Replies

"Where did I say faith is a gift?"

I took your post in 860 to mean that you believed faith to be a gift. You highlighted the following:

”For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. (Eph. 2:8-9)

By highlighting “through faith” and “not of works" you imply that faith is not a work. But the “not” refers back to “it is the gift of God” as well. So proper interpretation of the sentence of what you have highlighted would be “…through faith, …it is the gift of God, not of works…”

Another interpretation as to what the “gift of God” is would be:

For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. (Eph. 2:8-9)

This, of course gives a completely different meaning. Paul contrast the gift of God against what is not a work. So the question becomes what is the gift of God?

*chuckle* I must confess that I set up something of a trap there, and was wondering how long it would take one of you to fall into it. Since I'm not a scholar in Greek, I'll yield the floor to someone that is:

The exegetical flimsiness of using this passage [Eph. 2:8-9] in this way should be common knowledge. Apparently it is not. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, Calvin, Calovius, Olshausen, Meyer, Chandler, Adam Clarke, Ellicot, Alford, Salmond in EGT, Eadie, Vincent, A. T. Robertson, Wuest, F. F. Bruce (“an impenitent Augustinian and Calvinist”), and even extreme Calvinist Homer Hoeksema are among the host who reject such isogesis since they recognized that the relative pronoun touto (this) is neuter and pistis (faith) is feminine and cannot serve as its antecedent. Although Calvin doesn’t explain the grammar, he is very explicit about this error:
And here we must advert to a very common error in the interpretation of this passage. Many persons restrict the word gift to faith alone. But Paul is only repeating in other words the former sentiment. His meaning is, not that faith is the gift of God, but that salvation is given to us by God, or, that we obtain it by the gift of God. (emphasis Olsen’s)
(Olsen, Gordon C., Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism: An Inductive Mediate Theology of Salvation, p. 221)

So we're back to where we were before: Faith, trusting God, is neither a work, nor is it a gift from God, but rather a response to God offering the gift of salvation.