“there are opinions on both sides”
Not really. It is dishonest for anyone to try to force a connection between faith and ‘this’ in Ephesians 2:8. That anyone tries is evidence that there really IS no scriptural support for claiming faith is something given to us by God after regeneration, per Calvin’s unsupported theory of predestination.
There is a way Paul could have said that, in the Greek. He did not. He instead referred to the plan of salvation as a gift. In fact, Jesus rebuked people for not having faith, which could hardly be the case if God refused to give it to them:
Mar 16:14 Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.
You're really pushing it. You would have me to believe that a Greek speaker was being dishonest, though in that age there was none of the controversy over the issue. Do you read and speak Koine Greek?
Even in English, *faith* is not the subject of the sentence. It is part of a prepositional phrase and prepositional phrases are not the subject.
So *this* must be referring to the subject of the sentence, which is either *grace* or *saved*, and I’m leaning towards *grace*. Both *grace* and *saved* are gifts from God.
Off to church.
Later.....