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

Footnotes:

52. Everything in the universe was created by the divine love and wisdom of the Divine-Human One. The universe, from beginning to end and from first to last, is so full of divine love and wisdom that you could call it divine love and wisdom in an image. This is clearly evidenced by the way everything in the universe answers to something in us. Every single thing that comes to light in the created universe has such an equivalence with every single thing in us that you could call us a kind of universe as well. There is a correspondence of our affective side and its consequent thought with everything in the animal kingdom, a correspondence of our volitional side and its consequent discernment with everything in the plant kingdom, and a correspondence of our outermost life with everything in the mineral kingdom.

This kind of correspondence is not apparent to anyone in our physical world, but it is apparent to observant people in the spiritual world. We find in this latter world all the things that occur in the three kingdoms of our physical world, and they reflect the feelings and thoughts of the people who are there--the feelings that come from their volition and the thoughts that come from their discernment--as well as the outermost aspects of their life. Both their feelings and their thoughts are visible around them looking much like the things we see in the created universe, though we see them in less perfect representations.

From this it is obvious to angels that the created universe is an image depicting the Divine-Human One and that it is his love and wisdom that are presented, in image, in the universe. It is not that the created universe is the Divine-Human One: rather, it comes from him; for nothing whatever in the universe is intrinsic substance and form or intrinsic life or intrinsic love and wisdom. We are not "intrinsic persons." It all comes from God, who is the intrinsic person, the intrinsic wisdom and love, and the intrinsic form and substance. Whatever has intrinsic existence is uncreated and infinite; while what comes from it, possessing nothing within itself that has intrinsic existence, is created and finite. This latter presents an image of the One from whom it derives its existence and manifestation.

29. "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End." (1:8) This symbolically means, who is the one and only reality from firsts to lasts, from whom springs all else, thus who is the one and only love, the one and only wisdom, and the one and only life in itself, and so the one and only Creator, Savior and Enlightener from Himself, and therefore the all in all of the church and heaven.

These and still more are the ideas contained in these words, which describe the Lord. It is clearly apparent that they are said of the Lord, and indeed of His humanity, for we are told next that John heard a voice saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last," that he turned to see the voice that spoke with him, and that he saw the Son of Man in the midst of the seven lampstands (Revelation 1:10-13) - who shortly also said, "I am the First and the Last, and am He who lives, and was put to death" (Revelation 1:17-18, cf. 2:8).

As for all the particulars listed above, however, it is impossible to confirm these briefly, since to confirm them to people's comprehension would take many pages. Still, we have confirmed them in part in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, recently published in Amsterdam, q.v.

The Lord calls Himself the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, because Alpha and Omega have reference to His Divine love, while Beginning and End have reference to His Divine wisdom. For present in every particular of the Word is a marriage of love and wisdom or of goodness and truth, on which subject see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 80-90.

[2] The Lord is called the Alpha and the Omega because alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, and they consequently symbolize all things in their entirety. That is because in the spiritual world every alphabetic letter has some symbolic meaning, and a vowel, since it serves to provide tone, symbolizes something having to do with affection or love. From this origin springs spiritual and angelic speech, and also writing. But this is an arcanum previously unknown. For there is a universal language, which all angels and spirits possess, and it has nothing in common with any language of people in the world. Everyone comes into use of this language after death, as it is implanted in everyone from creation. Everyone can therefore understand everyone else throughout the whole spiritual world. I have been granted often to hear that language, and also to speak it, and I have compared it with languages in the world and found that it does not accord, even in the least particular, with any natural language on earth. It differs from them from its first characteristic, which is that every letter in each word has some symbolic meaning, both in speaking and in writing.

That, then, is why the Lord is called the Alpha and the Omega, which symbolically means that He is the all in all things of heaven and the church. And because they are both vowels, they have reference to love, as said above.

Regarding this language and the writing of it flowing from the spiritual thought of angels, see also some observations in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, no. 295.