Ephesians 2:8 and Salvation

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

Ephesians 2:8 is one of the verses most often quoted in the Gospel presentation. In conjunction with verse 9, its main usage is to prove to the sinner that salvation is sourced in the grace of God not the works or lack thereof of the sinner. The verse also illustrates that the channel of salvation is faith. Most orthodox would agree with this basic explanation due to the fact that it is so basic. However, below the surface of rudimentary explanation we find a little phrase, a two word combination that has added fire to the already blazing theological debate between Calvinists and Arminians. This distinction too is unfortunately an overgeneralization. There is no uniform code of beliefs that characterizes every Calvinist or every Arminian. Still a basic distinction can be made. And as the topic at hand is the identification of the gift of God in 2:8, the distinction will be mad in this respect. Based on the closely-held belief in the unconditional election of man by God and limited candidates for atonement, many strong Calvinists argue that in the phrase “and that not of yourself, it is the gift of God” the gift refers to faith emphasizing the complete lack of ability on the part of man to do anything even exercise faith to gain salvation. Thus, they claim that the exercise of faith is a work. Arminians on the other hand generally believe that man must have some hand in the conference of salvation. Thus they argue that faith is not a work, but rather man’s required response to the grace of God. Grace is, therefore, the aforementioned gift, and limited atonement and unconditional election are cast away as theological scalawags.

The grammatical construction of Ephesians 2:8 is as follows: A subordinate kai\ tou~to clause following two adverbial prepositional phrases separated by a Present Indicative stative verb and a verbal perfect passive participle.

Such a construction is much too narrow. Ephesians 2:8 is in fact the only Pauline occurrence of this exact construction. The search must be broadened to include other occurrences of kai\ tou~to.

In order to make an attempt at determining the grammatically correct view and thereby eventually the theological interpretation, the Gramcord for Windows program was used. So that the search be as fair as possible both Pauline and non-Pauline constructions were considered as well as general New Testament usage of coordinating conjunctions followed by demonstrative pronouns.

The first search conducted consisted of the Pauline occurrences of the coordinating conjunction kai\ followed by the Neuter Singular Demonstrative Pronoun ou(\toj, au(/th, tou~to. This search produced nine results. The next search was for all New Testament occurrences of the coordinating conjunction kai\ followed by the Neuter Singular Demonstrative Pronoun ou(\toj, au(/th, tou~to. This was but a broadening of the search parameters to include occurrences penned by other New Testament writers. Minus the Pauline results, this search yielded fourteen results. For good measure a search for the construction of any coordinating conjunction (a)lla/, de\, and te\) plus the same demonstrative pronoun was conducted. It produced eight results, three of which were Pauline.

This means that we were presented with 23 instances of the kai\ tou~to construction from four different writers and eight instances of another coordinating conjunction + tou~to by four different writers There were no occurrences of te’ tou~to However, there were five occurrences of de\ tou~to and three of a)lla\ tou~to. The breakdown of these results is shown below:

Summarization of Gramcord Searches

Conjunctions

Author

kai\

de\

a)lla\

Paul

Romans 13:11

1 Corinthians 6:6

1 Corinthians 6:8

1 Corinthians 7:37

Ephesians 2:8

Philippians 1:9

Philippians 1:25

Philippians 1:28

Philippians 3:15

Romans 2:3

1 Corinthians 1:12

Romans 14:13

Luke

Luke 2:12

Luke 3:20

Luke 5:6

Luke 24:40

Acts 7: 60

Acts 15:15

Acts 24:14

Acts 2:16

John

John 11:28

John 18:38

John 20:20

John 20:22

John 21:19

1 John 4:3

3 John 1:5

John 12:6

Revelation 2:6

Writer of Hebrews

Hebrews 6:3

Hebrews 9:27

____

This present study will focus exclusively on Pauline usage of kai/ tou~to. Examining not-Pauline verses would make this paper excessively long. Still, the results of these searches are included so that one reading this paper may conduct further research if desired.

These verses will be examined individually within their contexts and a judgment will be made as to which usage of kai’ tou~to seems appropriate.

Romans 13:10-11 states: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed.” The object of this clause at first appears to be “love.” But which love—the first or second occurrence? The first occurrence seems to be the subject of the main clause. Therefore, if a noun is modified by kai\ tou~to, this seems the most likely candidate. However, since the translation of the phrase as “do this (NASB)” or “and do this (NIV)” adds a verbal quality (however, the KJV does not), one could argue that that by necessity the phrases modifies the verb “does.” If such were the case, Romans 13:11 would be a case of an adverbial kai\ tou~to.

1 Corinthians 6:6 states: “but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?” This is obviously an adverbial usage as well, the clause referring to the “go[ing] to law”

1 Corinthians 6:8 states: “On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud. You do this even to your brethren” Kai\ tou~to undoubtedly refers to the “wrong[ing] and defraud[ing] of the members of the Corinthian church by other church members. This usage is adverbial.

1 Corinthians 7:37 states: “But he who stands firm in his heart, being under no constraint, but has authority over his own will, and has decided this in his own heart, to keep his own virgin daughter, he will do well.” This translation supposes that tou~to is functioning as an accusative. Since the forms are identical, the word could also function in the nominative case. Thus the translation would be: “…and this one has decided in his own heart…” This may be a substantival use, with tou~to functioning as either subject or direct object. Alternatively, this could be another adverbial usage with kai\ tou~to saying that the “standing firm” was a decision made in the man’s own heart.

Philippians 1:9 states: “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,” This seems to be a substantival use of tou~to as direct object. “ And I pray this.” However, it may be an act accompanying the apostle’s act of “long [ing ]for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:8)”

Philippians 1:25 states: “[And] Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith,” The literal translation is “And this confidence” This usage seems to be adverbial. Specifically, it is causal in nature. “And because I have this confidence, I know…”

Philippians 1:28 states: “in no way alarmed by your opponents--which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and that too, from God.” This is also a tough occurrence to judge. It can be substantival—“And this [salvation is] from God.”—or adverbial—describing the giving of the sign as destruction of salvation.

Finally, Philippians 3:15 states: “Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you;” This maybe a substantival usage, tou~to referring to the state of having a different attitude. However, an adverbial usage may be intended instead since the prepositional phrase “if in anything you have a different attitude” has a verbal force to it.

In summary, it seems that we have four usages that are clearly adverbial, three that may be either adverbial or substantive and one that is most likely substantive but may be adverbial.

It seems then that the adverbial usage is most common occurring in between four and eight Pauline usages. From this information, we must then draw a conclusion and formulate a working rule that can account for all Pauline usages.

This rule is as follows: Pauline occurrences of kai’ tou~to, unless clearly substantival, should be translated with an adverbial force.

Applying this rule to the verse in question, we receive the following translation: For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that [act of being saved is] not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;”

If this translation/interpretation is accepted, then we can see clearly the process of salvation is what is “not of yourselves.” The verse does not clearly identify the gift as either grace or faith. It is therefore best to conclude that neither Calvinists nor Arminians should use Ephesians 2:8 to debate the classification of faith as a work.