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

სქოლიოები:

13. The Lord's Divine Nature in Heaven Is Love for Him and Thoughtfulness toward One's Neighbor

In heaven, the divine nature that emanates from the Lord is called divine truth, for reasons that will be given below. This divine truth flows into heaven from the Lord, out of his divine love. Divine love and the divine truth that derives from it are like the sun's fire and the light that comes from it in our world. The love is like the sun's fire, and the derivative truth is like the light from the sun. By reason of correspondence, fire means love and light means the truth that flows from it. ¹

This enables us to determine the character of the divine truth that emanates from divine love: in its essence, it is divine good united to divine truth, and because it is united, it gives life to everything in heaven the way the warmth of the sun, united to its light, makes everything fruitful on earth in spring and summer. It is different when the warmth is not united to light, when the light is therefore cold. Then everything slows down and lies there, snuffed out.

The divine good we have compared to warmth is the good of love within and among angels, and the divine truth we have compared to light is the means and the source of this good of love.

სქოლიოები:

404. (6) When the wedding has taken place, the first conjunction occurs through an affection for knowing, from which springs an affection for truth. By the wedding we mean the state of a person after birth following his state of ignorance and continuing to a state of intelligence, and from this to a state of wisdom. We do not by the wedding mean here the first state, which is one of sheer ignorance, because there is then no thought in the intellect, but only a vague affection belonging to love or the will. This state is a prelude to the wedding.

Present in the second state, which is a person's state in childhood, is, as is recognized, an affection for knowing. It is in consequence of this affection that a young child learns to speak, learns to read, and afterward progressively learns such things as are matters of the intellect.

That it is love residing in the will which occasions this cannot be called into question; for unless love or the will prompted it, it would not come about.

The fact that every person after birth has an affection for knowing, and that it is in consequence of this affection that he learns those things by which the intellect is gradually formed, grows, and is perfected, everyone acknowledges when he considers in the light of reason the evidence of experience.

It is also apparent that from this affection springs an affection for truth. For when a person from an affection for knowing has become intelligent, he is motivated not so much by an affection for knowing as by an affection for reasoning and for reaching conclusions regarding such concerns as are matters of his love, whether these concerns be economic, civil, or moral. When this affection is elevated to encompass spiritual concerns, it becomes an affection for spiritual truth.

The fact that the first or initial form of this last love was an affection for knowing can be seen from considering that an affection for truth is an elevated affection for knowing. For to be affected by truths is to have in consequence of the affection a wish to know them, and when one discovers them, to be moved by the delight of the affection to take them in.

[2] (7) The second conjunction occurs through an affection for understanding, from which springs a perception of truth. This is apparent to everyone who is willing to rationally consider and examine it. It is apparent from a rational consideration that an affection for truth and a perception of truth are both faculties of the intellect, which in some people come together into a union of the two, and in others do not. They come together into a union of the two in people who wish to employ their intellect to perceive truths, and not in those who wish only to know truths.

It is apparent also that everyone possesses a perception of truth to the degree of his affection for understanding it. For take away any affection for understanding truth, and no perception of truth will exist. Conversely, grant an affection for understanding truth, and there will be a perception of it to the degree of the affection for it. For no one who has his reason intact ever lacks a perception of truth as long as he has an affection for understanding truth. As we showed above, everyone possesses the faculty for understanding truth called rationality.

[3] (8) The third conjunction occurs through an affection for seeing that truth, from which springs thought. An affection for knowing truth is one thing, an affection for understanding it another, and an affection for seeing it still another. So likewise, an affection for truth is one thing, a perception of truth another, and thought still another. Neither of these observations is but vaguely apparent to people who do not perceive the processes of the mind distinctly, but they are clearly apparent to people who do perceive them distinctly.

The distinctions are but vaguely apparent to people who do not perceive the processes of the mind distinctly, because the processes occur simultaneously in the thought in people who have an affection for truth and a perception of truth; and when they are simultaneous, they cannot be distinguished.

A person is engaged in obvious thought when his spirit thinks in the body, which is especially the case when he is in the company of others. But when he is moved by an affection for understanding, and in consequence of it comes into a perception of truth, he is then engaged in the thought of his spirit, which is meditation. This descends, indeed, into the thought of the body, but tacitly so, for it exists above the thought of the body and views as below it the elements of thought that are drawn from the memory, using them either to form conclusions or to provide confirmations. Still, the affection for truth is itself not apprehended except as an impetus of the will from some feeling of pleasure which exists within the meditation as its life, to which little attention is paid.

[4] It can now be seen from this that these three elements - an affection for truth, a perception of truth, and thought - follow in succession from love, and that they take form nowhere else than in the intellect. For when love enters the intellect, which happens when a conjunction of the two has taken place, it then produces first an affection for truth, then an affection for understanding what it knows, and finally an affection for seeing what in the thought of the body it understands - thought being nothing other than an internal sight.

Thought, indeed, occurs first, because it is a faculty of the natural mind. But thought from a perception of truth springing from an affection for truth occurs last. This latter thought is the thought of wisdom, while the first is a thought from memory formed in consequence of the sight of the natural mind.

All operations of love or the will apart from the intellect have to do not with affections for truth but with affections for good.