I found this personal piece by NT Wright “My Pilgrimage in Theology” a warm read. I’m no academic but I think there’s a theologian in me 🙂 in the broadest sense of the word!
Here’s two bits that struck me …
” …I learned to live with unanswered questions: one of the keys to staying sane and Christian in a lifetime of studying theology is to say ‘I don’t know the answer to this just now, but I’m prepared to wait’. Often the answer comes by an unexpected route, in a form that one wouldn’t have recognized at the original time of asking. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit much needed by theologians.
… Back in Oxford in 1986, the two halves of my professional life came together in a different way. I teach and write about the NT and early Judaism, and especially about Jesus and Paul. I work as a pastor in a college full of students from all backgrounds and in all disciplines. And I have the joy, during term, of a regular celebration of the Eucharist at which, again and again, everything else I do comes into focus. I find myself held within the love of the triune God able to receive fresh grace for fresh tasks. Privately I have found to my surprise that at least sometimes prayer is becoming more of a delight than a discipline—perhaps because I have drawn on traditions other than my own (charismatic on one side, orthodox on the other). Passages from Scripture still jump off the page and make me want to laugh and/or cry with the love and the pain, of God.”