God's foreknowledge has yet to be proven to be the cause of man's actions.
God's Election to NOT perform the salvific Miracles therein was statistically causative in the sense of predestining ONE result, and not ANOTHER, to ACTUALLY COME TO PASS.
Ergo,
Prior to these Men ever having been born -- God's pre-creative Election to NOT perform the salvific Miracles therein, predestined as an absolute certainty the fact that they would NOT REPENT.
On the other hand, statistical certainty has no bearing on the argument that I am making. (Are we even arguing about the same frickin' thing?!)
Prior to these Men ever having been born -- God's pre-creative Election to NOT perform the salvific Miracles therein, predestined as an absolute certainty the fact that they would NOT REPENT.
If you want to call that predestination, fine. It would be a correct usage of the term, though not in the sense that I have been taking it to mean for the sake of this argument. However, this predestination still does not affect man's free moral agency. God chose to not perform salvific miracles in Sodom, et al.. This does not impact the doctrine of man's moral free agency in any appreciable sense, nor does it really affect the doctrine of God's attribute of foreknowledge. God may have foreknown something, but until he 'spoke it into being' (so to speak), it was not caused. The foreknowledge and the omnipotence are separate. Likewise, man's non-repentance was contingent upon God's actions; but God's actions did not effectively cause man's choice. Man chose freely to react as he did based upon God's action. He might have chosen differently, but just as we can know the past with certainty as to the free actions made, so can God know the future with such certainty. It still doesn't mean that God's certainty necessitates our choices.