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.
Except a clear reading of the scripture says they were causative. IF God had CHOSEN to act differently they would have chosen to act differently .God knew that BUT He chose NOT to act in a way that would change their actions
His NON action was a causitive action
"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.