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

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11. 4. For various reasons, different nations and peoples have had and still have a diversity of opinions on the nature of that one God. The first reason for this is that knowledge about God and therefore acknowledgment of God is not possible without revelation; and knowledge of the Lord and therefore acknowledgment that all the fullness of divinity dwells physically in him is not possible without the Word, which is a garland of revelations. From the revelation they have been given, people are able to meet God, receive an inflow, and thus be made spiritual instead of earthly.

Early revelation spread throughout the whole world, and the earthly self distorted it in many different ways, giving rise to divergences, disagreements, heresies, and schisms among religions.

The second reason [for the diversity of opinions on God] is that the earthly self cannot comprehend anything about God; it can comprehend only the world, and conform it to itself. This is why it is among the axioms of the Christian church that the earthly self is against the spiritual self, and that they battle each other. People then have come to acknowledge from the Word [or] from some other revelation that there is a God, and yet in both the past and the present they have had a diversity of opinions on the nature and the oneness of God.

[2] Therefore people whose mental sight was dependent on their physical senses and who nevertheless wished to see God made idols for themselves out of gold, silver, stone, and wood. They intended to adore God in those forms as objects of sight. Others with the same desires but with religious principles that forbade idols pictured the sun and moon, the stars, and various things on earth as images of God. Those who believed themselves to be wiser than most but who remained earthly were led by the immensity and omnipresence God displayed in creating the world to acknowledge nature as God, in some cases in its innermost, in others in its outermost aspects. And some who wished to see God as separate from nature thought up some thing that was as all-encompassing as possible and that they called the Entity of All; but because they know nothing more of God than this, this "Entity of All" turns out to be an entity of their minds alone, utterly without any real meaning.

[3] As anyone can see, concepts of God are mirrors of God, and people who know nothing about God do not see God in a mirror facing their eyes, but in a mirror that is facing the wrong way, the back of which is covered with quicksilver or some black, sticky substance that absorbs rather than reflects the light.

Faith in God enters us on a pathway that comes down from above, from the soul into the higher reaches of the intellect. Concepts of God enter us on a pathway that comes up from below, because the intellect takes them in from the revealed Word through our bodily senses. In mid-intellect the different inflows come together. There an earthly faith, which is mere belief, becomes a spiritual faith, which is actual acknowledgment. The human intellect, then, is a kind of trading floor on which exchanges occur.

460. The second experience ¹ .

Once when I was looking around the spiritual world I heard a noise like the grinding of teeth, and also a throbbing sound, and mixed with them hoarse cries. I asked what this was. 'There are colleges,' said the angels with me, 'which we call places of entertainment, where they hold disputations. Their debates sound like this if heard from a distance, but from close by they are heard only as disputations.'

On approaching I saw some huts made of plaited reeds stuck together with mud. I wanted to see in through a window, but there was none. I was not allowed to go in through the door, because if I did light would flood in from heaven and cause confusion. Then suddenly a window was made on the right, and then I heard complaints that they were in darkness; but a little later a window was made on the left and that on the right was shut, and then little by little the darkness was dispelled, and they could see one another by their own sort of light. After this I was permitted to go in by the door and listen.

There was a table in the middle with benches round it; but it seemed to me that they were all standing on the benches disputing hotly about faith and charity. One party claimed that faith was the essential of the church, the other that charity was. Those who made faith the essential said: 'Surely faith guides our dealings with God and charity our dealings with men. Is not faith then heavenly and charity earthly? Surely it is by heavenly things, not earthly ones, that we are saved. Again, surely God can from heaven give us faith, because it is heavenly, while a person can give himself charity, because it is earthly; and what a person gives himself has nothing to do with the church and therefore does not save. Surely like this no one can be justified in the sight of God by so-called charitable deeds. Believe us, it is by faith alone that we are not only justified, but also sanctified, provided that faith is not polluted by the presence of merit-seeking deeds among the charitable ones.' They added many more arguments.

[2] But those who made charity the essential of the church hotly contested these arguments, claiming that it is charity, not faith, which saves. 'Surely God holds all men dear and wishes good to all? How can God do this except by means of men? Surely God does not grant only the ability to talk with men about matters that concern faith, without enabling men to do charitable acts? Do you not see how absurd it is of you to talk of charity being earthly? Charity is heavenly, and because you do not do charitable good, your faith is earthly. How do you receive your faith, except like a block of wood or a stone? "By listening to the Word" you will say. But how can the Word act on someone if he merely listens to it? How can it act upon a block of wood or a stone? Perhaps you are quickened without any awareness of it; but what sort of quickening is it, apart from your ability to say that faith alone justifies and saves. But you do not know what faith is, or what sort of faith is saving faith.'

[3] Then someone got up whom the angel talking with me called a syncretist. He took off his wig and put it on the table, but immediately put it back on his head, because he was bald. 'Listen,' he said, 'you are all wrong. The truth is that faith is spiritual and charity is moral, but they are none the less linked. The link is effected by means of the Word, as well as by the Holy Spirit, and by the result produced, which can indeed be called obedience, though man has no part in it; because when faith is introduced, a person knows no more about it than a statue. I have pondered the subject for a long time, and finally reached the solution, that a person can receive from God faith which is spiritual, but he cannot be moved by God to charity which is spiritual, any more than a block of wood can.'

[4] This speech was greeted by applause from those who championed faith alone, but with disapproval from those who championed charity. They said indignantly: 'Listen, friend, you are unaware that there is moral life which is spiritual, and moral life which is purely natural. Spiritual moral life is found in those who do good coming from God, but still as if of their own accord, purely natural moral life in those who do good coming from hell, and yet still as if of their own accord.'

[5] I said that the dispute sounded like the grinding of teeth, and a throbbing sound, with hoarse cries mixed with them. The dispute which sounded like the grinding of teeth came from those who made faith the sole essential of the church, and the throbbing came from those who made charity the sole essential of the church, the hoarse cries mixed with them came from the syncretist. The reason why they sounded like this at a distance was that they had all in the world engaged in disputes, and had not shunned any evil; consequently they had not done any good of spiritual lineage. They were also totally ignorant of the fact that the whole of faith is truth and the whole of charity is good, and that truth without good is not truth in spirit, and good without truth is not good in spirit, so that one makes the other.

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