[Part One. Part Two. Part Three.]

Recall from the previous parts that traditionalism reconnects man with the true order of being and the wisdom of his ancestors, and that the most important item of wisdom is to acknowledge the God of the Bible. Recall also that intuition, despite not being infallible, is the foundation of wisdom.

But intuition, although necessary, is not sufficient. Man also needs revelation in order to be wise, for his intuition is not always dependable and because he has a natural tendency to rebel even against the true and the good.

“Revelation” includes Scripture as its most important example, but it also includes any instance when man is not able to know as a result of his own efforts, and must rely on the testimony of those who do know. “Believing revelation” is not the customary way to refer, for example, to a man believing the testimony of a scientist or other specialist about his field of expertise, but it is the same type of act as when a man believes what God has said in the Bible. In both cases, a man trusts the testimony of someone with greater knowledge. Most of what we know, in fact, is knowledge we cannot verify ourselves, and so believing revelation (perhaps under another name) is a necessary part of wisdom.

[Much of this knowledge we could verify ourselves, if we had the necessary time, talent, and training. But some of it, and especially the truths about God found in the Bible, man cannot come to know on his own. He must trust others if he is to become wise.]

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Intuition and revelation are the two foundations of wisdom, and through them we can begin to understand the order of being. But how exactly can this education be had? It requires one thing that is easy to describe but hard to do, and another that is hard to describe but relatively easier to do, once one is in the right frame of mind.

The hard thing is to repent. This is to acknowledge that you have been on the wrong path; that you have been willingly participating in falsehood and sometimes evil. To begin knowing the truth, you must first repent of your participation in the liberal system.

Repentance is literally a change of mind. Not on a specific topic, but in one’s basic orientation. To repent of your participation in the system of the modern world is not instantaneously to reject all of the false modernist/progressive/liberal notions you hold, for such an immediate U-turn is not within your ability. Instead, repentance is an acknowledgement that you are on the wrong path, and a decision to begin seeking the right path.

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If you have repented, you are ready to seek those who can teach you about the true order of the world. This is the step that is not easy to describe, and we will discuss it in the next part of this series.

[Part Five is here.]