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:

460. The second memorable occurrence. Once when I was looking around the spiritual world I heard a sound like teeth grinding together and a sound like hammering and also a whistling mixed in with both other sounds. I asked what they were. The angels who were with me said, "They are meetings (which we label as diversions) where people have verbal battles with each other. Their arguments sound this way from a distance. From closer by they merely sound like arguing. "

I went to the place and saw huts made of rushes plastered together with mud. I tried to look in a window [of one of the huts] but there was none. (I was not allowed in the door, because light would have flowed in from heaven and confused them.) Suddenly a window was created on the right side of the hut. Then I heard the people complaining because they were in the dark. Soon a window was created on the left side, and the window on the right was closed over. It seemed to them that the darkness gradually went away and that they were in their own light again. After that I was given permission to go in the door and hear what was going on.

There was a table in the middle with benches around it for sitting, but instead all the people seemed to me to be standing on the benches, having a harsh dispute with each other about faith and goodwill. One side was arguing that the essence of the church is faith; the other side was arguing that the essence of the church is goodwill.

The people who saw faith as the essential thing said, "In the case of faith, we are dealing with God. And in the case of goodwill we are dealing with human beings. Therefore faith is heavenly and goodwill is earthly. Surely we are saved by heavenly things, not by earthly things. God is able to give us faith from heaven, because faith is heavenly, but goodwill is something we have to give ourselves, because goodwill is earthly. And what we give ourselves is not part of the church and therefore does not save us. Or do you think people could be justified before God by doing things that are said to be part of goodwill? Believe us when we tell you - by faith alone we are not only justified, we are also sanctified, as long as our faith is not defiled by our desire to earn merit through our acts of goodwill. " And many more points like these.

[2] On the other side, the people who saw goodwill as the essence of the church had sharp retorts. They said, "Goodwill saves us, not faith. Surely God holds all people as beloved and wants what is good for all. How could God put this goodness into effect if not through other human beings? Does God let us merely tell people points related to faith but not perform acts of goodwill toward them? Don't you see that what you are saying about goodwill is absurd - calling it earthly? Goodwill is heavenly. Since you don't perform acts of goodwill, your faith is earthly. You actually do receive this faith of yours in the way a log or a stone would. You say you receive it through hearing the Word, but how can the Word do any work on you if all you do is hear it? How can the Word do any work on a log or a stone? Perhaps you were brought to life but you were totally unaware that it happened! What is that liveliness except your ability to say, Faith alone justifies us and saves us? But you don't even know what faith is or which type of faith saves us!"

[3] Then someone whom the angel with me called a syncretist stood up. He took off his head-covering and put it on the table, but then quickly put it back on his head because he was bald. "Listen to me," he said. "You are all wrong. It is true that faith is spiritual and goodwill is moral, but still they are connected. The Word connects them; then they are connected by the Holy Spirit; and finally they are connected by their effect, which could indeed be called obedience, but it is an obedience in which we have no part, because when faith enters us we are as unaware of it as a statue would be. I have thought long and hard about this. What I have finally come to is that we can receive faith (which is spiritual) from God, but God cannot put us in a state of spiritual goodwill any more than he could put a log in a state of spiritual goodwill. "

[4] The people who believed in faith alone applauded these statements, but the people who believed in goodwill booed them. The proponents of goodwill said indignantly, "Listen, friend, you don't seem to know that there is such a thing as a moral life that is spiritual, as opposed to a moral life that is merely earthly. People who do good things that have their origin in God and yet do them as if they were acting on their own live a spiritual moral life. People who do good things that have their origin in hell and yet do them as if they were acting on their own live a merely earthly moral life. "

[5] I mentioned before that their fighting sounded like teeth grinding together and like hammering with whistling mixed in. The arguments from the people who made faith the sole and essential thing in the church sounded like teeth grinding together. The arguments from the people who made goodwill the sole and essential thing in the church sounded like hammering. The whistling that was mixed in came from the syncretist. These people sounded like this at a distance because they had all spent their time in the world arguing but had not abstained from any evil; therefore none of them had done any good thing that had a spiritual origin. They were also completely unaware that truth is the essence of faith and goodness is the essence of goodwill; that truth without goodness is not spiritually true, and goodness without truth is not spiritually good; and that therefore the two shape each other.

