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In article <82C06C0B-FA86-1856-A601-8BD3EA6173CB@srcbs.org>, ruth says...

>Bart Goddard wrote:

[snip]

>For it is by grace you have been saved through the faith and this not
>of you, of God the gift.

Please pay attention to the FAQ and Charter for this newsgroup. One of the two,
I forget which, urges us to always include chapter and verse citations, along
with credit to the translation/version used. You can prevent much pointless
strife by following this rule.

>What does "this" refer back to?

Good question. Alas, the grammar does NOT determine the answer for us. We must
rely on context.

> What does God give?
> "This" is singular. It can refer only to one thing.

Not true. In Greek of that time, it was common to ignore the strict rule
concerning agreement of _number_ in this case. Often, for example, one would say
some one thing, and then refer back to it as TAUTA, which is plural.


> It has to be grace or faith, not both.

You cannot argue this based on the grammar rule of agreement alone. For as I
just said, they did not adhere strictly to such a rule in _exactly_ this case.

Now let's look, just to be thorough, at the Greek text itself of Galatians:

THi GAR XARITI ESTE SESWiSMENOI DIA PISTEWS KAI TOUTO OUK EJ YMWN,
QEOU TO DWRON (Gal 2:8)

So you are claiming that TOUTO must refer to exactly one of XARIS or PISTIS. But
this fits the context poorly, if at all. It makes much more sense to read TOUTO
as agreeing with and referring to the WHOLE CLAUSE, THi GAR XARITI ESTE
SESWiSMENOI DIA PISTEWS. So then we could tranlate as:

By grace you(pl) are saved through faith, and this whole act is not
from you -- it is a gift of God.

Here I 'overtranslated' the reference of TOUTO as "this whole act" to make clear
that TOUTO refers to the entire clause. There is no other way to disambiguate in
English.

But this is another reason why I do not like to rely on English translations of
the Bible;)

>We know that grace has to be a gift of God.

[snip]


--
---------------------------
Subducat se sibi ut haereat Deo
quidquid boni habet, tribuat illi a quo factus est.
(St. Augustine, Ser. 96)




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Matthew Johnson wrote:

This is vain, but I'm going to do it any way.......
>
> >There is no NT principlization pointing to a singular
> >ecclessiastical entity with a board of "govenors" or bishops.
>
> So what? This is just the fallacy of the "false dilemma" -- one of
> your favorite fallacies. Besides: I n