What regular Christianity teaches is conditional election (or predestination) -- God already knows what you're going to do before the beginning of the world, and saves or doesn't save you on the basis of whether you have the saving faith.
I agree with your point in general, but I would make the point that in the Augustinian/ Thomistic understanding one is not predestined because of the faith that they will one day hold. Rather, they have faith because they have been predestined to have it:
As Augustine says, reasoning from Romans chapter 9: “Now, if the apostle had wished us to understand that there were future good works of the one, and evil works of the other, which of course God foreknew, he would never have said, ‘not of works,’ but, ‘of future works,’ and in that way would have solved the difficulty, or rather there would then have been no difficulty to solve.” --St. Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, Chapter 98.
Expounding on Romans 9:15, St. Augustine says, “And, moreover, who will be so foolish and blasphemous as to say that God cannot change the evil wills of men, whichever, whenever, and wheresoever He chooses, and direct them to what is good? But when He does this He does it of mercy; when He does it not, it is of justice that He does it not for "He has mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardens." -- St. Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, Chapter 98.
Thomas Aquinas followed in the thought of Augustine and denied that anyone's future faith could be the cause of their predestination:
"The Apostle says (Titus 3:5): "Not by works of justice which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us." But as He saved us, so He predestined that we should be saved.
Therefore, foreknowledge of merits is not the cause or reason of predestination."
Summa Theologica Question 23, Art 5.
Aquinas includes future faith in his repudiation of "foreknowledge of merits." The above-mentioned statement (Question 23, Art 5) is in response to this objection:
"It seems that foreknowledge of merits is the cause of predestination. For the Apostle says (Romans 8:29): "Whom He foreknew, He also predestined." Again a gloss of Ambrose on Romans 9:15: "I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy" says: "I will give mercy to him who, I foresee, will turn to Me with his whole heart." Therefore it seems the foreknowledge of merits is the cause of predestination."
In other words, Aquinas (and Augustine) both held that Predestination did not depend on God's foreknowledge of someone's faith in the future. Calvin didn't really come up with something that was entirely new (along the lines of predestination). He built on the foundation that was laid by some of the greatest thinkers in the history of Christianity. I don't personally consider myself a Calvinist, but it can't be denied that Calvin's thinking, specifically along the lines of
Election and Reprobation is very
similar to the thinking of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
In this way you can't say that "regular" Christianity teaches conditional election unless you are willing to exclude St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas from what could be considered "regular".
