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

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523. The Lord never does anything contrary to his design because he himself is the design. The divine truth that emanates from him is what establishes the design, and divine truths are the laws of the design by which the Lord is leading us. Saving people by unmediated mercy is contrary to the divine design, and anything contrary to the divine design is contrary to the divine nature.

The divine design is heaven for us. We have distorted it by living contrary to its laws, which are divine truths. The Lord brings us back into the design out of pure mercy, through the laws of the design; and to the extent that we are brought back, we accept heaven into ourselves. Whoever accepts heaven enters heaven.

This shows again that the Lord's divine mercy is pure mercy but not unmediated. ¹

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10125. 'And you shall anoint it' means consecration to represent the Divine Good of Love from the Lord as He exists in heaven and in the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'anointing' as consecration to represent the Lord in respect of the Divine Good of Divine Love from His Divine Human, dealt with in 9474, 9954, 10019, at this point from the Lord as He exists in heaven and in the Church; for the subject is the influx and reception of Him there. Whatever represents the Lord also represents Him as He is present with people of the Church and with angels of heaven, and so represents heaven and the Church, since people who have the Church within them constitute the Church in general, and angels who have heaven within them constitute heaven in general. Not that those people regarded in themselves constitute the Church, only the Lord present with them does so. Nor therefore do the angels regarded in themselves constitute heaven, only the Lord present with them. For the Lord does not dwell in anything that is a person's or an angels's own, only in what is His with them. So it is that when the words 'the Church and heaven' are used, what is Divine and the Lord's with those who are there is meant. From all this it is evident how the statements that the Lord is the All in all of heaven and the Church and that the Lord Himself is heaven and the Church ought to be understood. This is also evident from the teaching known and accepted in the Christian world that all the good of faith and love comes from God and none at all from man, and that whatever comes from man's own self is not good. For this reason also no one has any merit or any righteousness by virtue of what is his own.

[2] These matters have been stated in order that people may know what is meant by 'the Lord as He exists in heaven and in the Church', thus what heaven and the Church are, and consequently in what way the altar and the anointing of it were representative of the Lord. All the objects that were going to represent the Lord and the Divine things that came from the Lord were anointed - the altar, the tent of meeting, the tables within it, the lampstand, the ark, Aaron himself, his sons, and their garments. And when they had been anointed they were called holy, not because the oil imparted any holiness but because when anointed they would represent the Divine things from the Lord, which alone are holy. The reason why oil was employed for this purpose was that oil was a sign of the good of love, and the Divine Good of Divine Love is the Divine Himself, for He is the Essential Being (ipsum Esse) of all things. So in order to represent that Good, consecration was effected by the use of oil. The Divine Himself, the Essential Being of all things, was within the Lord alone, for He was conceived from Jehovah; and everyone derives the being (esse) of his life, called his soul, from his father. From this it is clear that the Divine Good of Divine Love was within the Lord's Humanity as a father's soul is within his child. With the human being nothing possesses life except the soul. The body without the soul has no life; indeed the whole body is fashioned by the soul in its own image, to bring the soul into a condition suitably adapted to the functions it performs on the lowest levels of order, that is, in the world. These facts about the human being lead to the conclusion that the Essential Being within the Lord's Humanity was Jehovah, or the Divine Good of Divine Love, the Being of life, and that this Being makes everything which exists from it a likeness of itself. Thus the Lord, acting from the Divine [Being] that was within Him and so was His, also made His Human into the Divine Good of Divine Love.

[3] Furthermore the Athanasian Creed which hands down the faith accepted in the Christian world states,

As body and soul is one man (homo), so Divine and Human in the Lord is one Christ ¹ .

Anyone therefore who knows about the union of soul and body in the body, and about the image of the soul in the body, can have some conception of the union of the Divine and Human within the Lord, and of the image of the one in the other. And from this he would recognize that the Divine, called the Father, and the Human, called the Son, were one, also that each was in the other, that is, the Father was in Him and He in the Father, according to the Lord's words in John 10:30; 14:10-11. But since there is no awareness at the present day of what the soul is, and scarcely any awareness that it is derived from the father, that the body is an image of it, and that the two are one, as prior and posterior are, or as being and manifestation of that being are, mankind has separated the Divine from the Human within the Lord, dividing them into two natures. As a consequence of this no other idea has been formed of the Lord's Humanity than of its being like anyone else's humanity. But in fact anyone else's soul from his father is finite and has evil within it owing to heredity, whereas the Lord's soul, being derived from Jehovah, was infinite and was nothing other than the Divine Good of Divine Love; and therefore His Human after glorification was not like anyone else's.

[4] For the same reason the Lord took up into heaven His entire Humanity that had been glorified, that is, had been made Divine by Him; He left nothing of it in the tomb, which is different from what happens with anyone else. The fact that the Lord glorified His actual body right down to the last and lowest constituents of it, which are its bones and flesh, the Lord also made plain to the disciples, saying,

See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see Me having. Luke 24:39.

And yet He came in through closed doors, and after He had revealed Himself became invisible, John 20:19; Luke 24:31.

These things have been stated in order that people may know that the Lord alone in respect of His Human was Jehovah's Anointed. He was not anointed with oil however but with the Divine Good of Divine Love, which 'oil' is the sign of and which 'anointing' represented, see 9954.

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