The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture XVIII (ΓÇ£PhilosophyΓÇ¥), 1902 by William James
Ratiocination is a relatively superficial and unreal path to the deity.
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This statement comes from William JamesΓÇÖs Gifford Lectures, delivered in 1901ΓÇô1902 and published in The Varieties of Religious Experience. The line appears in Lecture XVIII, where James critiques the limits of rational theology and argues that logical argumentation cannot bring a person to the living reality of God. He contrasts the abstractions of dogmatic proofs with the experiential encounter described in the book of Job. For James, reason alone is ΓÇ£superficial and unrealΓÇ¥ compared to the direct sense of GodΓÇÖs presence that shapes genuine religious life. The sentence is often misattributed to Louis Berkhof and other Reformed theologians, but it does not appear in Systematic Theology or any of BerkhofΓÇÖs works.
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