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The Big Ideas

작가: New Christian Bible Study Staff

A girl gazes into a lighted globe, showing the solar system.

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

각주:

스웨덴보그의 저서에서

 

Heaven and Hell #522

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522. First, though, let me state what divine mercy is. Divine mercy is a pure mercy toward the whole human race with the intent of saving it, and it is constant toward every individual, never withdrawing from anyone. This means that everyone who can be saved is saved. However, no one can be saved except by divine means, the means revealed by the Lord in the Word. Divine means are what we refer to as divine truths. They teach how we are to live in order to be saved. The Lord uses them to lead us to heaven and to instill heaven's life into us. The Lord does this for everyone; but he cannot instill heaven's life into anyone who does not refrain from evil, since evil bars the way. So to the extent that we do refrain from evil, the Lord in his divine mercy leads us by divine means, from infancy to the end of life in the world and thereafter to eternity. This is the divine mercy that I mean. We can therefore see that the Lord's mercy is pure mercy, but not unmediated: that is, it does not save people whenever it feels like it, no matter how they have lived.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

스웨덴보그의 저서에서

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #327

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327. All phenomena created by the Lord are forms of use, and they are forms of use in the order, degree and respect that they have relation to mankind and through mankind to the Lord from whom they originate. Regarding these points we have already said the following: That nothing can come into being from God the Creator except what is useful (no. 308). That the uses of all things that have been created ascend by degrees from the lowest created forms to mankind, and through mankind to God the Creator from whom they originate (nos. 65-68). That the end in creation finds expression in the lasts of it, which is for everything to return to God the Creator and conjunction take place (nos. 167-172). That things are useful in the measure that they look to the Creator (no. 307). That the Divine cannot but be and have expression in others it creates (nos. 47-51). That all constituents of the universe are recipients of the Divine according to the uses they serve, and this in accordance with degrees (no. 58). That the universe, regarded from the perspective of its uses, is an image of God (no. 59). And much else besides.

Apparent from this is the following truth, that all phenomena created by the Lord are forms of use, and that they are forms of use in the order, degree and respect that they have relation to mankind and through mankind to the Lord from whom they originate.

It remains for us to say something in particular here about forms of use.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.