For, by grace you are in the state of having been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, rather it is the gift of God, not a result of works, in order that no man should boast.

I’m going to open up a thread on Ephesians 2:8-9, since Matt and I have been discussing it and it would be good to get others involved.

The first thing I’d like to point out are two aspects of the Greek behind the word ‘saved’ and the demonstrative pronoun, ‘that’.

First, the word ‘saved’ is a perfect periphrastic adverbial participle here in the Greek. The significance for this construction is in the past action that has ongoing results in the present. In this case, something has happened in the past that is causing us to in the state of having been saved in the present.

Skip the following quote from Wallace’s Greek Grammar if you are already bored.

A. Intensive Perfect (a.k.a. Resultative Perfect)

1. Definition

The perfect may be used to emphasize the results or present state produced by a past action. The English present often is the best translation for such a perfect. This is a common use of the perfect tense.

2. Caution

The average student learning NT Greek typically knows Greek grammar better than English grammar after a couple of years of study. Consequently, the aspect of the Greek perfect is sometimes imported into the English perfect. That is, there is a tendency to see the English perfect as placing an emphasis on existing results–a notion foreign to English grammar. As Moule notes, “the Greek tense is concerned with result, while the English tense is concerned solely with the absence . . . of an interval.” One ought to be careful when translating the perfect into English to resist the temptation to translate it as an English perfect at all times. When so translated, the Greek perfect should be extensive, not intensive.

Along these lines, it should be noted that as many faults as the KJV has, it fre­quently has a superior rendering of the Greek perfect over many modern trans­lations. (Recall that the KJV was produced during the golden age of English, during Shakespeare’s era.) For example, in Eph 2:8 the KJV reads “for by grace are ye saved,” while many modern translations (e.g., RSV, NASB) have “for by grace you have been saved.” The perfect periphrastic construction is most likely intensive, however. The KJV translators, though not having nearly as good a grasp on Greek as modern translators, seem to have had a better grasp on English. They apparently recognized that to translate Eph 2:8 with an English perfect would say nothing about the state resulting from the act of being saved.

Secondly, the demonstrative pronoun ‘that’ or ‘this’ is interesting. What is ‘that’ referring to? It is a neuter, while all the antecedents are feminine. Therefore, it can not refer only to “faith,” but likely includes the whole conceptual idea of the first part of verse 8. This being saved by faith is a gift of God.

Here’s another piece from Wallace on how the demonstrative works in this passage.

2] Debatable Example
Eph 2:8

th|/ ga.r ca,riti, evste sesw|sme,noi dia. pi,stewj² kai. tou/to ouvk evx u`mw/n( qeou/ to. dw/ron

for by grace you are saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God

This is the most debated text in terms of the antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun, tou/to. The standard interpretations include: (1) “grace” as anteced­ent, (2) “faith” as antecedent, (3) the concept of a grace-by-faith salvation as antecedent, and (4) kai. tou/to having an adverbial force with no antecedent (“and especially”).

The first and second options suffer from the fact that tou/to is neuter while ca,riti and pi,stewj are feminine. Some have argued that the gender shift causes no problem because (a) there are other examples in Greek literature in which a neuter demonstrative refers back to a noun of a different gender, and (b) the tou/to has been attracted to the gender of dw/ron, the predicate nomina­tive. These two arguments need to be examined together.

While it is true that on rare occasions there is a gender shift between antecedent and pronoun, the pronoun is almost always caught between two nouns of dif­ferent gender. One is the antecedent; the other is the predicate nom. In Acts 8:10, for example (ou-to,j evstin h` du,namij tou/ qeou/), the pronoun is masculine because its antecedent is masculine, even though the predicate nom. is femi­nine. In Matt 13:38 inverse attraction takes place (the pronominal subject is attracted to the gender of the predicate nom.): to. de. kalo.n spe,rma( ou-toi, eivsin oi` ui`oi. th/j basilei,aj (“the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom”). The construction in Eph 2:8, however, is not parallel because dw/ron is not the predicate nom. of tou/to, but of the implied “it” in the following clause. On a grammatical level, then, it is doubtful that either “faith” or “grace” is the ante­cedent of tou/to.

More plausible is the third view, viz., that tou/to refers to the concept of a grace-by-faith salvation. As we have seen, tou/to regularly takes a conceptual antecedent. Whether faith is seen as a gift here or anywhere else in the NT is not addressed by this.

A fourth view is that kai. tou/to is adverbial, though this view has surprisingly made little impact on the exegetical literature. If adverbial, kai. tou/to is intensive, meaning “and at that, and especially,” without having any anteced­ent. It focuses on the verb rather than on any noun. In 3 John 5 we see this usage: pisto.n poiei/j o] eva.n evrga,sh| eivj tou.j avdelfou.j kai. tou/to xe,nouj (“you do a faithful [deed] whenever you render service for the brothers, and especially [when you do it] for strangers”). If this is the force in Eph 2:8, the text means “for by grace you are saved through faith, and [you are saved] especially not by your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

The issues here are complex and cannot be solved by grammar alone. Nevertheless, syntactical considerations do tend toward one of the latter two views.