Scripture is placed in a specific context for a reason. I am not interested in discussing your attempts to change the subject, I am interested in discussing the gross distortion of Romans 8:31, which was not written to muse on the possibility of Sarah Palin’s presidential campaign.
Paul had a reason to include the verse where he did. Our task is not to clip the verse from its context and try to use it elsewhere, our task is to study the verse *in* context and glean *in context* applications from it.
Sorry. Disagree. Consider the following:
Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.
Your version of the “Context Rule” says, “he’s only talking about lots being cast into laps, so dice are not controlled by God, because they are not ‘lots’, and they are generally cast on the ground, not into laps.”
My version of the “Context Rule” says, “he’s talking about a game of chance; the principle is that even what we consider random is really still under God’s control.”
My Context Rule still produces a rock solid conservative, evangelical understanding of Scripture, and is consistent with some 2000 years of sound Biblical hermeneutics.
Your rule, where I am not allowed to see general principles because the general principles might somehow be inconsistent with the specific instance, is frankly something I’ve never heard before anywhere. I am a graduate of a well-known Bible school, and of a well-known conservative Christian university, have read extensively in the subject matter for many years, can read some Greek and some Hebrew, believe in a grammatical historical approach to interpreting Scripture, believe in a literal creation, a literal Adam and Eve, a literal Devil, a literal universal flood, all the miracles of both testaments, the literal virgin birth of Jesus, the literal death and bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead, by which we have the forgiveness of sins and the hope of life everlasting, the literal visible return of Jesus at the end of days, the eternal punishment of the wicked, and for the redeemed the glories of the eternal state with the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, forever.
And yet, in all that, I have never heard once, in any material I have read, no matter how conservative or liberal, nor have I found it anywhere in Scripture, that I am not permitted to think, when I read the Biblical text, of the general principles that emerge from the specific details of the narrative before me.
So I am sorry, but unless you can actually convince me, from Scripture, why I should not be permitted to perceive general truths as well as specific truths in holy writ, I will obstinately continue to think as I read, because that is what thinking is, the continuous transformation of an incoming stream of raw data into a meaningful hierarchy of truth. You are literally asking me to leave off the top layer of that hierarchy of thought, and solely because it displeases you that one such general truth in a particular passage might well reasonably apply to Sarah Palin.
Not gonna happen.
BTW, I noticed you didn’t even attempt to answer any of my earlier questions. Let me try again. Do you believe the following propositions are true:
If God be for David, who can be against him?
If God be against Saul, who can help him?
If you do not believe they are true, do you believe they are false?
If you believe they are true, then why would they not be as true for you or me or Sarah as they were for David and Saul?
Last question: Why are you not answering my questions?
Cue the crickets …