Mark

Cheryl,

First, i am not here to continue in a long discussion. I would just like to offer a few comments for your readers and for you.

1. You break the rules of hermeneutics. Your whole interpretation is based on a ‘hypothetical’ false teacher that as yet, we have no evidence for. There is no ‘external’ evidence to support your case, so your exegesis needs to be taken with caution as any solely ‘internal’ exegesis does. This hermeneutical approach is not a good one as i’m sure you are aware. It’s basically a ‘guess’ on the grammar with no coroborating evidence, let’s at least be honest about that.

2. Why is the woman not already saved, when it appears she already has faith. We know this because the ‘if’ clause states according to YLT ‘remains in faith.’ You would assume to remain in faith, one would already have faith and to have faith is to be saved!

3. Why do ‘they’ need to remain in faith ect, for ‘she’ to be saved? Is this hypothetical husband contributing to his wife’s salvation. Is her salvation conditional on his remaining in faith aswell. This is what your exegesis misses and which leads to a drastically contradictory personal salvation that the Bible portrays. You attempt to solve this tension saying that we need others to direct our teaching ect, but this is not what the verse saids. It saids, ‘if they remain in faith’.

4. If this text is dealing with a specific woman and her husband you should at least be consistent with your grammatical approach and say that ‘love’, ‘sanctification’ and ‘sobriety’ are all required elements for this ‘they’ to be ‘saved’, since these are all part of the ‘conditional’ clause.

As you clearly state, this is a difficult verse to understand, however i don’t think your exegesis adequately solves the issue. There are just as many holes and problems with your exegesis as there is with any other.

Thanks for your time.
Cheerio