Before getting into my post, as an Eagle Scout, let me mention that the Boy Scouts are considering the acceptance of sodomites in their organization.  This is an awful idea–they would be asking for an increase in child molestation, and sharing a tent with a sodomite, not to mention the group showers, etc. out in the back woods, is intolerable.  Acceptance of sodomy would violate the Scout’s swearing to be “morally straight” also.  Please read the article here and either call or e-mail them and politely request that they retain their current policy.  The phone  number works, but you may need to call a few times to get through.

part 2

The verb employed in Genesis 15:6, to believe, (Hebrew ‘aman)[i]
signifies to trust in, to believe in in
the Hebrew form employed in Genesis 15:6,[ii]
and signifies to be firm, trustworthy
in its foundational idea and to prove to be firm, reliable, faithful, trustworthy in a different, frequently passive verb form.[iii]
Commenting on a part of the meaning of ‘aman that relates to Genesis 15:6, the Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament notes:

[T]he concept of Nma
embraces a twofold relation: recognition and acknowledgment of the relation of
claim and reality, and the relation of the validity of this claim for him who
says Amen to all its practical consequences. . . . This leads us to the
simplest definition of the hiphil NImTaRh
(“to believe”), which the LXX renders 45 times by pisteu/ein, 5 by ejmmisteu/ein, and
once each by katapisteu/ein and pei/qesqai. It means “to say Amen with all the consequences for
both obj. and subj.” . . . [T]he use of NImTaRh
toward men gives prominence to the total basic attitude along the lines of “to
trust.” . . . A further point is that the OT uses NImTaRh only for the personal relation, for behind the word
which is believed is the man whom one trusts. The hiphil finds an analogous use
as an expression for man’s relation to God. Here, too, it has declarative
rather than causative significance. It means “to declare God NDmTaRn,” “to say Amen to God.” But this does not embrace the
whole meaning . . . the mutual relation between God and man is of the very
essence of faith . . . God is the true author of the relation between God and
man. . . . [T]he setting and origin of the religious use of the stem Nma in the OT tradition is to be sought in the sacral
covenant with [Jehovah]. . . . In the relation denoted by NImTaRh the OT saw the special religious attitude of the
people of God to [Jehovah]. (pgs. 186-188, 191, Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 6,
Kittel)

B. B. Warfield notes on the tense of ‘aman found in Genesis 15:6, the Hiphil + the preposition beth, the following:

God Himself is the object to which [Old Testament
saints] believingly turn, or on whom they rest in assured trust, in some eleven
cases. In two of these it is to Him as a faithful witness that faith
believingly turns (Deuteronomy 9:23; Isaiah 43:10). In the remainder of them it
is upon His very person that faith rests in assured confidence (Genesis 15:6;
Exodus 14:31; Numbers 14:11; 20:12; Deuteronomy 1:32; 2 Kings 17:14; 2
Chronicles 20:20; Psalm 78:22; Jonah 3:5). It is in these instances, in which
the construction is with b, together with those in which the word is used
absolutely (Exodus 4:31; Isaiah 7:9; 28:16; Psalm 116:10), to which may be
added Psalm 27:13 where it is construed with the infinitive, that the
conception of religious believing comes to its rights. The typical instance is,
of course, the great word of Genesis 15:6, ‘And Abram believed in the LORD, and
he counted it to him for righteousness’; in which all subsequent believers,
Jewish and Christian alike, have found the primary example of faith. The object
of Abram’s faith, as here set forth, was not the promise which appears as the
occasion of its exercise; what it rested on was God Himself, and that not
merely as the giver of the promise here recorded, but as His servant’s shield
and exceeding great reward (xv.1). It is therefore not the assentive but the
fiducial element of faith which is here emphasized; in a word, the faith which
Abram gave Jehovah when he ‘put his trust in God’ (e˙pi÷steusen tw◊ˆ
qew◊ˆ, LXX), was the same faith which
later He sought in vain at the hands of His people (Numbers 14:11; cf.
Deuteronomy 1:32; 2 Kings 17:14), and the notion of which the Psalmist explains
in the parallel, ‘They believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation’
(Psalm 78:22). To believe in God, in the Old Testament sense, is thus not
merely to assent to His word, but with firm and unwavering confidence to rest
in security and trustfulness upon Him. . . . In the Greek of the Septuagint pisteu/ein takes its place as the regular rendering of NyImTaRh, and is very rarely set aside in favour of another
word expressing trust (Proverbs 26:25 pei÷qesqai).
. . . It was by being thus made the vehicle for expressing the high rfeligous
faith of the Old Testament that the word was prepared for its New Testament use
(“The Biblical Doctrine of Faith,” Warfield, in Biblical Doctrines, vol. 2 of Works).

Faithfulness and trustworthiness arise from faith, and are
impossible without it, so that faith, through the initial exercise of which
justification was received, may, by continued acts of faith that are a product
of a believing new nature,[iv]
evidence the saint’s inward faith and faithfulness in outward fidelity.  Thus, the Old Testament teaches that
one who believes in God,[v]
another person,[vi] an event,[vii]
or a thing,[viii]
reckons the thing in question, or the person, as one who will continue or
endure the same,[ix] as
trustworthy[x] or faithful,[xi]
or sure,[xii]
or confirmed or established,[xiii]
and therefore worthy of assured confidence.[xiv]  Those descendents of Jacob who believe
in Jehovah, those who believe and consequently become the faithful, of whom
Abraham is the paradigm,[xv]
are those who are redeemed and counted as righteous[xvi]
and will in the last days receive the Promised Land, along with believing
Gentiles (Jonah 3:5, 10) who will similarly inherit the Millenial earth and the
eternal kingdom.

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