Mark Stevens’ recent post on prayer (which includes a book giveaway; if interested go here) reminded me of a short book that I own by P.T. Forsyth titled The Soul of Prayer. As I flipped through it briefly today I found this quote on theological prayer (p. 91) that I thought I’d share here:

If we learn to pray from the Bible, and avoid a mere cento of its phrases, we shall cultivate in our prayer the large humane note of a universal gospel. Let us nurse our prayer on our study of our Bible; and let us, therefore, not be too afraid of theological prayer. True Christian prayer must have theology in it; no less than true theology must have prayer in it and must be capable of being prayed.

What must be noted from this quote is Forsyth’s refusal to separate academics from Spirituality. Christian scholarship cannot be made distinct from seeking the God and participating in the narrative we are reading. This reminds me of a quote from a speech titled “The Religious Life of Theological Students” given by B.B. Warfield at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1911. He uses the word “religious” like many today use “spirituality”. Here is a excerpt from the speech that I think echoes Forsyth:

Sometimes we hear that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. “What!” is the appropriate response, “than ten hours over your books, on your knees?” Why should you turn from God when you turn to your books, or feel you must turn from your books in order to turn to God? If learning and devotion are as antagonistic as that, then the intellectual life is in itself accursed, and there can be no question of the religious life for a student, even of theology. The mere fact that he is a student inhibits religion from him….You are students of theology, and, just because you are students of theology, it is understood that you are religious men, to whom the cultivation of the religious life is a matter of profoundest concern –of such concern that you will wish above all things to be warned of the dangers that may assail your religious life, and be pointed  to the means by which you may strengthen and enlarge it. In your case their can be no “either–or” here –either a student or a man of God. You must be both.

For Warfield praying while studying supersedes the impasse of prayer or study. A student of theology cannot come from this so-called “objective” vantage point (as if such a thing exists). How can we study God like we study some specimen under a microscope? In order to understand the true of the Christian gospel we must live in the truth of the Christian gospel. Likewise, we should not think that serious study will lead us away. Rather, it will be the town of which Chesteron wrote that we “discovered” only to find it was really our home all along. Studying in the Spirit will always lead us back to orthodoxy.