Ephesians 2:8-9…Faith is NOT the gift

Question: 

Is faith a gift from God that he must impart to non-believers to enable them to believe in Jesus? Calvinists claim that people are too "dead" spiritually to even muster faith in God's Son.  The "T" in the acronym TULIP that outlines Calvinist doctrine stands for "Total Depravity".  The "total" conveys a complete spiritual bankruptcy that is so impotent that a person cannot believe the gospel God commands for them to believe.  They point to verses such as Eph. 2:1 and Rom. 3:10-12 to support this belief.  The Calvinist claims that until God regenerates a person's soul and grants them faith as a special gift, they will never be able to believe in Jesus.  Otherwise, they argue, if faith is something a person can put in Jesus themselves, it is a work, and they would be able to boast before God, pointing to Eph 2:9b and Rom 4:2.  The key verse they use to support this view is Ephesians 2:8-9, which in NIV reads,

"For by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast." 

Answer: 

The answer here is not even debatable.  The Ephesians 2:8-9 Greek construct precludes "faith" as being the gift.  The genders used by Paul:  "pistis" (faith) is fem. and "touto" (this) is neuter.  By the rules of the Greek language, the gender of the demonstrative pronoun ("touto" in this case) must point to a noun of the same gender or else a a phrase or clause rather than a specific noun.  Since "touto" is neuter, it cannot refer to the feminine word "pistis".  Thus it must be referring to a grace-by-faith-salvation.  This view was first revealed to me by a Calvinist teacher of Greek at CIU seminary when I attended.  To his commendation, he was honest with the text.  He still believed faith was a gift from God, but he insisted that his view could not be supported from this particular Scripture. 

The words that follow-- "not by works, so that no one can boast" reveal the purpose behind Paul's writing here.  Paul always contrasts faith with works.  He never says faith is a work.  This is congruent with his words in Rom 3:27-28, where he says that because righteousness is established by faith, nobody can boast.  The point is if you can establish your own righteousness through obeying the Law, then you inherently have something to boast about because you accomplished it yourself.  Jesus Christ himself falls into this camp.  He established his own righteousness by fully obeying the Law.  However, if we have to depend on another person's righteousness offered vicariously for us, then we have no reason to boast because we did not accomplish the righteousness ourselves; it was accomplished by another.  That is what faith is-- relying upon Jesus' righteous obedience to the Law.  And this is a basic tenet of the Christian faith that Paul is communicating.  Paul presupposes that we have the ability to put our faith in Jesus- to rely upon him for this righteousness…and that we have this ability without further help from God.  The help and grace God provides is the righteousness itself in Jesus.  He puts the onus completely on us to accept that gift he offers in a loving relational way.  And this is why he can hold us accountable for not doing so. 


Calvinists argue that if faith comes from ourselves, then we have something to boast about or that we have contributed something to our salvation, which the Scripture precludes.  But as I have shown from Romans 3:27-28, Paul says the opposite.  Your faith is never a reason to boast, simply because your faith is exercised out of need-- out of weakness-- not strength.  Faith is needed because you are are inadequate and unable to do it yourself; you need someone's help.  Here is an example.  If a drowning victim who was saved by a lifeguard tried to take credit for saving himself because he grabbed onto the life preserver, it would be considered nothing other than a joke.  No, the one glorified in this scenario is clearly the lifeguard, not the one who grabbed onto the life preserver!

Comments are welcome.  I would love to hear your thoughts.