25. After his life in the world everyone lives for ever. This is evident from the fact that he is then no longer natural but spiritual; and a spiritual person once separated from the natural stays in the same state for ever, since a person's state cannot change after death. Moreover every person's spiritual side is linked with the Divine, since it can think about and also love the Divine, and be acted upon by all the influences coming from the Divine, much as the church teaches. The spiritual side can as a result be linked to the Divine by willing and thinking, the two faculties of the spiritual man which make up his life. Thus a link can be made with the Divine which can never die, for the Divine is present with him and links him to Itself.

[2] Man has also been created so as mentally to be a model of heaven. The form of heaven derives from the Divine itself, as was shown in HEAVEN AND HELL (The Lord's Divine makes and forms heaven, 7-12, 78-86); man was created so as to be a model of heaven on the smallest scale (57); heaven taken all together resembles a single human being (59-66). Hence an angel has a perfect human form (73-77). An angel is a human being in his spiritual aspect.

[3] I have had a number of conversations with angels on this subject. They were extremely surprised that there are very many among those reputed intelligent in the Christian world, and believed to be intelligent by other people, who have totally rejected any idea that their life is not subject to death, but believe that the soul of a human being is dispersed after death like that of an animal. They fail to perceive the difference in the way human beings and animals live. Human beings have thoughts that can rise above themselves, and they can think about God, heaven, love, faith, spiritual and moral good, truths and such matters, thus rising to the Divine itself, and being linked to Him by all these means. Animals, however, cannot rise above their natural level so as to entertain such thoughts. As a result their spiritual side cannot be separated from their natural after death, ¹ and live on by itself as a human being's can. That too is the reason why an animal's life ² is dispersed together with its natural life.

[4] The angels said that the reason why many so-called intelligent people in the Christian world do not believe their life is immortal is that at heart they deny the existence of the Divine and acknowledge Nature in His place. Those who think from such premises cannot imagine how they can live for ever by being linked with the Divine, and consequently that the condition of human beings is any different from that of animals; for when they banish the idea of the Divine from their thoughts, they also banish that of eternity.

[5] They went on to say that every individual has a highest or most inward degree of life, something highest and inmost on which the Lord's Divinity primarily and most closely acts, and from which He controls the remaining interiors belonging to the spiritual and natural man and arranged in ordered sequence in them. They called this highest or most inward part the Lord's entrance into man and His truest abode with man. It is this highest or most inward part which gives man his humanity and sets him apart from dumb animals, which lack it. This is why men can, unlike animals, have their interiors, which belong to their minds and characters, raised by the Lord to Himself. Thus they can believe in Him, feel love for Him, and receive intelligence and wisdom and speak rationally.

[6] When asked whether those who deny the existence of the Divine and the Divine truths which link a person's life with the Divine Himself none the less live on for ever, they said that these had the ability to think and will, and thus to believe and love what proceeds from the Divine equally with those who acknowledge Him; and that this ability to think and will enables them equally to live for ever. They added that this ability results from that highest or most inward part everyone possesses which was mentioned just above. I have demonstrated at length that even those in hell have this ability, which enables them to reason and speak against Divine truths. This is why every person, irrespective of what sort of person he is, lives for ever.

[7] Because after death everyone lives for ever, no angel or spirit can think about death; in fact, they do not know what it is to die. Whenever therefore death is mentioned in the Word, the angels understand it as damnation, which is death in the spiritual sense, or the continuation of life and resurrection. ³ These remarks are intended as confirmation that all people who have ever been born from the beginning of creation, and have died, are alive, some in heaven and some in hell.

각주: