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

Fußnoten:

796. Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin in the Spiritual World

I have often had conversations with these three leading reformers of the Christian church. I have learned what the state of their life has been from the beginning up to the present day.

As for Luther, from the moment he arrived in the spiritual world he was an ardent evangelist for and defender of his own theological teachings. As the number of people from earth who agreed and favored his position grew, his impassioned championing of those teachings only increased.

He was given a home like the one he had had in the world, at Eisleben. In the middle of that home he set up a chair on a low platform. He would sit there, and his door was open to people who came to hear him. He would line them up in rows, placing those who were most favorable to his views closest to himself and situating the less favorable behind them. Then he would follow a routine of holding forth for a while, and breaking now and then for questions, but always with a view to using the questions as a way to get back to the main point of his lecture.

[2] Over time, because of the widespread approval he was receiving he adopted a particular style of persuasive speaking that is so effective in the spiritual world that no one can resist it or take up a contrary position to what is being said. Because this technique was in fact a type of incantation that had been practiced in ancient times, however, he was strictly forbidden to use it. He went back to appealing to people's memory and understanding instead.

The type of persuasion (actually a form of incantation) that he had been practicing draws its power from self-love. Eventually that self-love leads the style of discourse to become such that when anyone contradicts what you are saying, you attack not only the point being made but also the person who is making it.

[3] This was the state of Luther's life all the way up to the time of the Last Judgment, which occurred in the spiritual world in 1757. Then a year after that, Luther was relocated from that first house of his to another; at the same time he was brought into a different state of life as well.

He came to hear about my situation - that although I was still in the physical world, I was having conversations with people in the spiritual world. Therefore he (and many others) sought me out. After a lot of questions and answers back and forth with me, he came to understand that this day is the end of the former church, and the beginning of the new church that Daniel had foretold and that the Lord himself prophesied in the Gospels. Luther also understood the idea that this new church is what is meant by the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation and by the everlasting gospel proclaimed by the angel, flying in the midst of heaven, to the people who dwell on the earth (Revelation 14:6).

At that point in the conversation, though, he became extremely upset and protested loudly against what I was saying. Nevertheless, as he gradually came to see that the new church has been and is being constituted of people who acknowledge the Lord alone as the God of heaven and earth (as the Lord himself says in Matthew 28:18), and as he noticed that the group that gathered around him daily was becoming smaller, his protestations came to an end.

We then developed a closer relationship and he began confiding in me. Once he had become thoroughly convinced that he had based his central doctrine of justification by faith alone on his own ideas and not on the Word, he allowed himself to be taught about the Lord, goodwill, true faith, free choice, and even redemption; and all this teaching was based exclusively on the Word.

[4] After being convinced, he began to prefer the truths that are foundational to the new church, and to become stronger in them. During this period he was spending time with me every day. Then whenever these truths would come to his mind, he would start to laugh at his own prior teachings, because they went directly against what the Word says.

I once heard him saying, "It is not all that surprising, though, that I latched onto faith alone as what justifies us, and cut goodwill off from its own spiritual essence, and took away the notion of any human free choice in spiritual things, not to mention the many other things that faith alone, once that is accepted, leads to, like one link after another in a chain. It was all because my goal was to separate from the Roman Catholics, and the notion of faith alone was the only way to pursue and achieve that. Therefore I am not surprised that I wandered off into error. But I am surprised that one deranged person can produce so many other deranged people. " Luther then looked over in the direction of some famous theological authors who were much read in their day, who were loyal adherents to his teachings.

"It does surprise me," he continued, "that people like these did not notice the statements in Sacred Scripture that contradict my teachings, even though such statements are standing there in plain sight. "

[5] The angels who examine people informed me that this leader, more than many others who had convinced themselves that we are justified by faith alone, was in a state of openness to change, because since his youth, before he ever began the Protestant Reformation, he had taken to heart the teaching that goodwill has the highest priority; this is why in both his writings and his sermons he had taught so beautifully about goodwill.

It became clear from this that the idea of justification by faith alone had taken root in his outer, earthly self, but not in his inner, spiritual self. The outcome is very different for people who become convinced in their youth that goodwill is not spiritual; this spontaneously occurs in listeners when a teacher uses supporting evidence to establish that we are justified by faith alone.

[6] I have had a conversation with the person who was the prince of Saxony when Luther was in the world. He told me that he had often raised objections to Luther, particularly on the point that Luther had separated goodwill from faith and declared that faith contributes to our salvation but goodwill does not, even though Sacred Scripture not only unites these two as the universal means of salvation, but Paul actually gives precedence to goodwill over faith when he says, "There are three things: faith, hope, and goodwill. The greatest of these is goodwill" (1 Corinthians 13:13). The prince noted, however, that Luther would give the same response every time - that he had no choice but to do so, because of the Roman Catholics. This prince is among the blessed.

457. The case is different with those who only worship God and do not at the same time perform good deeds out of charity. These people are like those who tear up an agreement. It is different again with those who divide God into three, and worship each one separately; and different yet again with those who approach God, but not in His Human. These are the people who do not go in by the door, but climb up another way (John 10:1, 9). It is different yet again with those who are confirmed unbelievers in the Lord's divinity. None of these groups can achieve linking with God, and as a result salvation. Their charity too can only be spurious, and this does not allow linking face to face, but only at the side or back.

[2] A few words must be said on how the linking takes place. God flows into what everyone knows about God, bringing about an acknowledgment of God, and at the same time imparting His love for mankind. If a person receives only the first and not the second, the inflow reaches only his understanding, and not his will, and he remains knowing about God without any inward acknowledgment of God, so that his condition resembles that of a garden in wintertime. But if a person receives both the first and the second, the inflow reaches his will and comes from there into his understanding, so occupying his whole mind. Then he makes an inward acknowledgment of God, which brings to life what he knows about God, so that his condition resembles that of a garden in springtime.

[3] The reason why linking is produced by charity is that God loves each and every human being; and because He cannot do good to them directly, but only indirectly by means of other people, He therefore breathes into people His love, just as He breathes into parents love for their children. Anyone who receives that love is linked to God, and the love of God makes him love the neighbour. In him, the love of God is contained within his love towards his neighbour, and it is this which gives him his will and ability to act.

[4] Since no one can do any good deed unless it seems to him as if his ability, will and activity come from himself, this appearance is granted to him; and when he does it freely as if of his own accord, it is imputed to him, and accepted as the reciprocal act which brings about linking. This is like the relationship between active and passive, and the co-operation of the passive being produced in it as the result of the active. Or it is like the will being present in actions, and thought being present in speech, and the soul working at the innermost level on each of these. Or it is like effort in motion; and like the reproductive principle of the seed, which acts from within on the juices, causing the tree to grow until it produces fruit, and by means of the fruit to produce fresh seeds. Or it is like light falling on precious stones, the reflexion of which depends on the texture of the parts it strikes, thus producing various colours, which seem to belong to the gems, when in fact they are properties of the light.