New Christian Bible Study

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:

1. Divine Love and Wisdom 4, 15, 16, 23, 301, Divine Providence 46, True Christian Religion 11, 19.

2. Divine Love and Wisdom 4, 29, 30, Apocalypse Explained 297, Heaven and Hell 13, 545.

3. Divine Love and Wisdom 31, 32, 57, 59, 84, 169-171, 329, 330, Divine Providence 3, 27.

4. Divine Love and Wisdom 65, 179, 180, 213, 230, 363.

5. Divine Love and Wisdom 44, 45, 55.

6. Divine Love and Wisdom 42, 43, 52, 154, Divine Providence 3, 5.

7. Divine Providence 27, 71, 72, 75, 129, True Christian Religion 459, 490.

8. Divine Providence 145, 322, 324, 325, 328, Apocalypse Explained 986, Heaven and Hell 522, True Christian Religion 457.

9. Divine Providence 67, 322, 333, 334, Heaven and Hell 312, 319, 324.

10. Apocalypse Explained 986, Heaven and Hell 479, 481, 525, 598. The True Christian Religion 795.

11. Arcana Coelestia 168, 1854, 3016, 5078, 6008, 8939, Heaven and Hell 445, 461, 493, 498, Divine Love and Wisdom 90, Last Judgment 25.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Heaven and Hell #545

Study this Passage

  
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545. The Lord Does Not Cast Anyone into Hell: Spirits Cast Themselves In

Some people cherish the notion that God turns his face away from people, spurns them, and casts them into hell, and is angry against them because of their evil. Some people even go so far as to think that God punishes people and does them harm. They support this notion from the literal meaning of the Word where things like this are said, not realizing that the spiritual meaning of the Word, which makes sense of the letter, is wholly different. So the real doctrine of the church, which is from the spiritual meaning of the Word, teaches something else. It teaches that the Lord never turns his face away from anyone or spurns anyone, never casts anyone into hell or is angry. 1

Anyone whose mind is enlightened perceives this while reading the Word simply from the fact that the Lord is goodness itself, love itself, and mercy itself. Good itself cannot do harm to anyone. Love itself and mercy itself cannot spurn anyone, because this is contrary to mercy and love and is therefore contrary to the divine nature itself. So people who are thinking with an enlightened mind when they read the Word perceive clearly that God never turns away from us, and that because he does not turn away from us, he behaves toward us out of goodness and love and mercy. That is, he wills well toward us, loves us, and has compassion on us.

Enlightened minds also see from this that the literal meaning of the Word where things like this are said has a spiritual meaning concealed within it, a meaning needed to explain expressions that in the letter are adapted to human comprehension, things said in accord with our primary and general conceptions.

Footnotes:

1. [Swedenborg's footnote] Blazing wrath is attributed to God in the Word, but it is the wrath in us; and the Word says such things because it seems that way to us when we are being punished and condemned: Arcana Coelestia 798 [5798?], 6997, 8284, 8483, 8875, 9306, 10431.

Even evil is attributed to the Lord, though nothing comes from the Lord but what is good: 2447, 6073 [6071?], 6992 [6991?], 6997, 7533, 7632, 7677 [7679?], 7926, 8227-8228, 8632, 9306.

Why the Word says such things: 6073 [6071?], 6992 [6991?], 6997, 7643, 7632, 7679, 7710, 7926, 8282, 9009 [9010?], 9128.

The Lord is pure mercy and clemency: 6997, 8875.

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

The Bible

 

1 Kings 6

Study

   

1 It happened in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of Yahweh.

2 The house which king Solomon built for Yahweh, its length was sixty cubits, and its breadth twenty [cubits], and its height thirty cubits.

3 The porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was its length, according to the breadth of the house; [and] ten cubits was its breadth before the house.

4 For the house he made windows of fixed lattice work.

5 Against the wall of the house he built stories all around, against the walls of the house all around, both of the temple and of the oracle; and he made side rooms all around.

6 The nethermost story was five cubits broad, and the middle was six cubits broad, and the third was seven cubits broad; for on the outside he made offsets [in the wall] of the house all around, that [the beams] should not have hold in the walls of the house.

7 The house, when it was in building, was built of stone prepared at the quarry; and there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.

8 The door for the middle side rooms was in the right side of the house: and they went up by winding stairs into the middle [story], and out of the middle into the third.

9 So he built the house, and finished it; and he covered the house with beams and planks of cedar.

10 He built the stories against all the house, each five cubits high: and they rested on the house with timber of cedar.

11 The word of Yahweh came to Solomon, saying,

12 "Concerning this house which you are building, if you will walk in my statutes, and execute my ordinances, and keep all my commandments to walk in them; then will I establish my word with you, which I spoke to David your father.

13 I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel."

14 So Solomon built the house, and finished it.

15 He built the walls of the house within with boards of cedar: from the floor of the house to the walls of the ceiling, he covered them on the inside with wood; and he covered the floor of the house with boards of fir.

16 He built twenty cubits on the hinder part of the house with boards of cedar from the floor to the walls [of the ceiling]: he built [them] for it within, for an oracle, even for the most holy place.

17 The house, that is, the temple before [the oracle], was forty cubits [long].

18 There was cedar on the house within, carved with buds and open flowers: all was cedar; there was no stone seen.

19 He prepared an oracle in the midst of the house within, to set there the ark of the covenant of Yahweh.

20 Within the oracle was [a space of] twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in its height; and he overlaid it with pure gold: and he covered the altar with cedar.

21 So Solomon overlaid the house within with pure gold: and he drew chains of gold across before the oracle; and he overlaid it with gold.

22 The whole house he overlaid with gold, until all the house was finished: also the whole altar that belonged to the oracle he overlaid with gold.

23 In the oracle he made two cherubim of olive wood, each ten cubits high.

24 Five cubits was the one wing of the cherub, and five cubits the other wing of the cherub: from the uttermost part of the one wing to the uttermost part of the other were ten cubits.

25 The other cherub was ten cubits: both the cherubim were of one measure and one form.

26 The height of the one cherub was ten cubits, and so was it of the other cherub.

27 He set the cherubim within the inner house; and the wings of the cherubim were stretched forth, so that the wing of the one touched the one wall, and the wing of the other cherub touched the other wall; and their wings touched one another in the midst of the house.

28 He overlaid the cherubim with gold.

29 He carved all the walls of the house around with carved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, inside and outside.

30 The floor of the house he overlaid with gold, inside and outside.

31 For the entrance of the oracle he made doors of olive wood: the lintel [and] door posts were a fifth part [of the wall].

32 So [he made] two doors of olive wood; and he carved on them carvings of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, and overlaid them with gold; and he spread the gold on the cherubim, and on the palm trees.

33 So also made he for the entrance of the temple door posts of olive wood, out of a fourth part [of the wall];

34 and two doors of fir wood: the two leaves of the one door were folding, and the two leaves of the other door were folding.

35 He carved [thereon] cherubim and palm trees and open flowers; and he overlaid them with gold fitted on the engraved work.

36 He built the inner court with three courses of cut stone, and a course of cedar beams.

37 In the fourth year was the foundation of the house of Yahweh laid, in the month Ziv.

38 In the eleventh year, in the month Bul, which is the eighth month, was the house finished throughout all its parts, and according to all its fashion. So was he seven years in building it.

   

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