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Ephesians 2.8

Posted: August 14th, 2012, 4:55 pm
by thomas.hagen
I have a question concerning Ephesians 2.8:

τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσωσμένοι διὰ πίστεως· καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον·

THi GAR XARITI ESTE SESWSMENOI DIA PISTEWS· KAI TOUTO OUK EC UMWN, QEOU TO DWRON·

“for by grace have you been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;”


I have seen many apparently scholarly studies which claim that TOUTO refers to PISTEWS and just as many studies which claim that TOUTO refers to “salvation by grace”. Is there anything in the Greek text which can resolve this debate?

Thank you for any enlightenment you can give me on this.

Thomas Hagen

Re: Ephesians 2.8

Posted: August 15th, 2012, 1:13 am
by Barry Hofstetter
Just to muddy it further for you, Tom, I believe it refers to the entire previous clause, "saved by grace through faith." It's not unusual to use the neuter to refer to a previous clause.

Re: Ephesians 2.8

Posted: August 15th, 2012, 12:21 pm
by GlennDean
I just noticed πίστεως is in the gen-sg-fem (Case-Number-Gender), while τοῦτο is in the nom-sg-neuter, so the antecedant of τοῦτο can't be πίστεως (since the pronoun must match its antecedant in Number-Gender).

Re: Ephesians 2.8

Posted: August 15th, 2012, 2:01 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
GlennDean wrote:I just noticed πίστεως is in the gen-sg-fem (Case-Number-Gender), while τοῦτο is in the nom-sg-neuter, so the antecedant of τοῦτο can't be πίστεως (since the pronoun must match its antecedant in Number-Gender).

"Substantivized neuter singular pronouns, both demonstrative and relative may be used with relation to either feminine or masculine substantives." G. Cooper (Attic Greek Prose Syntax v. 2, #58.3.6.A. p. 936).

Never the less, I agree with B. Hofstetter. Furthermore, the neuter singular pronoun is particularly well suited for reference to the entire "scenario" represented in Eph. 2:4-8.

C. Stirling Bartholomew

Re: Ephesians 2.8

Posted: August 15th, 2012, 4:16 pm
by Bob Nyberg
Concerning Eph 2:8, Dan Wallace wrote:

This is the most debated text in terms of the antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun, τοῦτο. The standard interpretations include: (1) “grace” as antecedent, (2) “faith” as antecedent, (3) the concept of a grace-by-faith salvation as antecedent, and (4) καὶ τοῦτο having an adverbial force with no antecedent (“and especially”). The issues here are complex and cannot be solved by grammar alone. Nevertheless, syntactical considerations do tend toward one of the latter two views.

He explains the possible options in his book Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics,

http://books.google.com/books?id=XlqoTV ... 22&f=false


Bob

Re: Ephesians 2.8

Posted: August 15th, 2012, 11:06 pm
by Louis L Sorenson
καὶ τοῦτο = adverbial is an interesting consideration. I think it would take a lot of analysis though to pin this down, as the phrase occurs 24,639x in TLG-e. There should be an ample number of parallel examples to bolster an adverbial understanding of this phrase.

Re: Ephesians 2.8

Posted: August 16th, 2012, 7:12 am
by Barry Hofstetter
For τοῦτο itself understood as referring to an entire clause, I think 1 Pet 2:19-20 provides two nice examples:

19 τοῦτο γὰρ χάρις εἰ διὰ συνείδησιν θεοῦ ὑποφέρει τις λύπας πάσχων ἀδίκως· 20 ποῖον γὰρ κλέος εἰ ἁμαρτάνοντες καὶ κολαφιζόμενοι ὑπομενεῖτε; ἀλλʼ εἰ ἀγαθοποιοῦντες καὶ πάσχοντες ὑπομενεῖτε, τοῦτο χάρις παρὰ θεῷ.

For καὶ τοῦτο used with adverbial force, it is an interesting suggestion, but as Louis suggests would take some work to prove it. My sense of the Greek (which is also to say the context) leads me to the whole clause interpretation.

Re: Ephesians 2.8

Posted: August 16th, 2012, 8:41 am
by Stephen Carlson
Barry Hofstetter wrote:For καὶ τοῦτο used with adverbial force, it is an interesting suggestion, but as Louis suggests would take some work to prove it. My sense of the Greek (which is also to say the context) leads me to the whole clause interpretation.
I agree, but if the adverbial καὶ τοῦτο is viable, it should expand the exegetical options for what becomes now the implied topic for the fragmentary predicate οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν.

Re: Ephesians 2.8

Posted: August 30th, 2012, 10:57 pm
by Louis L Sorenson
I've been thinking about the structure ἐπὶ τοῦτο in Eph. 2.8
8 Τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι διὰ πίστεως· καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον
It's been thrown out that this could be an adverbial construction.
Concerning Eph 2:8, Dan Wallace wrote: This is the most debated text in terms of the antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun, τοῦτο. The standard interpretations include: (1) “grace” as antecedent, (2) “faith” as antecedent, (3) the concept of a grace-by-faith salvation as antecedent, and (4) καὶ τοῦτο having an adverbial force with no antecedent (“and especially”). The issues here are complex and cannot be solved by grammar alone. Nevertheless, syntactical considerations do tend toward one of the latter two views.
I wonder if it would not be better to classify καὶ τοῦτο as a discourse structure: restatement - reinforcement, rather than say it is 'adverbial'. I have not looked into Runge's discourse grammar to see where this would fit, but καὶ τοῦτο definitely seems to me to be a device used by a ῥήτωρ.