344. The underlying reality of the faith of the new church is (1) trust in the Lord God our Savior Jesus Christ; (2) confidence that he saves those who live good lives and believe the right things.

The essence of the faith of the new church is truth from the Word.

The manifestations of the faith of the new church are (1) spiritual sight; (2) harmony among truths; (3) conviction; (4) acknowledgment engraved on the mind.

The states of the faith of the new church are (1) a newborn faith, a growing faith, a mature faith; (2) faith based on genuine truth, and faith based on things that seem true; (3) faith based on memory, faith based on reason, faith based on light; (4) earthly faith, spiritual faith, heavenly faith; (5) faith based on life experiences, and faith based on miracles; (6) faith that is free and faith that is coerced.

For a universal idea and a specific idea of the form itself of the faith of the new church, see above, 2 and 3.

340. 2. Briefly Put, Faith Is Believing That People Who Live Good Lives and Believe the Right Things Are Saved by the Lord

We are created for eternal life. All of us are capable of inheriting it, provided we use in our lives the means of salvation that have been prescribed for us in the Word. On these points all Christians agree, as do all non-Christians who have religion and sound reason.

There are indeed many means of being saved, but each and every one of them relates to living a good life and believing the right things. Therefore they all relate to goodwill and faith, for goodwill is living a good life and faith is believing the right things. These two universal categories of means of being saved - goodwill and faith - are not just prescribed for us in the Word, they are commanded.

From the fact that they are commanded it follows that goodwill and faith give us the capacity of providing ourselves with eternal life through a power that is assigned and given to us by God. The more we use that power and look to God, the more God increases the power until he turns every aspect of our earthly goodwill into spiritual goodwill and every aspect of our earthly faith into spiritual faith. In this way God brings dead goodwill and faith to life, and brings us to life as well.

[2] Two things have to come together before we can be said to be living a good life and believing the right things. In the church these two things are called our inner self and our outer self. When our inner self has good intentions and our outer self has good actions, then the two unite. Our outer self acts from our inner self, and our inner self acts through our outer self; we act from God and God acts through us. On the other hand, if our inner self has evil intentions, but our outer self still has good actions, nonetheless both are acting from hell. Our intentions come from hell and our actions are hypocritical. Our hellish intentions are inside every hypocritical thing we do, like a snake inside a plant or a grub inside a flower.

[3] If people know not only that we have an inner and an outer self but also what they are and that the two can work together either actually or seemingly, and also that our inner self lives on after death but our outer self is buried, they have access to an abundance of secrets about heaven and the world. People who unite these two in themselves for a good purpose become happy forever, but people who divide them, or worse yet if they unite them for an evil purpose, are unhappy forever.