Whereas 'Traditionalist' Christians will claim that even their bottom-line convictions come from outside themselves; i.e. typically from The Church (i.e. whatever aspect of church or denomination they personally regard as true).
I believe that, when the Christian is true, this claim is false.
It is clear to me that the real Christians now (i.e. those who have survived the temptations and passed the Litmus Tests of recent years - demonstrating their are not merely Christian-flavoured apologists for totalitarian leftism, or Establishment bureaucrats) - are people whose faith is solidly founded-upon an inner, intuitive and personal discernment of truth.
The difference is that Traditionalists claim that they are merely obeying the external and objective authority of their church; while the Romantics are clear that whatever complex superstructure rests upon these baseline discernments; and this is true however much that superstructure is derived from one or more churches/ denominations.
The foundation of a genuine and robust Christian faith in 2022 needs to be personal intuitive discernment; a direct knowledge-of, and relationship-with, the divine. Validated from-within - not obeyed from-without.
Any external source of knowledge may be, is-being, and almost certainly already-has-been - subverted, destroyed or (worst) inverted.
And therefore one who really did base his Christian faith on the external is no longer a Christian.
This is why I continue to debate these matters with real Christians who regard themselves as externally-validated Traditionalists, Orthodox, Mainstream; because I believe they are living in a state of denial of both freedom and responsibility, of error, of self-dishonesty and self-deception; in a Christian version of what existentialists used to call Bad Faith.
And this inauthentic, faith is 'bad' for Christians because it is genuinely self-deceptive and dishonest. This untruthfulness inevitably weakens faith; and therefore renders Traditionalists highly vulnerable to seduction by mainstream atheistic-leftist-materialism operating via general culture; and specifically through the top-down net-corruption of the leadership class in all major churches and denominations.
In sum: I ask traditionalists for something very specific: an explicit acknowledgement that - here-and-now - the effective and resistant faith of even the most traditionalist and church-orientated of real-Christians has a personal and intuitive foundation.
