What you have described in each of these passages is a demand by God of man to choose. There is no question that He asks, no requires, men to choose. I do not argue that the demand has not been made upon man. The matter at hand is whether the choice has been possible, unaided and undirected.
First, let me mention that it appears the Ecclus. passages are from the Apochrypha. Those are not in any accepted Bible except for the Catholic collection. They have no standing here.
Second, each of the remaining passages in fact do note that God has placed this requirement before man, but in each case there has not been a man in existence who has chosen rightly. If your organization does in fact believe in "free will" one would think that someone, somewhere along the line chose rightly. But, Paul clearly notes from Old Test. Scriptures that in spite of the cajoling, the demands, the threats by God, no man ever chose to seek God. The proofs are from David's hand and Isaiah's hand, those who also penned the demands. Rom. 3.
Now, which must subsume which? If you pound your fist on the table and demand that I lift this office building, and try as I might, I cannot, does that still make the demand possible? Well, only if something significant changes. But, a couple things are clear...you have made the point about what is required and if I am paying attention (and am permitted to see this) I now know my inability.
That was the entire point of the Law. Gal. 3:24. It taught the Jews (the ones upon whom the demands you quote were actually made) that they could not comply with the demands of holiness. Did God require it? Of course. Did any man every comply unaided by God? Well, if they did then Pelagian was right. There exists enough righteousness in man to save himself.
But, you might argue that all we are talking about is the choice to turn to Christ to make up for all the failure. Well, that is not all you are arguing, but it is the beginning. This choice matter is based upon "God has done all He can, now it is up to us to choose Christ or death." That choice, according to Paul, is just as much in the hands of God as the initial choice to be holy or evil.
When Paul reaches the climactic argument in chap. 9 of the letter to the Romans, the point is that, "so then it does not depend upon the man who runs (acts) or the man who wills (chooses), but upon God who has mercy...and He will have mercy on some and harden some." Now, from my perspective, this has to subsume the raw demands made earlier in the story. Like any unfolding narrative, the story develops and then the decoding begins. In this case, Paul holds the decoder ring for the entire book.
We now find from Paul that there has never been a man that could seek God, nor actually tried to seek God. There is none who obeyed , nor tried to obey. Not really. No one really even understood the first thing about righteousness. Even in your system, the "free will" was not very successful if everyone SHOULD become a Catholic to find forgiveness. Forgiveness? Why forgiveness if some men of their own "free wills" could have chosen to be good from the get go? Let's just keep hollering "Obey, doggone it!!!!" Salvation will be unnecessary
And the same goes for resisting Him. Of course we have resisted Him. Every man has resisted Him. That is Paul's argument. We all like sheep have gone astray...at God's management. Man plans his way, but God directs his steps. Proverbs. Why? So He could send the Lamb slain BEFORE the foundation of the earth, to show His incredible Glory.
The whole matter of "free will" is foundationally impossible as I have mentioned before. Think about it. If God knows what sox you are going to pick out tomorrow, then that matter is really fixed...whether you "feel" it or not. He says He brings all things to pass. He is going to make all things that come into a believers life good. Just like He managed Joseph's life. This is how He directed all things to lead to the vicarious atoning death of His Son, per Peter Acts 2:22,23. Why would God predetermine to have His Son executed for men if some would choose to straighten up? Wouldn't He just want those who straightened up? But, Christ died for us while we were enemies. That is love.
The Catholic Church has confused the sense of turning toward Christ with an independent act of the man executing a choice apart from God's operation on him. Such a misunderstanding is either driven by a pride (at least we turned to Christ and they did not, so now we deserve salvation) or a misapprehension of just how lost, lost is.
No, my FRiend, these are the same old arguments that tend to put men on a pedastal. We are victims of God's will, His decisions, His mercy. Romans 9:19ff You and I are putty in His hands...thankfully.
Eph. 2:1ff "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience (everyone lost). Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of the our flesh, indlulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive togther with Christ (by grace you have been saved) and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Now, where is man's "free will"?
Did any man every comply unaided by God?
Here you show that you do not understand Catholic teaching. The statement above is Pelagianism and has been condemned by the Catholic Church as a heresy since the 5th century. The true Catholic teaching is that we obey God's will only by the aide of his Grace but that this obedience is not compelled and we can resist it. Interestingly in today's Office of Readings we have the following passage from St. Augustine from his Tract on the Gospel of St. John:
‘No-one can come to me unless the Father draws him.’ You must not imagine that you are being drawn against your will, for the mind can also be drawn by love. Nor should we be afraid of being taken to task by those who take words too literally and are quite unable to understand divine truths, and who might object to these words of scripture, saying: How can I believe of my own free will. if I am drawn? In reply I say this: It is not enough to be drawn of your own free will, because you can be drawn by delight as well.The whole matter of "free will" is foundationally impossible as I have mentioned before. Think about it. If God knows what sox you are going to pick out tomorrow, then that matter is really fixed...whether you "feel" it or not.What does it mean, to be drawn by delight? ‘Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.’ There is a certain desire of the heart to which the bread of heaven appeals. Moreover, if the poet can say: ‘Everyone is drawn by his delight’, not by necessity but by delight, not by compulsion but by sheer pleasure, then how much more must we say that a man is drawn by Christ, when he delights in truth, in blessedness, in holiness and in eternal life, all of which mean Christ?
Or must we assume that the bodily senses have their delights, while the mind is not allowed to have any? But if the soul has no delights, how can scripture say: ‘The children of men will take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They will feast on the abundance of your house, and you will give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life: in your light we shall see light’?
Show me a lover and he will understand what I am saying. Show me someone who wants something, someone hungry, someone wandering in this wilderness, thirsting and longing for the fountains of his eternal home, show me such a one and he will know what I mean. But if I am talking to someone without any feeling, he will not know what I am talking about.
Offer a handful of grass to a sheep and you draw it after you. Show a boy nuts and he is enticed. He is drawn by the things he is running to take, drawn because he desires, drawn without any physical pressures, drawn simply by the pull on his appetite. If, then, the things that lovers see as the delights and pleasures of earth can draw them, because it is true that ‘everyone is drawn by his delight’, then does not Christ draw when he is revealed to us by the Father? What does the mind desire more eagerly than truth? For what does it have an insatiable appetite, why is it anxious that its taste for judging the truth should be as healthy as possible, unless it is that it may eat and drink wisdom, righteousness, truth and eternal life?
Christ says: ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness’, but here and now! ‘for they shall be satisfied’, but in the future! I give him the thing he loves. I give him what he hopes for. He will see what he believes in but does not yet see. He will eat what he hungers for and be filled with what he thirsts for. When? At the resurrection of the dead, because I will raise him up at the last day.
And here we have the foundational error in Reformed theology. God does not exist in time, he is eternal. What we experience as time — the past, the present and the future — for God is an eternal present. "Before Abraham was, I AM." Thus when we say that God knows what I will do in the future it is incorrect to say that he has foreknowledge or knows beforehand what I will do. Rather, what I will do in the future God experiences as an event in his eternal present. Thus God's knowledge of the choice I will make in the future does not contradict my free will in making that choice.
First, let me mention that it appears the Ecclus. passages are from the Apochrypha. Those are not in any accepted Bible except for the Catholic collection. They have no standing here.
Ecclesiaticus (Sirach) is also held as Sacred Scripture by the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox (other than the Copts) and Assyrian churches, i.e. by 2/3 of the worlds Christians. The fact that the Protestants broke with 1500 years of Christian teaching and rejected what is properly called the Deuterocanonical Books is what should have no standing. In any case, I have provided enough Biblical references that the Biblical truth of free will is not dependent upon these quotes.