Commentary

 

The Big Ideas

By 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

Footnotes:

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Providence #46

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46. In Everything That It Does, the Lord's Divine Providence Is Focusing on What Is Infinite and Eternal

It is widely recognized in Christian circles that God is infinite and eternal. In fact, it says in the doctrine of the Trinity named after Athanasius that God the Father is infinite, eternal, and omnipotent, as are God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, but that there are not three infinite, eternal, and omnipotent beings, but only one. It follows from this that since God is infinite and eternal, only what is infinite and eternal can be attributed to him.

However, we finite beings cannot grasp what anything infinite and eternal is--and yet at the same time we can. We cannot grasp it because the finite cannot contain the infinite; and we can grasp it because there are abstract notions that enable us to see that certain things do exist even though we cannot see what their nature is.

There are such notions about the infinite--for example, that because God is infinite, or Divinity is infinite, God is reality itself or essence itself and substance itself, love itself and wisdom itself, what is good itself and what is true itself, the Only--in fact, the essential Human. Then too, if we say that the infinite is the all, then infinite wisdom is omniscience and infinite power is omnipotence.

[2] These concepts, though, will get lost in the dim depths of our thought and perhaps even fall from incomprehension into denial unless we can rid them of elements that our thought gets from the material world, particularly those two essential features of the material world called space and time. These can only limit our concepts and make abstract concepts seem like nothing at all. However, if we can rid ourselves of them the way angels do, then the infinite can be grasped by means of the things I have just listed. This leads to a grasp of the fact that we ourselves are real because we have been created by the infinite God who is the All, that we are finite substances because we have been created by the infinite God who is substance itself, that we are wisdom because we have been created by the infinite God who is wisdom itself, and so on. For if the infinite God were not the All, substance itself, and wisdom itself, we would not be real, or would simply be nothing, or would be only ideas of existence, according to those dreamers called idealists.

[3] Material presented in the work Divine Love and Wisdom may serve to show that the divine essence is love and wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 28-39), that divine love and wisdom are substance itself and form itself and that divine love and wisdom are substance and form in and of themselves, and are therefore wholly "itself" and unique (Divine Love and Wisdom 40-46), and that God created the universe and everything in it not from nothing but from himself (Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284). It follows from this that everything that has been created, especially ourselves and the love and wisdom within us, is real, and is not just an image of reality.

If God were not infinite, then, nothing finite would exist; if the Infinite were not the All, there would not be anything; and if God had not created everything from himself, there would be nothing real, nothing at all. In short, we are because God is.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Heaven and Hell #319

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319. People can realize that non-Christians as well as Christians are saved if they know what constitutes heaven in us; for heaven is within us, and people who have heaven within them come into heaven. The heaven within us is our acknowledgment of the Divine and our being led by the Divine. The beginning and foundation of every religion is its acknowledgment of the Divine Being; a religion that does not acknowledge the Divine Being is not a religion at all. The precepts of every religion focus on worship, that is, on how the Divine is to be honored so that we will be acceptable in its sight; and when this fully occupies the mind (or, to the extent that we intend this or love this) we are being led by the Lord.

It is recognized that non-Christians live lives that are just as moral as the lives of Christians - many of them, in fact, live more moral lives. A moral life may be lived either to satisfy the Divine or to satisfy people in this world. A moral life that is lived to satisfy the Divine is a spiritual life. The two look alike in outward form, but inwardly they are totally different. One saves us, the other does not. This is because if we live a moral life to satisfy the Divine we are being led by the Divine; while if we live a moral life to satisfy people in this world, we are being led by ourselves.

[2] This may be illustrated by an example. If we do not do harm to our neighbor because that is against our religion and therefore against the Divine, our refraining from evil stems from a spiritual source. But if we refrain from doing harm to others simply because we are afraid of the law or of losing our reputation or respect or profit - for the sake of self and the world, that is - then this stems from a natural source and we are being led by ourselves. This latter life is natural, while the former is spiritual. If our moral life is spiritual, we have heaven within ourselves; but if our moral life is merely natural, we do not have heaven within ourselves. This is because heaven flows in from above, opens our deeper natures, and flows through those deeper natures into our more outward natures; while the world flows in from below and opens our more outward natures but not our deeper natures. No inflow occurs from the natural world into the spiritual, only from the spiritual world into the natural; so if heaven is not accepted at the same time, the deeper levels are closed. We can see from this who accept heaven into themselves and who do not.

[3] However, the heaven in one individual is not the same as the heaven in another. It differs in each according to the affection for what is good and true. If people are absorbed in an affection for what is good for the sake of the Divine, they love divine truth because the good and the true love each other and want to be united. 1 Consequently, non-Christian people who have not had access to genuine truths in the world still accept them in the other life because of their love.

Footnotes:

1. [Swedenborg's footnote] There is a likeness of a marriage between what is good and what is true: 1094 [1904?], 2173, 2503 [2508?]. What is good and what is true are engaged in a constant effort toward union, with what is good longing for what is true and for union with it: 9206-9207, 9495. How and in whom this union of what is good and what is true takes place: 3834, 3843, 4096-4097, 4301, 4345, 4353, 4364, 4368, 5365, 7623-7627, 9258.

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