Talk:Faith

From Theopedia

Not sure if this could somehow fit in:

“Faith is chosen by God to be the receiver of salvation, because it does not pretend to create salvation, nor to help in it, but it is content humbly to receive it. Faith is the tongue that begs pardon, the hand which receives it, and the eye which sees it; but it is not the price which buys it. Faith never makes herself her own plea, she rests all her argument upon the blood of Christ. She becomes a good servant to bring the riches of the Lord Jesus to the soul, because she acknowledges whence she drew them, and owns that grace alone entrusted her with them.”

–Charles Spurgeon, All of Grace

-Aaronshaf 22:24, 5 Nov 2004 (EST)

Faith given by God and Ephesians 2:8

While a convincing argument can be taken from scripture that faith itself is a gift of God, Ephesians 2:8 is not the verse to use - the word "faith" is a different gender to the word "gift" in the Greek, showing consequently that the "gift" is either salvation or grace, not faith. For this reason, I will be removing the reference to Ephesians 2:8 in the appropriate section of the article - hopefully someone else will come along and put an appropriate reference in its place later.

--124.189.69.3 01:53, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Sonnybob. I believe Ephesians 2:8 certainly is a valid reference for seeing faith as a gift of God, even in light of the neuter gender of the demonstrative pronoun. See below:

Ephesians 2:8 is likely the first passage that comes to mind in the question of whether or not faith is a gift of God. There are two main interpretations of this text, both interpretations hinging on what is meant by the phrase and this, more specifically the pronoun this. This demonstrative pronoun has an antecedent to which it refers. So the question is, What is the this which is the gift of God?

1. The first interpretation takes it as referring to faith. This has been the view of many Bible scholars over the years, e.g. Augustine, Beza, Hodge, Kuyper, and Hendriksen. This is also the natural meaning one would take from the plain reading of the English text. If this interpretation is correct, then the question is immediately settled, faith is the gift. Those holding this view would paraphrase it like this, “By grace you have been saved through faith, and even your faith is not of yourselves; faith is a gift from God, so you cannot boast in the least.” Thus Paul is stressing here that even your faith is a gift in order to exclude the possibility of any boasting.

The difficulty with this view is as follows. In the Greek, this is a neuter demonstrative pronoun but faith is a feminine noun. The general rule would have the two agree in gender. Why would Paul use what may be viewed as awkward or incorrect grammar? Those who hold this first interpretation give several replies. For example, a pronoun usually but not always agrees with its noun in gender. There are exceptions to the general rule as can be seen in the Greek of Acts 8:10, Jude 12, 2 Pet. 2:17, 1 Pet. 2:19, 1 Cor. 6:11, and 1 Cor. 10:6 (Ref. A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament, p. 704). Examples may also be found in classical and Koine Greek where neuter pronouns are used to refer to both masculine and feminine nouns. It has also been suggested that the formula and this (Greek: kai touto) is often used in a technical sense to add special emphasis to the idea to which it is attached, and in this case it is attached to the word faith in the Greek as well as in the English translation. Finally, it is also generally true that a pronoun refers to the nearest antecedent or closest noun. Again, in this case, it is the word faith.

2. The other major interpretation has the word this referring back to the whole preceding thought, centering on the verb. This is the view of other well known scholars such as Calvin, Eadie, Matthew Henry, and John Gill. This view may have fewer difficulties and appeals to some direct grammatical parallels for support. There are four other sentences in the New Testament, all by Paul, which are grammatically parallel: 1 Cor. 6:6 and 6:8, Phil. 1:28, and Rom. 13:11. In each of these, the demonstrative pronoun, this, refers to the whole preceding clause or sentence with the thought centering on the verb. According to this view, Eph. 2:8-9 would be paraphrased thus, “By grace you have been saved through faith. But this salvation is not of yourselves, salvation is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast.”

This last interpretation is also readily adopted by those who deny that faith, itself, is a gift. They think that if this does not refer specifically to faith they have made their case. But there are a couple of snags here. First, in this interpretation, this refers to the whole idea of the preceding clause. It is not merely salvation which is the gift of God, but salvation through faith which is God’s gift. Hence, this doesn’t exclude faith as a gift. On the contrary, if the whole of salvation is the gift, then so are the parts that make up the whole and here that specifically includes faith. Faith is intrinsic to salvation. Secondly, even if somehow one could show that Paul did not mean to imply that faith is a gift here, it does not mean Paul is denying that faith is a gift. He would simply be saying something else.

However, I personally favor the first view. If this doesn’t refer to faith then it must indeed refer to the idea of salvation. Yet, if we take Paul to mean “this being saved is not of yourselves” he would be somewhat guilty of needless repetition, for he has just said we are “saved by grace”, which by definition is not of ourselves. The whole context of Ephesians up to this point, and especially chapter 2, seems to be stressing the fact that it is all by God’s grace. We were made alive when we were yet dead, not in response to our faith. I think this is the point Paul is making: even our faith is not of ourselves, it is a gift of God!

Jim Ellis 11:39, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Another bit of information - while Robertson (from point 1) notes an exception to the rule regarding pronouns, nouns and gender, I think it's also important to note the following: Wallace argues that no clear examples can be found in the NT using kai touto that involve different genders (although Phil 1:28 is possible, he says - see Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 335). So there seems to be exceptions to the rule/concept but not to the actual wording of Eph 2:8 and elsewhere. And no, I'm not trying to make this a war of the Grammars. ;-) Jordan Barrett ^(talk) 16:15, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I plucked the above info from a post I did on my blog from a while back. I'm not hard over either way. I just bowed my neck at the initial comment that touto can't refer to faith, as if it were a clear matter of fact.  :-) Jim Ellis 16:55, 22 October 2008 (UTC)