Okay, you felt I didn’t address your questions. I did, but I tend to go at a fast pace and presumed you knew what I was referring to when I answered your questions in a nut shell. I apologize for that and now after what I hope is a thorough enough explanations above I will break down your entire paragraph. Please don’t take offense at my style of using somewhat rhetorical replies which are meant to help me to get my points across, nothing more:
Here they all are. You said:
HT:
These questions, imo, pose a problem for the idea of maintaining the self, which is a must.
(Your “self” belongs to God, period; you don’t need to be maintaining it in the sense you seem to be thinking, a person needs to be surrendering his self, his pride, they need God to give them “
His free gift of Grace”! There is apparently a difference to the depth between us in how we are looking at “maintaining the self” and exactly what freedoms we possess that need to be maintained as necessary truth.)
HT:
I find it hard to believe that I would recognize my self in another world had I been born in another culture to other parents, in a different era, etc.
(God’s plan of salvation
IS in True and Just regardless of what you “find hard to believe” no matter when or where you are born. Otherwise, you are unavoidably headed into a belief of limited atonement which hinges on Deterministic Sovereign Control and that view’s consequences. God knowing you before you were born placed you in the world where He knew you belonged and none of this changes a thing about His Just plan of salvation for all His creatures. You may not be able to recognize your self in another world, but you are not God, and He CAN recognize you in any world He decides to put you in and it changes nothing concerning all the truths and promises to us within His loving creational design that He said He has made. )
HT:
Which version of me is God going to use to judge me?
(Who are you, little god, to judge God’s judgment? His judgment WILL be righteous and according to His Just ways. You WILL be given everything you need to respond in faith and WILL have no excuse not to.)
HT:
The me thirty years ago in this world is very different than the me now.
(God knows this. He is longsuffering in bringing you to the point you are today. That a person might be more susceptible to respond to His influences today than they were before goes to His Glory while showing His achievements of drawing “you” closer in love for “His” Truths. God demonstrates the power of Love to His Glory.)
HT:
It is very reasonable to think that, had I been the me that I now am I would have chosen differently than I had.
(Not if you don’t neglect to give God the credit for bringing you through your choices to who you are now. It is an on-going process of God’s influence and your response; He did the work, all of it, so that you could freely choose to accept His gift of Grace. The fact that you have grown into a different person today and would choose differently testifies to His Glory and the power of His Love while working on you.)
HT:
This is the problem with beings that are in the process of becoming.
(Why is this a problem, because they couldn’t have enough freedom to come to God on their own??? It seems you are back to “helping” God out in your salvation. It doesn’t work that way. God will not force beings in His processes, but He will be Just (Providently so) in giving every being all the influences any being needs to respond; as the word says none will have an excuse for that in they knew Him they did not glorify Him and were not thankful for the things they were made to understand. They will be judged according to the righteous process God long-sufferingly put them through and His Judgment in the matter of what those beings have become through their free responses to His freely given influences will be Divinely Just
as “only” He can decide.)
HT:
With new experience and changed attitude they are not the same person.
(Exactly, that is all part of God’s plan of salvation to bring you to Him through His powerful loving influences. It (the new experiences and changed attitudes) is His doing and He gets all the credit. Like the Molinist model says, if you stay in it for the ride you get none of the credit for arriving, but you will get all the blame for getting out. Why, because God has given you everything you need to believe in His love, the love He has told us He had in creating the world and His Divinely Designed creatures, and some were not thankful for that ride, thus they get the blame for getting out.)
HT:
That person that was in the past no longer exists.
(And to God be the Glory!)
HT:
I have become who I am and will continue the process so long as there are possibilities for me to change.
(Here is where you really demonstrate missing the point. You need to dispose of that “I” became who “I am” stuff; you neglect that God gets the all the credit for who you have become, He did all the work through His influences and did so Justly according to your (LFW) free responses. The process He put you through WILL be sufficient for you to freely respond to His free gift of Grace, God’s Judgment WILL be Just and Genuinely based on your free responses to His freely given influences that brought you to faith in love of His Truths. God has all the possibilities (infinitely) He needs to Righteously Judge your (LFW) responses toward becoming the person. Once again, little god, you who are you to judge God’s judgment of whether or not He is
able to keep the process going long enough with enough possibilities to do “HIS JOB” righteously and in Truth? God is Truth in all things. I hear you expressing difficulty believing He is
able to do all the things He says He can do and I find that problematic. Especially if you are than willing to sacrifice on any aspect of His nature to have these abilities or on any of His attributes before you will accept that He does do all He says He does in Truth. I see this un-acceptance being done merely in the pride of self; i.e., wanting the “freedom to help” which is rooted in and the consequences of the OVT thoughts you have engaged in to escape the consequences of Determinism.)
If you don’t like Molinism’s model you don’t even need a complex system to maintain all of God’s necessary Truths you just believe them and hold to them! But, if you want to have a system that strives to logically argue how all of God’s Truths can be maintained Molinism is the only game (model) in town.
HT:
Your ambulance model is a fine one to propose to a determinist but that's about all.
(Says you, I have been plugging in all kinds of different scenarios and it’s upheld all the necessary truths I’ve needed it to.
HT:
As the patient I would wonder why the caregiver chose that this event must be in order to secure his desires.
(Because all God’s are judgment in truth and He has a plan of salvation for every patient that comes into His ambulance. His desires are not the patient’s desires and the patient should be thankful for the opportunity. Some aren’t.)
Rom 1:20-23 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (21) Because that, when they knew God, they glorified
him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. (22) Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, (23) And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
HT:
It might be more preferable to leave the ambulance on my own cognizance and if I did it would be because the caregiver didn't choose the other world in which I did stay in the ambulance since that possibility is inferred by him in the first place... Surely he wouldn't misrepresent the reality of the matter?
(If you did you it seems to me you were unthankful for what you have been given (life, in the world you have been placed in) and maybe in pride you don’t want to surrender your “self identity” and be seen in Christ with Him as your Lord. The reality is that you, not of your own doing, have woke up in an ambulance (you’ve been created) and you seem to be second guessing His purposes (love in creating the world) and ability to righteously judge your heart.)
HT:
So, whatever obtains does so because of God's choosing, meticulous providence down to the smallest possible event.
(Yes, God is the Manager of the influences He will freely give you to freely respond to which according to His plan which WILL be Just and is based on His choosing and judgment alone along the way. He is
able to do accomplish His plan through His providence down to the smallest detail.)
HT:
That's not to say that it couldn't have happened otherwise in another world very close to ours.
(“You” might think maybe the world you are in could have happened otherwise, but it’s God’s job to choosing and put you in the world He wants you and I happen to think He does His job perfectly. So you will be in the best possible world to freely respond to influences and that’s what you will be judged on, Truthfully, Righteously, and Justly.)
Continued:
