Ephesians 2:8 is an important verse about salvation by faith, and in English translation, it ends with the statement, "And that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." This verse is stating that something is the gift of God, but there is controversy concerning the referent of the pronoun "it." Some believe it is referring to faith, others that it is referring to grace, and others that it is referring to salvation itself.
Over the years, I have heard many people claim that faith is definitely the gift of God in this passage. This view is attractive to those who minimize the personal decision involved in putting one's faith in Christ. They claim that God is the one who provides the faith to anyone who believes in Christ, and that those who have not received this gift of faith are incapable of being saved. One major problem with this interpretation of Ephesians 2:8 is that the Greek pronoun in question, τοῦτο, is neuter, whereas the proposed antecedent, πίστεως, is feminine. The lack of gender agreement between pronoun and antecedent makes this interpretation extremely unlikely. Although many modern Calvinists may claim that faith is the gift of God in this verse, it is interesting to note that John Calvin himself wrote in his commentary on Ephesians 2:9 that this is an error (Hart 2006, 56).
Faith in this context is not generic but is specifically referring to faith in Jesus Christ. People are not saved by faith if they have their faith in something other than Jesus. For example, people who place their faith in Buddhism, the Virgin Mary, or adherence to the law, will not be saved. The faith that saves us must specifically be faith in Christ. With that in mind, it is problematic to state that faith in Christ is a gift from God, when God is constantly demanding throughout scripture that people believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. What would be the point in telling people to "choose life" if the choice has already been made for them? In John 5:40, Jesus said, "And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." "Will" in this context of 17th century English means "want." The problem here is not that people are lacking a supposed gift of faith, but rather that they do not want to put their faith in Christ.
Those who propose grace as the gift of God are on firmer ground theologically since there are many scriptures in the New Testament that reference the gift of God's grace. In fact, the Greek word for grace, χάρις, and another Greek word for gift, χάρισμα, are obviously closely related (Lamour 2023, 1). However, the same gender problem exists for this interpretation since χάριτί is also a feminine noun. Rather than grace being the gift, it makes more sense that the statement, "It is the gift of God," is reiterating the previous statement about salvation being by grace.
τοῦτο is clearly a reference to the entire phrase ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι, "ye are saved," which is why the pronoun is neuter. According to this interpretation, salvation itself is the gift of God. This is supported by other scriptures, like Romans 6:23, that state that the gift of God is eternal life. Possessing eternal life and being saved are synonymous, so the parallel is strong. Growing up as a Christian, this was always my natural reading of the text, and only as an adult did I become aware of the teaching that "faith" was the gift of God in Ephesians 2:8. In my opinion, anyone reading these verses in Greek would never come away with that conclusion due to the issue of the mismatched genders. A natural reading of the King James Version would also lead one to the right interpretation, unless one approached the text with a theological bias.
Bibliography
Hart, John. "Is faith a gift from God according to Ephesians 2: 8? A grammatical analysis." Chafer Theological Seminary Journal 12, no. 2 (2006): 44-57.
Lamour, Corinne. 2023. "Charisma and Surgery in the Middles Ages: The Example of Henri de Mondeville, Surgeon of Philip IV the Fair" Religions 14, no. 6: 699. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060699
No comments:
Post a Comment