Doubt or dispute (Jude 9 and 22-23) 219 “extend mercy” and “save” are complementary: saving disputers is at the heart of extending mercy to them (51). In combination, they denote the direction to which Jude summons his eschatological community: toward active engagement with the disputers who face “fire” in the dawning eschaton [B]. According to Jude’s letter, fire is the element that God uses to punish (v. 7) (52). With the phrase, “snatching from fire”, Jude metaphorically clarifies the significance of the imperative swv/zete: it comprises a concrete action by the faithful that bridges the present and the future and has eschatological implications for both disputers and faithful community members. As a result, the ou}" mevn – ou}" dev – ou}" dev sequence of Jude’s chiastic argument structurally clarifies for the community faithful 1) the identity of the mercy recipients [A], i.e., the disputers; 2) the signific- ance of their task [B], i.e., saving means “snatching from fire”; and 3) the manner in which they are to respond to (perhaps, also feast with) divisive disputers [A1], i.e., “with fear”. Accordingly, both contextual and literary evidence limit the grammatical possibility that Jude, with this particular sequence, describes the existence of divisions either among the faithful or among the disputers (53). The first hypothetical subgroup (the doubters) disappears once the diakrinomenoi [A] are recognized to be the separatists/infiltrators, and the present imperative ejlea'te [A][A1] is seen to exhort the faithful to respond with mercy to these diakrinomenoi. The other two hypothetical subgroups (usually described by exegetes to be in various degrees of spiritual danger) (54) also disappear, as soon as the repeated relative pronoun ou{" [B][A1] is understood to function as a grammatical substitute for the disputers [A] (51) In other words, salvation is the destination of those who travel the road of mercy. This is also true of the faithful who, according to v. 21, await God’s mercy. (52) Jude uses language of the natural elements — fire (vv. 7, 23), wind/air (v. 12), water (v. 12, 13), and earth (v. 19) — only in reference to persons and characters other than the faithful. (53) Cf. SCHREINER, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, 487 for the differing opinion that the ou}" mevn – ou}" dev – ou}" dev structure unequivocally denotes a series of divisions. In contrast, ALLEN, New Possibility, 136-140 provides grammatical evidence that allows one to read vv. 22-23 as referring to one and the same group. I agree with SCHREINER, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, 487, n. 432 that Allen’s argument is weak due to the scarcity of comparative evidence. However, Allen makes the important point that Jude’s particular construct, which is equally rare, ought to be interpreted in a way that does not slavishly follow a one-for-all grammar rule — especially since the literary context contradicts this rule. (54) Cf. fn 35.