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

Notas de rodapé:

13. 6. If there were not one God the universe could not have been created or maintained. We can infer the oneness of God from the creation of the universe, because the universe is a work connected together as one thing from beginning to end, all dependent on one God as the body depends on its soul. The universe was designed to allow God to be omnipresent, keep every detail of it under his supervision, and maintain it perpetually as one entity, that is, preserve it. This is why Jehovah God says he is "the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega" (see Isaiah 44:6; Revelation 1:8, 17); and why he says elsewhere that he makes all things, stretches out the heavens, and extends the earth by himself (see Isaiah 44:24).

This vast system called the universe is a work connected as one thing from beginning to end because God had a single purpose in creating it: an angelic heaven populated by the human race. All the things that make up the world are means of fulfilling that purpose, because someone who intends an end result also intends the means to achieve it.

[2] If we view this world as a work containing the means of fulfilling the aforementioned purpose, we can see the created universe as a work connected together into one thing; and see that this world is a complex structure of useful functions arranged and prioritized for the sake of the human race, the source of the angelic heaven.

Divine love cannot intend anything other than that people should forever have the blessings of its divineness. Divine wisdom cannot produce anything other than useful things that are means of fulfilling that purpose.

Upon examining the world with this universal idea in mind, every wise person is capable of grasping that there is one Creator of the universe and that his essence is love and wisdom. For this reason every single thing in this world is of benefit to us; if it seems of no direct benefit, at least it is of indirect benefit. The fruits of the earth and the animals benefit us with food and also with clothing.

[3] Among the marvels of this world is that the lowly insects called silkworms clothe with silk and magnificently adorn both women and men from queens and kings down to maids and butlers. And the lowly insects called bees supply wax for the lamps that give churches and royal courts their splendor.

Some people examine certain aspects of the world in isolation rather than looking at everything as a chain from purposes through intermediate means to results. Therefore those people cannot see that the universe is the handiwork of one God. The same is true for people who do not see creation as the product of divine love acting through divine wisdom. Neither group is able to see that God dwells in individual useful things because he dwells in the purpose behind them. Yet everyone who has some purpose is also involved in the means of achieving it, because deep within every one of the means lies the purpose as the force that drives and guides it.

[4] Some do not view the universe as the handiwork of God and the home of his love and wisdom, but view it instead as a product of nature and as the home of the sun's heat and light. They close the higher levels of their mind toward God and open the lower levels of their mind toward the Devil. In the process, they take off their humanity and put on the nature of a wild animal. It is not just a belief of theirs that humans are like animals; they themselves actually become like animals. They become as crafty as foxes, as fierce as wolves, as deceptive as leopards, as savage as tigers; or they take on the nature of crocodiles, snakes, horned owls, or night birds. In the spiritual world they even look like these wild animals from a distance. Their love for evil takes these shapes.

44. Divine love and wisdom are substance and form in themselves, thus the one and only absolute. We have just established above that Divine love and wisdom are substance and form; and we have already said as well that the Divine being and expression are being and expression in itself. ¹ We cannot say that they are being and expression from itself, because this involves a beginning - and a beginning moreover from something in it which is being and expression in itself. Yet being and expression itself in itself exists from eternity. Being and expression itself in itself is also something not created, and everything that is created can exist only from something that is not created. Furthermore, whatever is created is also finite, and something finite can come into being only from something that is infinite.

Notas de rodapé: