Free Will and Loving/Rejecting God

[orangebox21]

Did people in the OT see God face to face?
Did people see Jesus face to face?
Is Jesus God?
Did therefore people who saw Jesus see God face to face?
Did everyone who saw Jesus face to face believe in God?
Did therefore some people see God and yet not believe in Him?

Do you want us to answer these questions?

Yes.

Chad is welcome to discuss election and predestination in this thread if he wishes. No need to start a new thread.

Orange was the one who quoted Scripture to support his point. If his interpretation of them is not correct then it sorta undermines his point.

I agree. Which is why rather than argue against premise #1 and get into an 'election' conversation, I have retracted said counterargument.

Is Jesus God?

Nope.

Am I clear that you're stating that the Biblical record does not claim Jesus is God?

I'll stress again, you're reducing your beliefs to a play on words when you try to make the statement that you've made. If you'd started the questioning off with "According to my sects christology" rather than "according to the bible" some of my answers would be different, except for the last one. No matter how you cut it, those who don't see god in jesus don't believe jesus is god, even if they already believe in god (jews, roman pagans, etc). You think they should have. For you, seeing god and seeing jesus are one in the same, but this is a statement of your beliefs, not some logical maxim that can be relied upon to yield true conclusions, not "the biblical position", and certainly not the position of the character of jesus in the narrative (amusingly, neither you nor I trust what jesus says about himself in the narrative - we both have our own takes). Everyone in the narrative who sees god believes in god, full stop. Some of the people in the narrative just don't see god when they look at jesus.

I understand your point. It is however outside the context of our argument. In the case of the OP's original argument we have assumed the Biblical record to be true. There are givens that come with this.

1. There is only one God.
2. Jesus is God.
3. Some people saw Jesus face to face but didn't believe He is God.
Therefore, anyone who saw Jesus face to face but didn't believe He is God does not believe in God.

To assume the truth of the Biblical record for the original argument only to deny it as a premise of the counterargument is fallacious. It's a fallacy because doing this would invalidate one or more of the premises of the original argument.

In that case I could perhaps argue with the OP like Stimbo did and force the OP to prove the original premises (that God exists, and that people in the OT saw Him, etc) but I have chosen instead to accept these premises and thus that the Biblical record is true.