Jaltus,
First, about Boule and Thelema, I stand by my opinion that God's counsel, Boule, is never thwarted. God clearly states in Is 46 "My counsel (LXX Boule) shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure (LXX Boule)." Thus, I must believe that God's counsel is never thwarted. If it were, then God was disingenuous in Is 46. As for the Pharisees, it says they "rejected" it "for themselves." That would be the opposite of not accepting it, not a synonym to thwarting it.
As for Cyrus, I'm still a little undecided. You put up some excellent arguments. Although Cyrus isn't a "believer" in the sense that we would think of it, or rather, He isn't one of "God's people," He is called a "messiah" in Is 45 (God's Anointed), and Cyrus certainly sounds like a believer in Ezra 1:2.
I'm not so sure that all the "details" given of Cyrus make it so specific however. It's all very general: We don't get the names of the lands he is to conquer, kings he is to conquer, and not a lot of specific information about what he is to do. In Is 41:2, for instance, everything, which is very general, is written in the past tense, although the Hebrew was written in the "prophetic perfect": It refers to future events. This, no doubt, makes it seem much more definite than it actually is.
As for his name, Cyrus (Actually, in Persian it would have been Kurash), I don't feel it is necessary to say that God would have renamed him, only that God manipulated events (to whatever extent necessary) to ensure that his name would be Cyrus. Jews, however, were not the only ones with more than one name: Look at the Midian Jethro/Reuel.
It is God's sovereign right to control us when He wants to. In fact, Is 10 shows us that God can control our actions when necessary to fulfill His counsel, without taking away our responsibility for those actions: "I will commission him against the people of My wrath... although that is not what he intends, nor what his heart plans, but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off not a few nations... therefore, when the Lord has performed all His work [. . .] He will say 'I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the glory of his haughty looks."
I know you will say, "But Cyrus acknowledge the Lord God in Ezra 1:2!" But that's not what I'm arguing. I'm saying that it is God's sovereing right, when He wants to, to override our freewill in order to accomplish His will or counsel. This by no means implies that He does it exhaustively or all the time.
The determinist viewpoint has blinded us with the notion that prophecy is simply pre-written history. Given the extent to which Scriptural prophecy is rewritten or changed, this simply can't be true. An example would be the prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar would conquer Tyre and Egypt. Ezekial 26:1-14 clearly states that Nebuchadnezzar will conquer Tyre (with quite a few details) and that Tyre will be covered by the sea (v. 3 "as the sea causes its waves to come up" v. 5 "It shall be a place for spreading nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken.") History quite clearly shows that this didn't happen, and many historians argue that Nebuchadnezzar never actually defeated Tyre - I really don't want to argue that. However, after Nebuchadnezzar didn't "receive wages from Tyre," God told Him that He would give him Egypt. This never happened either, yet it was prophecied. Prophecy that never happened.
God bless,
Dr. Deutsch
