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on mysticism


Here's B. B. Warfield, Princeton professor and theologian a century ago, on the distinction between mysticism and evangelical Christianity.  It's a concise and relevant summary:  


Saint Teresa Of Avila, Mary Evans Library
"Evangelical Christianity interprets all religious experience by the normative revelation of God recorded for us in the Holy Scriptures, and guides, directs, and corrects it from these Scriptures, and thus molds it into harmony with what God in His revealed Word lays down as the normal Christian life. The mystic, on the other hand, tends to substitute his religious experience for the objective revelation of God recorded in the written Word, as the source from which he derives his knowledge of God, or at least to subordinate the expressly revealed Word as the less direct and convincing source of knowledge of God to his own religious experience. The result is that the external revelation is relatively depressed in value, if not totally set aside."  

(B. B. Warfield, Sermons and Essays)





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