Warfield on the Slight Difference Between Rationalism and Mysticism

B. B. Warfield was not a fan of mysticism nor rationalism for that matter. According to Warfield, here’s what happens when you give up on biblical authority:

Once turn away from revelation and little choice remains to you but the choice between Mysticism and Rationalism. There is not so much choice between these things, it is true, as enthusiasts on either side are apt to imagine. The difference between them is very much a matter of temperament, or perhaps we may even say of temperature. The Mystic blows hot, the Rationalist cold. Warm up a Rationalist and you inevitably get a Mystic; chill down a Mystic and you find yourselves with a Rationalist on your hands. The history of thought illustrates repeatedly the easy passage from one to the other.

This gem is found in, B. B. Warfield, “Review of Mysticism in Christianity by W. K. Fleming and Mysticism and Modern Life by John Wright Buckman, in The Princeton Theological Review, xiv (1916), 343-348; and is reprinted in B. B. Warfield, Critical Reviews (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 366-367.