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:

19. 1. The one God is called Jehovah from "being," that is, from the fact that he alone is [and was] and will be, and that he is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega. "Jehovah" means "I am" and "to be," as is generally known. We know from the Book of Creation, or Genesis, that God was called "Jehovah" from most ancient times. In the first chapter he is called "God," but in the second and subsequent chapters he is called "Jehovah God. " Later on the descendants of Abraham through Jacob forgot the name of God owing to their long sojourn in Egypt. Then in the event recorded in the following passage it was recalled to memory:

Moses said to God, "What is your name?" God said, "I Am I Who Am. So you will say to the Children of Israel, 'I Am sent me to you. ' And you will say, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, sent me to you. This is my name to eternity, and this is how I will be remembered from generation to regeneration. " (Exodus 3:13-15)

Since God alone is "I Am" and being, or "Jehovah," therefore nothing exists in the created universe that does not derive its underlying reality from him. (How this happens will be discussed below [21, 75-76, 78].) The same thing is meant by these words: "I am the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega" (Isaiah 44:6 and Revelation 1:8, 11; 22:13). This means that on every level of existence he is the one and only entity, the source of all things.

[2] God is called the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, because alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet and omega is the last; so together they mean all things as a whole.

In the spiritual world, every alphabetical letter has a meaning. A vowel, because it carries tone, means a feeling or some kind of love. Spiritual and angelic speech, and also writing, depends on these meanings - but this is a mystery that has not been known until now. There is in fact a universal language shared by all angels and spirits. It has nothing in common with any human language in our world. After death everyone inherits that language, because it is latent in everyone from creation. In the spiritual world, then, everyone can understand everyone else. I have often been allowed to hear that language. I have compared it with languages in the physical world and have ascertained that it has not even the least thing in common with any earthly language. It differs by its very origin, which is that every letter of every word has a meaning. This is why God is here called the Alpha and the Omega, meaning that on every level of existence he is the one and only entity, the source of all things. (For more on how this language and its written form flow from angels' spiritual thought, see the work Marriage Love 326-329; see also what follows in this work [280].)

24. It requires no further explanation to see that the statement that all people who have ever been born since the beginning of creation and have died are in heaven or in hell is the consequence of what has been said in the previous chapter, where it was shown that heaven and hell are from the human race. Up to now it has been generally believed that people will not go to heaven or to hell before the day of the Last Judgment, when souls will return to their own bodies so that they can enjoy what are believed to be the peculiar properties of the body. Simple people have been brought to believe this by those who have made a profession of being wise and have enquired into people's inner state. These have had no idea of the spiritual world, but only the natural one, and so no idea of the spiritual man either. They have therefore been unaware that the spiritual man, which everyone has within his natural man, has human form just as the natural man. Neither has it occurred to them that the natural man gets his human form from his spiritual man. Yet they could have seen that the spiritual man acts at will upon every detail of the natural man, who is unable to do anything of himself.

[2] It is the spiritual man who thinks and wills, for the natural man cannot do this of himself. And thought and will are all-in-all to the natural man, for he is acted upon as the spiritual man wills, and he speaks as the spiritual man thinks, so much so that action is nothing but willing and speech is nothing but thinking. For if you take away willing and thinking, speech and action come instantly to a stop. From this it is plain that the spiritual man really is the man, present in every detail of the natural man; so its outward form must be similar, since any part or particle of the natural man not subject to the action of the spiritual is lifeless. However, the spiritual man cannot become visible to the natural man, for the natural cannot see the spiritual, though the spiritual can see the natural. This is in accordance with the rules of order, but the reverse would be contrary to them, since it is possible for the spiritual to influence the natural (and this applies to sight, since it is a form of influence), but not the reverse. The spiritual man is what is called a person's spirit, which is seen in the spiritual world in complete human form and which lives on after death.

[3] Since intelligent people have, as I said before, known nothing about the spiritual world, and thus about a person's spirit, they have therefore got the idea that a person cannot have a personal life until his soul returns to his body and resumes its senses. This is the origin of such empty notions about personal resurrection, for instance, that although bodies have been eaten by worms or fishes or have collapsed into dust, they will by God's almighty power be brought together again and reunited with souls; or that these events will only occur at the end of the world, when the visible universe will come to an end; and many similar ideas, all of which are beyond our grasp and at first sight appear impossible and contrary to God's order. Consequently many people have their faith weakened by these ideas. For those who think wisely can only believe what they to some extent understand; one cannot believe the impossible, that is, what one judges to be impossible. So those who do not believe in life after death use this argument to infer a proof of their negative attitude. However, it may be seen in numerous chapters of HEAVEN AND HELL that people rise again at once after death, and are then endowed with complete human form. These remarks are intended as additional confirmation of the statement that heaven and hell are from the human race; from which it follows that all people who have ever been born from the beginning of creation and have died are in heaven or in hell.