1. True Christianity

Containing a Comprehensive Theology of the New Heaven and the New Church

The Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church

THE faith of the new heaven and the new church is stated here in both universal and specific forms to serve as the face of the work that follows, the doorway that allows entry into the temple, and the summary that in one way or another contains all the details to follow. I say "the faith of the new heaven and the new church" because heaven, where there are angels, and the church, in which there are people, act together like the inner and the outer levels in a human being. People in the church who love what is good because they believe what is true and who believe what is true because they love what is good are angels of heaven with regard to the inner levels of their minds. After death they come into heaven, and enjoy happiness there according to the relationship between their love and their faith. It is important to know that the new heaven that the Lord is establishing today has this faith as its face, doorway, and summary.

340. 2. Briefly Put, Faith Is Believing That People Who Live Good Lives and Believe the Right Things Are Saved by the Lord

We are created for eternal life. All of us are capable of inheriting it, provided we use in our lives the means of salvation that have been prescribed for us in the Word. On these points all Christians agree, as do all non-Christians who have religion and sound reason.

There are indeed many means of being saved, but each and every one of them relates to living a good life and believing the right things. Therefore they all relate to goodwill and faith, for goodwill is living a good life and faith is believing the right things. These two universal categories of means of being saved - goodwill and faith - are not just prescribed for us in the Word, they are commanded.

From the fact that they are commanded it follows that goodwill and faith give us the capacity of providing ourselves with eternal life through a power that is assigned and given to us by God. The more we use that power and look to God, the more God increases the power until he turns every aspect of our earthly goodwill into spiritual goodwill and every aspect of our earthly faith into spiritual faith. In this way God brings dead goodwill and faith to life, and brings us to life as well.

[2] Two things have to come together before we can be said to be living a good life and believing the right things. In the church these two things are called our inner self and our outer self. When our inner self has good intentions and our outer self has good actions, then the two unite. Our outer self acts from our inner self, and our inner self acts through our outer self; we act from God and God acts through us. On the other hand, if our inner self has evil intentions, but our outer self still has good actions, nonetheless both are acting from hell. Our intentions come from hell and our actions are hypocritical. Our hellish intentions are inside every hypocritical thing we do, like a snake inside a plant or a grub inside a flower.

[3] If people know not only that we have an inner and an outer self but also what they are and that the two can work together either actually or seemingly, and also that our inner self lives on after death but our outer self is buried, they have access to an abundance of secrets about heaven and the world. People who unite these two in themselves for a good purpose become happy forever, but people who divide them, or worse yet if they unite them for an evil purpose, are unhappy forever.

425. Acts of Kindness Related to Goodwill Consist in Giving to the Poor and Helping the Needy, Although with Prudence

It is important to distinguish between work-related acts of goodwill and incidental acts of kindness. "Work-related acts of goodwill" means those practices of goodwill that come straight from goodwill itself, since goodwill itself is a function of the work that we do, as I have shown just above. "Acts of kindness," however, refers to helpful acts that are done outside of our work.

They are called acts of kindness because we are free to do them as we please, and when we do them, the recipients see them as kindnesses and nothing else. We do them according to the reasons and intentions we have in mind as benefactors.

It is a common belief that goodwill consists solely of giving to the poor, helping the needy, caring for widows and orphans, and making contributions to build, enhance, and endow hospices, hospitals, hostels, orphanages, and especially church buildings. Many of these actions, however, are not integral to the exercise of goodwill; they are extraneous to it.

People who consider goodwill to be good deeds of these kinds cannot help taking credit for them. Although people may claim aloud that they do not want any credit for their good deeds, nevertheless inside them lies the belief that they deserve credit. This is perfectly obvious after death when people like this list the things they have done and demand salvation as their reward. They are then investigated to find out what origin their actions had and what quality their actions possessed as a result. Whatever origin the actions had - whether they came from arrogance, or from a hunger for fame, or from a wish to be seen as generous, or from a desire to win friends, or from some merely earthly tendency, or from hypocrisy - they are judged on the basis of that origin, because the quality of the origin lies within the actions. Genuine goodwill, however, emanates from people who have become steeped in it through doing work based on justice and judgment without the goal of being repaid, in accordance with the Lord's words (Luke 14:12-14). People of genuine goodwill refer to the donations listed just above [not as goodwill itself but] as acts of kindness and also duties, although they are related to goodwill.