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

Notes de bas de page:

322. Everyone Can Be Reformed, and There Is No Such Thing as Predestination

Sound reason tells us that everyone is predestined to heaven and no one to hell. We are all born human, which means that we have the image of God within us. The image of God within us is our ability to discern what is true and to do what is good. Our ability to discern what is true comes from divine wisdom and our ability to do what is good comes from divine love. This ability is the image of God; it is enduring with everyone who is whole and is never erased. It is why we can become civic, moral individuals; and if we can become civic and moral individuals, we can become spiritual individuals, since civic and moral life is receptive of spiritual life. We are called civic individuals if we know and abide by the laws of the country we are living in. We are called moral individuals if we make habits and virtues of these laws and live by them for rational reasons.

[2] Next I need to say how civic and moral living is receptive of spiritual living. Live by these laws not only as civic and moral laws but also as divine laws and you will be a spiritual person.

There is hardly a nation so barbaric that it does not have laws forbidding murder, promiscuity with other people's spouses, theft, perjury, and violation of others' rights. Civic and moral individuals keep these laws in order to be or to seem to be good citizens; but if they do not regard them as divine laws as well, they are civic and moral individuals only on the earthly level. On the other hand, if they do regard them as divine laws, they become civic and moral spiritual individuals.

The difference is that in the latter instance they are not just good citizens of their earthly kingdom, they are good citizens of the kingdom of heaven as well; in the former instance they are good citizens of their earthly kingdom but not of the kingdom of heaven. It is the good they do that makes the difference. The good that worldly civic and moral individuals do is not intrinsically good because they themselves and the world are at its heart. The good that civic and moral spiritual individuals do is intrinsically good because the Lord and heaven are at its heart.

[3] This shows that since we are all born capable of becoming civic and moral individuals on the earthly level, we are also born capable of becoming civic and moral individuals on the spiritual level. All we have to do is acknowledge God and not do evils because they are against God, and do what is good because that is for God. Doing this enables the spirit to enter into our civic and moral acts, and they come to life. Otherwise there is no spirit in our acts, and they are not alive. This is why worldly people are called "dead" no matter how civic and moral their behavior is, while spiritual people are called "living."

[4] Under the Lord's divine providence, every nation has a religion, and the first principle of every religion is a recognition of the existence of God. Otherwise we cannot call it a religion. Every nation that lives by its religion--that is, that does not do evil because it is against its God--is given a spiritual element within its worldly life.

Imagine hearing non-Christians say that they do not want to do some evil thing because it is against their God. Is there anyone who would not say inwardly that these people are saved? Nothing else seems possible; that is what sound reason tells us. Conversely, suppose some Christian says, "One evil or another does not matter to me. What is this business about saying that it's against God?" Is there anyone who would not say inwardly that this person is not saved? It seems impossible; that is what sound reason tells us.

[5] If this individual says, "I was born Christian, I was baptized, I have confessed the Lord, read the Word, and taken the Holy Supper," does all this matter if this individual has a craving for murder and revenge, for adultery, surreptitious theft, perjury, lies, and all kinds of violence, and does not regard them as sins? Are people like this thinking about God or about some eternal life? Do they think that they exist? Surely sound reason tells us that people like this cannot be saved.

I make these statements about Christians because non-Christians pay more attention to God than Christians do, because their religion is in their life.

I need now to say more about this, though, in the following sequence.

1. The ultimate purpose of creation is a heaven from the human race.

2. Consequently, under divine providence everyone can be saved; and everyone is saved who believes in God and lives a good life.

3. It is our own fault if we are not saved.

4. This means that everyone is predestined to heaven and no one to hell.

797. As for Melanchthon, I was allowed to learn a lot about his fate upon his first coming into the spiritual world, and what it was later on, not only from angels, but from himself, for I spoke with him a number of times, though not as often or at as close range as with Luther. The reason for this restriction was that he could not approach as closely, because he devoted his researches only to justification by faith alone, and not to charity; and I was surrounded by angelic spirits devoted to charity, who prevented him from approaching me.

[2] I was told that as soon as he entered the spiritual world, he was provided with a house like that in which he had lived in the world. (This also happens to most new arrivals, so that they remain unaware of being no longer in the natural world, and the time which has elapsed since they died seems like no more than a sleep.) Everything in his room too was similar; he had a similar table, a similar writing-desk with compartments and also a bookcase. So as soon as he arrived, as if he had just awoken from sleep, he sat down at the table and went on writing; his subject then was justification by faith alone, and he went on thus for some days, with not a word about charity. When the angels perceived this, they sent to ask him why he did not write about charity too. He replied that the church was in no way dependent upon charity, for if charity were accepted as an essential of the church, man would also attribute to himself the merit of justification and so of salvation, thus depriving faith of its spiritual essence.

[3] When this was perceived by the angels who were overhead, and heard by those who had associated with him when he was out of his house, they went away. (Every newcomer has angels associated with him at first.) Some weeks after this had happened, the objects he was using in the room began to grow dim and finally to fade away, until at length nothing was left there but a table, paper and an ink-pot. Moreover, the walls of his room appeared to be covered with whitewash and the floor was paved with yellow brick; he himself wore coarser clothes. When he was surprised at this and asked around to learn the reason, he received the answer that it was because he had banished charity from the church, when in fact it is its heart. But because he so often spoke against it, continuing to write about faith as the one and only essential of the church and the means of salvation, removing charity further and further away, he suddenly found himself in an underground workroom, full of similar people. When he wanted to leave, he was detained, and warned that this is the fate awaiting those who cast charity and good deeds out of the church doors. Still, since he was one of the reformers of the church, he was taken out on the Lord's instructions, and sent back to his previous room, where he had nothing but a table, paper and an ink-pot. Yet the ideas he had convinced himself of made him blot the paper with similar errors; so he could not be kept from being alternately sent down to his companions in prison and at other times being released. When released he appeared to be dressed in furs, since faith without charity is cold.

[4] He told me himself that there was another room adjoining his at the back, containing three tables, at which sat three men who, like him, had also driven charity into exile; and there sometimes a fourth table appeared on which various monstrous forms were to be seen, though these did not frighten them away. He said that he talked with these men, and they convinced him more every day. However, after some time he became fearful and started to compose something about charity, but what he wrote on the paper one day he was unable to read the next. For this is what happens to everyone there, if he draws only on the external man for what he puts on paper, and not on the internal at the same time; he writes then from compulsion, not from free choice, and it is blotted out automatically.

[5] After the Lord began the foundation of the new heaven, the light coming from it made him start thinking that he might perhaps be wrong. So, worrying about his fate, he became aware of some interior ideas about charity which had been impressed on him. In that state he consulted the Word, and then his eyes were opened and he saw that it was completely full of love to God and love towards the neighbour, so that it was as the Lord says, on these two commandments depend the law and the prophets, that is to say, the whole Word. From this time on he was moved further in towards the south-west, and so to another house. From there he spoke with me, and said that now his writing about charity does not fade as it did before, but is dimly visible the next day.

[6] I was surprised that when he walks his footsteps ring out rhythmically, like those of people wearing iron-shod boots walking on a stone surface. I must add that when some newcomers from the world entered his room to see him and talk with him, he summoned one of the spirit magicians, who were able by imagination to produce various pleasant appearances. They then furnished his room with ornaments, rose-coloured carpets, and also a kind of bookcase in the middle. However, as soon as they left, these appearances disappeared, and the former whitewash and emptiness came back. But these events happened when he was in his former state.