Would it sound overly triumphant if I advanced the claim that I’m now experiencing what seems to be the most enjoyable stage of my theological journey so far?

I’m learning new forms of theological articulation, discovering new categories and deciphering how my existing scheme fits into the ever-expanding matrix, and in the process, witnessing an influx of new categories that I’d previously never even heard of before. And yes, I’m thinking to myself, “Which part of the planet have I been stuck in before this?”

It seems as though I have just entered a whole new world of discovery. At the same time, it’s not a world entirely unfamiliar to me. There are things that strongly resonate with what I’ve known before, so the sense of continuity resounds. But more than that, there are also things that are really mind-blowing in the light of the paradigm from which I have emerged.

Now it seems like the paradigm I have recently emerged from is at least thirty years backward. It was a world wherein people articulated things as if those were entirely brand new discoveries, when it had actually escaped their realisation that others had already spoken about those very things for decades and have now moved far beyond that.

Oh the folly of thinking that we already know all there is to know. The folly of thinking that our little fossilised little frameworks already contain all there is to know, and the ignorant insecurity of protectionism reflected in the way we guard our fragile little schemas.

But you know, inasmuch as it might sound judgemental to say this, the reality is that some people will always remain where they are. They will always remain happy being in static intellectual existence; they remain happy there because that’s where they get to persist in their delusions of already having known all there is to be known.