The British Museum Is Falling Down

“It was not that Adam felt any particular aversion to the truth, merely that he had a professional interest in the preservation of appearances.”

— Describing Adam's professional inclination as a university lecturer.

“Theology was, for Adam, a kind of intellectual game, a sophisticated puzzle with a divine referee who never actually blew the whistle.”

— Adam's view on the academic pursuit of theology.

“Faith, he had always understood, was a gift, but it was a gift that required constant unwrapping, and he felt he was running out of wrapping paper.”

— Adam's struggle with maintaining his faith.

“The British Museum, Adam reflected, was a monument to man's insatiable curiosity, and his equally insatiable capacity for making a mess.”

— Adam's thoughts while at the British Museum.

“He often felt that he was living in a perpetual footnote, always referring to something more substantial, but never quite being it.”

— Adam's sense of his own academic and personal significance.

“The problem with believing in God, Adam thought, was that it made you responsible for everything that happened, including the things you couldn't explain.”

— Adam pondering the implications of divine belief.

“A university, Adam had once heard it said, was a collection of buildings around a library; a theologian's mind, he sometimes felt, was a collection of doubts around a prayer.”

— Adam comparing academic and spiritual structures.

“He was a man who tried to keep his intellectual and spiritual lives in separate compartments, like clean and dirty laundry, but they kept getting mixed up in the wash.”

— Describing Adam's difficulty in compartmentalizing his beliefs.

“Theology, Adam had concluded, was the art of answering unanswerable questions in language that was comprehensible to nobody but other theologians.”

— Adam's cynical view of theological discourse.

“He had always assumed that faith was a destination, a place you arrived at, not a journey you perpetually undertook.”

— Adam's evolving understanding of faith.

“The silence of God, Adam found, was often more eloquent than any sermon.”

— Adam reflecting on divine silence.

“The modern world, Adam often felt, was a vast, sprawling text, full of fascinating but ultimately meaningless footnotes.”

— Adam's perception of contemporary society.

“He was a pilgrim in search of a path, but all the signposts seemed to be pointing in different directions, or else had fallen down.”

— Adam's sense of spiritual disorientation.

“To be a theologian in the twentieth century, Adam thought, was like being an archaeologist in a world that had forgotten what ruins were for.”

— Adam's analogy for the role of a modern theologian.