A Man is Free when he may Will to do what he Wants to do. He is not Free if he is compelled to Will that which he does not Want (slavery), or if his Will is divorced from his Wants (intoxication, demonic possession, etc.).
As to the second objection you have, I believe Ralston is using the term 'foreknowledge' in the proper sense of prescience, which isn't causative. That would be the realm of God's omnipotence. Finally, as to the Hammer of Augustine, how does God's foreknowledge of events imply causation of said events? In other words, God foreknew that people would repent if he performed miracles in Chorazin, Bethsaida, Tyre, and Sidon; but does that mean that his foreknowledge was the cause? At the very least, Matt. 11 does not touch the issue. It simply states that God foreknew what would happen--not that his foreknowledge caused it to be so.
I don't think that you ever noticed what Jesus is saying here. I think that you still aren't noticing it.
The point is that, when God foreknows what a Man will choose in a logically dependent response to one possible Divine Election of Action, and God foreknows what a Man will choose differently in a logically dependent response to a different Divine Election of Action, then it is precisely God's Election which determines WHAT a Man will choose.
With this in mind, look at Matthew 11 once again:
QUESTION:
True, or False?
How can Ralston possibly maintain the idiocy that "the taking place of the event is the cause of God having foreknown it", when it is precisely the Election of God which DETERMINES what the "taking place of the event" (Man's Choice) SHALL BE???
Ralston would make the Foreknowledge of God a hostage to the Decisions of Man.
But it is the Election of God which determines what the Decisions of Man SHALL BE.
You seem to be making President Edwards' argument all over again. "Man may will as he wills." Man is not a free agent if the only potential options available to him are the singular options which he inevitably chooses. When man is free, man may choose what he wants as well as what he does not want, or between something which he wants more and something which he wants less. Morally speaking, a free agent is, as Ralston states, "is understood [to be] one capable of acting without being necessitated, or efficiently caused to do so, by something else; and he who has this power is properly possessed of liberty."
I don't think that you ever noticed what Jesus is saying here. I think that you still aren't noticing it.
I'm fully aware of what Jesus is saying here. He is saying that man would have reacted differently had God performed differently. It still does not mean that God's performance in the cases mentioned here are causative, irresistibly 'efficient.' It means that man would have reacted differently than he did in these cases, contingent upon God's performing miracles.
The point is that, when God foreknows what a Man will choose in a logically dependent response to one possible Divine Election of Action, and God foreknows what a Man will choose differently in a logically dependent response to a different Divine Election of Action, then it is precisely God's Election which determines WHAT a Man will choose.
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.