Theology, Knowledge of Self, and Prayer

To define prayer as merely "talking to God" is deficient. To biblically plumb its depths, one must begin with God and how speech plays a key role in the interactions between the Persons of the Trinity, and how we as men made in God's image and likeness analogize these interactions in our communications with fellow men and God Himself.

To downplay theology is to shun prayer.

"     All speech originates with the Persons of the Trinity.
      God has made us persons in his image.
      Therefore God talks to us, and we talk to him.

Our knowledge of God as the Trinity, three Persons in one God, is the foundation for our understanding of ourselves as discoursing people and as praying people. The more we grasp what it is for God to be as he is, the more we will grasp what it is for us to be as we are. What God is and what we are will determine how the discourse between us is shaped. To the extent that our perceptions of either God or ourselves are distorted, so our perceptions of prayer will be similarly distorted."

- Graeme Goldsworthy, Prayer and the Knowledge of God, ch. 2, p. 37.