“Prayer, after All, Is but Thinking towards God” Philosophical Theology and Private Prayer in the Spirituality of John Baillie

Abstract

John Baillie was a leading Scottish theologian during the middle third of the 20th Century. A son of the manse and a staunch Presbyterian, his intellectual journey engaged the disciplines of philosophical and systematic theology. Following 15 years in North America he returned to Edinburgh as Professor of Divinity in 1934. In the decade 1929–1939 Baillie published several substantial books of theology and a volume of prayers. While his theology during this period was speculative and liberal, the prayers reveal a piety which is biblically rooted, Christ centered, and theologically robust. By comparing the prayers with his theological publications of the same period, this essay explores the spirituality of John Baillie by examining the conversation between his philosophical theology and personal piety, with a particular focus on The Place of Jesus Christ in Modern Christianity (1929), A Diary of Private Prayer (1936), and Our Knowledge of God (1939). Each book is placed in context, and Baillie’s spirituality in the prayers is shown to be significantly indebted to his particular intellectual and conceptual understanding of knowledge of God, human experience of God as mediated immediacy, and the central place of Jesus Christ in his Christian piety.