It is a striking insight when one reflects upon how Christianity (those who followed Jesus Christ) so rapidly and completely evolved from what we know of the teachings of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel...
...To a situation in which "the church" (an always-contested definition) successfully claimed the authority to define Christianity, and to control each Man's access to salvation.
The Romantic epiphany is that this claim of primary authority by "the church" - however that is defined; and all other such claims that transfer primary Christian authority to any external objective locus: such as scripture, or tradition - Must Be Wrong.
Must Be - because God the creator, and our loving Father, would obviously not have made the world thus; but would certainly have made a world compatible with the Fourth Gospel vision of individual Men choosing or rejecting each his own salvation - sufficiently guided and consoled by the divine within each Man and by the Holy Ghost.
Must Be - because God regards each of us as a beloved and unique child, and has made the world such that each child has ultimate control of his own salvation - regardless of circumstances.
Such is (more or less) the Romantic epiphany.
Yet - although commonplace now - this Romantic epiphany was not possible until relatively recently - apparently not until the late 1700s, and then only in a few Men in a few places (in Germany, Britain, then France).
It was not possible for ancient Men to have the Romantic epiphany, because their consciousness was different from ours.
They did not experience themselves - as we do - as essentially cut off from the world and other Men. Instead, they were - to a significant, but varied, extent, naturally, spontaneously, unconsciously immersed-in the world: part of the world.
Therefore, ancient men could not envisage, could not experience, a religious life that was detached from the human community of "the church". Neither could they envisage life itself outwith the patronage of a leige Lord to whom was owed loyalty - exile from one's community was no better than a living death.
Ancient Man was substantially and inescapably communal in his consciousness.
Even, more than a millennium later, by the time of the Reformation - Men's minds had only somewhat detached from the group: Men were 'semi-detached'. Authority was still experienced as ultimately external.
Instead of locating external primary authority in "the church" the Reformers maintained the primacy of external authority and 'merely' transferred it to a book: while maintaining strict control over the interpretation of that book.
But the condition of modern Man - not chosen, but fated - is one of alienation, of detachment. The Church/ The Bible or any other possible external location is experienced as Other - we are not organically and spontaneously "members" of any human social grouping, nor do we experience any book or scripture as innately authoritative in an objective - group-shared - fashion.
We each confront the world as an isolated consciousness; whether we like it or not - and for a Christian, therefore, the claims of any external entity to stand between us and God, strikes us as simply, obviously, untrue.
This is the Romantic epiphany; and once experienced it can never wholly be forgotten or suppressed. The Romantic Christian knows he has direct and personal task in this world, and that responsibility for his salvation lies, inescapably, on his own shoulders.
(Our individuality is, for us, as inescapable as was the communal consciousness of the ancients.)
The Romantic Christian knows, too, and therefore; that a claim otherwise - a claim that an external is the necessary condition for our personal salvation, regulates our 'access' to resurrected life eternal - a claim that salvation is ultimately described-by or controlled-by any external authority -- is a false claim.
The Romantic epiphany is that nothing - nothing external, not an institution, not a book, not a set of 'authorities', not a practice... ultimately nothing stands between a Man and his choice of whether or not to follow Jesus Christ to Heaven.
Nobody can give us salvation - except our-selves. Nobody can take away salvation - except our-selves.
Salvation is as easy as you, me, or any person, saying and meaning Yes to Jesus Christ... And Damnation as easy as saying Yes to Satan.