Cheryl Schatz

Sorry Craig,
I got caught up in the answer and forgot to read all the way through your comment.

You said:

I however replied to him, “I agree that the bible sometimes says that believers are not only saved now but “will be saved” in the future and for all eternity. But Paul can’t be saying that here in reference to Eve because of v15b.

I think that would be good enough and leave it at that. After all the end of verse 15 makes it so clear that even those who think that the dead can be spoken of as having a future salvation know that the future salvation cannot be conditional on either the dead or the living doing something.

I went through a lot of John MacArthur material when I was writing the script for my DVDs and I do not remember him ever speaking about 1 Timothy 2:15b in giving his reason for why it could not be Eve. He always stopped with the future tense and left it at that. I just think that the conditional phrase adds weight to the future tense.

The issue about Eve is that she is never directly said to be saved. Abraham is said to be saved and so is David but not Eve directly. So the future tense would be questionable since she is not listed in the “hall of faith” per se. We are never told what happened to her or if she remained in faith so why would we think that Paul would speculate about her assured salvation?