[B-Greek] Ephesians 2:8
Eric Weiss
papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Fri Jun 17 22:38:57 EDT 2005
> THi GAR CARITI ESTE SESWiSMENOI DIA PISTEWS KAI
> TOUTO OUK EX hUMWN, QEOU TO DWRON.
>
> Note the word TOUTO. It is from hOUTOS, hAUTH,
> TOUTO. A check in BDAG
> (Baur, Danker, Arndt & Gingrich _A Greek-English
> Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early
> Christian Literature_ (3rd edition), which is
> THE lexicon to have for NT studies (Accept no
> substitutes. Go, sell your first-born child and
> buy one.), reveals that it signifies first of all
> "the person or thing comparatively near at hand in
> the discourse material." In this case that would
> be PISTIS. It is thus a matter of the nearest
> referent.
Ah, but there's the rub! For PISTIS is feminine, and
TOUTO is neuter, so in this case there is a "problem"
with the nearest referent, as the gender of the
demonstrative pronoun hOUTOS/hAUTH/TOUTO is not in
concord with it. (I suppose one could reach for TO
DWRON to find gender agreement with TOUTO, but I don't
think many stretch so far as to suggest that TOUTO has
been attracted to the gender of TO DWRON.)
But this is not an insurmountable problem, for the
Expositor's Greek Testament says that "The formula KAI
TOUTO indeed might favor it [i.e., referring to
PISTIS], as it often adds to the idea to which it is
attached." But then it goes on to conclude similarly
to Andrew Lincoln, who writes in his Commentary on
Ephesians (Word):
"In the history of interpretation TOUTO has been taken
by some to refer specifically to the last word in the
preceding clause, "faith"...so that even faith itself
is explicitly said not to come from a human source but
from God as his gift. But the parallelism of the two
clauses of v 8b and v 9 suggests, rather, that both
are comments about the introductory clause of v 8a.
TOUTO is probably best taken, therefore, as referring
to the preceding clause as a whole, and thus to the
whole process of salvation it describes, which of
course includes faith as its means...."
(By the way, I think Amazon.com will accept
second-born children in exchange for BDAG.)
Eric S. Weiss
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