Render Individual Form Element in Symfony 2 - symfony

Question

I'm having trouble rendering individual form fields in a twig template from a Symfony 2 form. In the example below, I'm simply trying to render the first_name form field.
Also, form_errors never renders anything.
Here is my Form object:
namespace ABC\WebsiteBundle\Form;
use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\FormBuilderInterface;
use Symfony\Component\OptionsResolver\OptionsResolverInterface;
class LoanApplication extends AbstractType
{
public function buildForm(FormBuilderInterface $builder, array $options)
{
$builder->add('first_name', 'text', array('required' => true));
}
public function getName()
{
return 'LoanApplication';
}
public function getDefaultOptions(array $options)
{
return array(
//'data_class' => 'Acme\TaskBundle\Entity\Task',
'csrf_protection' => true,
'csrf_field_name' => '_token',
// a unique key to help generate the secret token
'intention' => 'loan_application',
);
}
}
Here is the controller:
namespace ABC\WebsiteBundle\Controller;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\Controller;
use JML\WebsiteBundle\Form\LoanApplication;
use JML\WebsiteBundle\QuickBase as QuickBase;
class ApplyController extends Controller
{
public function indexAction()
{
$form = $this->createForm(new LoanApplication());
return $this->render('ABCWebsiteBundle:Apply:index.html.twig', array(
'form' => $form->createView(),
));
if ($request->getMethod() == 'POST') {
$form->bindRequest($request);
if ($form->isValid()) {
// perform some action, such as saving the task to the database
//return $this->redirect($this->generateUrl('task_success'));
}
}
}
}
And the twig:
<form action="{{ path('apply') }}" method="post" {{ form_enctype(form) }}>
<pre>
{{ dump(form_errors(form)) }} // always empty
</pre>
<div>
{{ form_label(form.first_name) }} // this renders
{{ form_widget(form.first_name) }} //empty
{{ form_row(form.first_name) }} //empty
</div>
<input type="submit" formnovalidate/>
</form>