One of my favourite writers, and one of the greatest Biblical
scholars of our generation, N.T. Wright once wrote the following: I used to tell my students that at
least 20 per cent of what I was telling them was wrong, but I didn’t know which
20 per cent it was: I make many mistakes in life, in relationships and in work,
and I don’t expect to be free of them in my thinking. But whereas in much of
life one’s mistakes are often fairly obvious – the short cut path that ended in
a bed of nettles, the experimental recipe that gave us all queasy stomachs, the
golf shot that landed in the lake – in the life of the mind things are often
not so straightforward. We need other minds on the job, to challenge us, to
come back at us to engage with our arguments and analyses. That is how the
world goes round.
Here
is a man who has years of research under his belt, countless books from his own
pen lining bookshelves all throughout the world, a former Oxford professor,
Bishop of Durham and now Professor…
Not many will leave a legacy like that... he certainly carved a path for others to tread... 'ministering to the poorest, the lonliest and the lost'... plenty for us to contemplate in the way he lived his life and served his God.
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