The Necessity of Spirituality to the Theological Enterprise

This symposium in First Things is an excellent read; full of thought provoking reflections on theology as a knowledge tradition and its place within the modern university by three of the sharpest American theologians writing today (and one political science prof. who authored the paper around which the symposium centered).

This point by Stanley Hauerwas, summarizing the argument of Gavin D'Costa's Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy, and Nation, especially stood out to me:

"Recognizing this history, D’Costa argues that, if theology is to regain its claim to be knowledge crucial for the work of the university, it must be reconnected with the practices that make it intelligible: prayer, the sacraments, and the virtues. In a wonderful chapter entitled “Why Theologians Must Pray for Release from Exile,” D’Costa suggests that prayer is the necessary condition to secure the objectivity of theology, because theology cannot be done with intellectual rigor outside the context of a love affair with God and God’s community. The formal object of theology is God, and, like other disciplines that require practices and virtues constitutive for knowing the object of their investigation, theology requires prayer."

I think Barth says something similar in his book on prayer, where he casts theology as a form of prayer. Anyway, I think the connection between spirituality (i.e. prayer and other disciplines, worship, the sacraments) and theological knowledge may be something worth developing into a paper.