Phil Gons

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Genesis

Creation, Evolution, and the Age of the Earth

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Earth

I’ve seen several posts recently on the subject of creation, evolution, and the age of the earth. If you missed them and are interested in these kinds of discussions, you may want to give them a read.

(See below for some related videos and conferences.)

I grew up believing that God created the universe out of nothing in six 24-hour days and that the earth was about 6,000 years old. My first real exposure to opposing Christian viewpoints was in Systematic Theology I in seminary, where we used Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology1 as our main textbook.

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  1. Available from Amazon and Logos. [↩]

The Merit of Faith: Genesis 15:6 in JPS

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jps.jpgI just received the JPS Bible and Torah Commentary Collection (9 volumes) from Logos and started “thumbing” through a couple of the volumes. I’m glad I picked it up. It looks like a valuable series—primarily for what it reveals about modern Judaism’s understanding of the Tanakh.

As I expected, though, I’m going to disagree with many of the interpretations that it defends. Nahum Sarna’s interpretation of Genesis 15:6, for example, is disappointing on several levels.1

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  1. Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, The JPS Torah commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 113. [↩]

When Was Abraham Justified? Part 1

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When was Abraham justified? This might seem like a rather elementary question with an obvious answer: Abraham was justified when he believed the Lord and the Lord credited it to him as righteousness, which is recorded in Genesis 15:6.

Abraham

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Genesis 15:6

Certainly Paul’s use of this text in defense of justification by faith apart from works in Romans 4:3 and Galatians 3:6 confirms that Genesis 15:6 was the precise point of Abraham’s justification, doesn’t it?

What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Romans 4:3

So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Galatians 3:6

This is probably what most people assume. It’s what I thought—prior to giving it some careful consideration.

I’m now convinced that Abraham was already justified prior to the events recorded at the beginning of Genesis 15. In this post I’d like to give some arguments in favor of this position, and in the next post I will answer objections and respond to potential problems.

As I see it, the main issue hinges on one central point:

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