I think that it can be a great satisfaction in having a curiosity met. I think that there are people who enjoy Bible study the same way that other people enjoy filling out crossword puzzles. Get all the parts and get the thing completed -- they find satisfaction. I think there are people that study the Bible that way. They can see how it relates to its context and how its details work to get across the concept. But if it never gets into your life, if it never really touches your experience, I doubt seriously that you can call it a study of biblical truth, because I think God's truth is always designed to challenge us and change us.

Preaching: One of the critical areas that is so important to preaching -- and that so many pastors struggle with -- is the whole area of applying biblical truth. Making that transition from the context of the biblical world into "What does this mean for me on Tuesday morning?"

Robinson: It's a perceptive question. In fact if I have a serious book left in me, it would be on application. I think in many of our circles, more evangelical circles perhaps, but liberal as well, the great heresies are not primarily in the doctrine -- though they can be there -- but in the application. By that I mean, I can study a text and I can understand what the text means, as a preacher. Thus if I really understand what this text means, I can preach that idea, that abstraction from the text, with the authority that says "Thus saith the Lord." But the big question is, when I apply it in a specific way, can I have the authority of the Scriptures behind the application?

If it's a necessary implication: that is, if as Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 9, "There is one God," it's a necessary implication. There can't be five Gods. So if A is true, B must be true. But there aren't that many necessary implications. The next level would be a probable implication -- it's important, but it doesn't quite have the "Thus saith the Lord." Others are a possible implication, I guess improbable and, finally, an impossible implication. But how you take a truth from the ancient world in a different context from ours and bring it over with the authority of scripture, I think is the thing we battle with. But on the other hand, you have to apply the text, and you have to do it, I think, in specific ways, for people to get it and to put it into their lives.

There's a danger of legalism here. You can have an abstract concept, a concept that says "You shall honor your father and mother"-- it's clear that's what you're supposed to do. Then I apply it: it has to do with my aging parents. And I can tell you a story out of my own life, when my father came to live with us the last years of his life in Dallas. He lost touch with reality, and we had to put him in the nursing home. It cost me half of my salary, and I went to visit him every day. I hated to put him in there because he didn't like to be there. When my wife's mother came to the end of her life, we kept her in our home, and my wife took care of her. In both cases I was trying to honor my parents. Different situation -- the kids were gone when Bonnie's mother was ill. But it is very easy to come to the conclusion that if you are going to honor your parents then you must keep them in your home when they get old. Then what happens is that that application has all the force of the principle. But you can honor your parents in a number of different ways because of different situations. So I see legalism as the application of a principle, and the application has all the force of the principle and it does not deserve it. So there is a theological danger in the way that we apply.