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The Big Ideas

От New Christian Bible Study Staff

A girl gazes into a lighted globe, showing the solar system.

Here we are in the 21st century. We know that the universe is an enormous place. We're just bursting with scientific knowledge. But how are we doing with the even-bigger ideas? Our human societies seem to be erasing them, or ignoring them - maybe we think we're too busy for them.

Here on the New Christian Bible Study site, we'll buck the trend. We want to explore the big ideas that give us a framework for living better lives. Here's a start on a list of big ideas from a New Christian perspective. For each idea, there is a footnote that lists some references in Swedenborg's theological works:

1. God exists. Just one God, who created and sustains the entire universe in all its dimensions, spiritual and physical. 1

2. God's essence is love itself. It's the force that drives everything. 2

3. God's essence comes into being, that is, it exists, in and through creation. 3

4. There are levels, or degrees, of creation - ranging from spiritual ones that we can't detect with our physical senses or sensors, to the level of the physical universe where most of our awareness is when we're alive here. 4

5. The created universe emanates from God, and it's sustained by God, but in an important way it is separate from God. He wants it to be separate, so that freedom can exist. 5

6. God operates from love through wisdom - willing good things, and understanding how to bring them about. 6

7. The physical level of creation exists to provide human beings with an opportunity to choose in freedom, with rationality, whether or not to acknowledge and cooperate with God. 7

8. God provides all people everywhere, regardless of their religion, the freedom to choose to live a life of love to God and to the neighbor. 8

9. God loves everyone. He knows that true happiness only comes when we're unselfish; when we're truly motivated by a love of the Lord which is grounded out in a love of the neighbor. He seeks to lead everyone, but will not force us to follow against our will. 9

10. God doesn't judge us. He tells us what's good, and what's evil, and flows into our minds to lead us towards good. However, we're free to reject his leading, and instead opt to love ourselves most. Day by day, we create habits of generosity or of selfishness, and live out a life in accordance with those habits. Those habits become the real "us", our ruling love. 10

11. Our physical bodies die eventually, but the spiritual part of our minds keeps going. It's been operating on a spiritual plane already, but our awareness shifts - so that we become fully aware of spiritual reality. 11

Бележки под линия:

От "Съчиненията на Сведенборг

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #52

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52. Everything in the universe was created by the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. The universe, from beginning to end and from first to last, is so full of divine love and wisdom that you could call it divine love and wisdom in an image. This is clearly evidenced by the way everything in the universe answers to something in us. Every single thing that comes to light in the created universe has such an equivalence with every single thing in us that you could call us a kind of universe as well. There is a correspondence of our affective side and its consequent thought with everything in the animal kingdom, a correspondence of our volitional side and its consequent discernment with everything in the plant kingdom, and a correspondence of our outermost life with everything in the mineral kingdom.

This kind of correspondence is not apparent to anyone in our physical world, but it is apparent to observant people in the spiritual world. We find in this latter world all the things that occur in the three kingdoms of our physical world, and they reflect the feelings and thoughts of the people who are there--the feelings that come from their volition and the thoughts that come from their discernment--as well as the outermost aspects of their life. Both their feelings and their thoughts are visible around them looking much like the things we see in the created universe, though we see them in less perfect representations.

From this it is obvious to angels that the created universe is an image depicting the Divine-Human One and that it is his love and wisdom that are presented, in image, in the universe. It is not that the created universe is the Divine-Human One: rather, it comes from him; for nothing whatever in the universe is intrinsic substance and form or intrinsic life or intrinsic love and wisdom. We are not "intrinsic persons." It all comes from God, who is the intrinsic person, the intrinsic wisdom and love, and the intrinsic form and substance. Whatever has intrinsic existence is uncreated and infinite; while what comes from it, possessing nothing within itself that has intrinsic existence, is created and finite. This latter presents an image of the One from whom it derives its existence and manifestation.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

От "Съчиненията на Сведенборг

 

Arcana Coelestia #5077

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5077. 'The cupbearer of the king of Egypt' means among the things of the body which are subject to the understanding Part of the mind. This is clear from the meaning of 'the cupbearer' as the external or bodily senses that are subordinate or subject to the understanding part of the internal man, dealt with in what follows below; and from the meaning of 'the king of Egypt' as the natural man, dealt with below in 5079. Since the cupbearer and the baker are the subject of the narrative that follows and these mean the external senses belonging to the body, something must first be said about these. It is well known that the external or bodily senses are five in number - sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch - and also that these constitute the entire life of the body. For without those senses the body has no life at all, for which reason also when deprived of them it dies and becomes a corpse. The actual bodily part of the human being therefore is nothing else than a receiver of sensory impressions and consequently of the life resulting from these. The part played by the senses is the principal one and that by the body the instrumental. The instrumental without its principal which it is fitted to serve cannot even be called the body that a person carries around while living in the world; but the instrumental together with its principal, when they act as one, can be called such. The two together therefore constitute the body.

[2] A person's external senses are directly related to his internal ones, for they have been given to a person and placed within his body to serve his internal man while he is in the world and to exist subject to the sensory powers of that internal man. Consequently when a person's external senses begin to rule his internal ones he is done for. When this happens his internal sensory powers are regarded as no more than servants whose function is to reinforce whatever the external senses imperiously demand. When this is the state in which the external senses operate, order in their case has become turned around, a situation dealt with immediately above in 5076.

[3] A person's external senses are, as stated, directly related to his internal ones, in general to the understanding and to the will. Consequently some external senses are subject or subordinate to the understanding part of the human mind, others are subject to the will part. One sensory power specifically subject to the understanding is sight; another subject to the understanding, and after that to the will also, is hearing. Smell, and more especially taste, are subject to both simultaneously, while the power subject to the will is touch. Much evidence could be introduced to show that the external senses are subject to the understanding and the will, and also to show how they are subject; but it would take up too much space to carry the explanation so far. Something of what is involved may be recognized from what has been shown at the ends of preceding chapters about the correspondence of those senses.

[4] In addition it should be recognized that all truths that are called the truths of faith belong to the understanding part, and that all forms of good which are those of love and charity go with the will part. Consequently it is the function of the understanding to believe, acknowledge, know, and see truth - and good also. But the function of the will is to feel an affection for that truth and to love it; and whatever a person feels an affection for and loves is good. But how the understanding influences the will when truth passes into good, and how the will influences the understanding when it puts that good into effect, are matters for still deeper examination - In the Lord's Divine mercy those matters will be discussed at various points further on.

[5] The reason 'the cupbearer' means the senses subject or subordinate to the understanding Part of the internal man is that everything which serves as drink, or which is consumed as such, for example, wine, milk, or water, is related to truth, which feeds the understanding and so belongs to the understanding. Also, because the external or bodily senses play a ministering role, 'a cupbearer' therefore means those senses or what is perceived by them. For in general 'drinking' has reference to truths which feed the understanding, see 3069, 3071, 3168, 3772, 4017, 4018; the specific meaning of 'wine' is truth deriving from good, or faith from charity, 1071, 1798, while 'water' means truth, 680, 2702, 3058, 3424, 4976. From all this one may now see what 'the cupbearer' means.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.