In October of 1911, B. B. Warfield delivered a conference lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary entitled The Religious Life of Theological Students. This has long been required reading for many Reformed and Presbyterian seminary students. But Warfield’s lecture should be read by church officers or anyone who reads a significant amount of theology. In fact, it should be read by all Christians who enjoy a life of the mind as well as embrace the biblical gospel.

Warfield’s lecture also serves as a corrective to the sort of Evangelical piety which eschews “head knowledge” for “heart knowledge,” as exemplified in a popular Calvary Chapel pastor who speaks of seminary education as “cemetery education,” since, he claims, this fills the mind with “doctrine not love.” Warfield’s essay is a wonderful counteractive to such nonsense, reminding all who heard his lecture then and read the text of it today, that for a Christian, mind and heart, while distinct, must never the separated.

Early in the lecture, Warfield makes the obvious observation . . .

Recruiting officers do not dispute whether it is better for soldiers to have a right leg or a left leg: soldiers should have both legs. Sometimes we hear it said 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 that 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 a religious life for a student, even of theology.

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