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

Fusnotat:

5. 3. There is some image of this unity in everything that has been created. We can tell from what is presented throughout Divine Love and Wisdom that in everything created there is some image of the divine love and wisdom that are a whole in the Lord and that emanate from him as a whole. See especially Divine Love and Wisdom 47-51, 54-60 [Divine Love and Wisdom 55-60], Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284, 290-295, 316-318 [Divine Love and Wisdom 313-318], Divine Love and Wisdom 319-326, 349-357. I have explained in these passages that Divinity is present in everything that has been created because God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity, brought forth the sun of the spiritual world from his actual self, and by means of that sun brought forth the whole universe. This means that that sun, which is from the Lord and is where the Lord is, is not only the first but the only substance of which everything is made. Since it is the only substance, it follows that it is present in everything that has been created, but with infinite variety depending on function.

[2] In the Lord, then, there is divine love and wisdom; in the sun that comes from him there is divine fire and divine radiance; and from that sun come spiritual warmth and spiritual light, with the two making a single whole. It follows, then, that some image of this whole is present in everything that has been created.

This is why everything in the universe is based on what is good and what is true and in fact on their union, or (which amounts to the same thing) everything in the universe is based on love and wisdom and on their union, since goodness is a matter of love and truth is a matter of wisdom. Love in fact calls everything of its own good, and wisdom calls everything of its own true.

We will see now that this union is present in everything that has been created.

202. The Lord's divine providence is universal by virtue of its attention to the smallest details, specifically through his having created the universe in such a way that an infinite and eternal process of creation by him could occur in it. This creation takes place by the Lord's forming a heaven from humans, a heaven that in his sight is like a single individual that is his own image and likeness. I have explained in 27-45 above that the heaven formed from humanity looks like this in the Lord's sight, and that this was the purpose of creation. I have also explained that Divinity focuses on what is infinite and eternal in everything it does (56-69 [46-69]). The infinite and eternal goal that the Lord focuses on in forming his heaven from humanity is that this heaven should keep growing without limit and forever, so that in this way he might constantly dwell in the purpose of his creation.

It is this infinite and eternal creation that the Lord provided for in creating the universe, and he is constantly present in that creation through his divine providence.

[2] It is common to the teaching of all the churches in the Christian world that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is infinite, eternal, uncreated, and omnipotent (see the Athanasian Creed). Can people who know and believe, on this basis, that God is infinite and eternal be so completely devoid of rationality that they will not agree on first hearing that Divinity must focus on what is infinite and eternal in the masterwork of its creation? What else can it do when it acts from itself? Must we not also agree that it focuses on this in the human race from which it is forming its heaven?

What other goal can divine providence have, then, than the reformation of the human race and its salvation? No one can be reformed by his or her own efforts and prudence, only by the Lord, through his divine providence. It follows that unless the Lord led us at every moment, even the very smallest, we would wander from the way of reformation and die.

[3] Every shift and change in the state of our minds shifts and changes a whole series of present and therefore of subsequent events--why not on and on to eternity? It is like an arrow shot from a bow. If the arrow were deflected the least bit from its aim at the target, the deflection would be huge at a distance of a mile or more. That is how it would be if the Lord were not guiding the states of our minds at every least moment.

The Lord does this in keeping with the laws of his divine providence, including the law that says it seems as though we are leading ourselves. However, the Lord foresees how we will lead ourselves and constantly makes adjustments.

We will see below [234-274, 322-330] that the laws of permission are also laws of divine providence, that everyone can be reformed and regenerated, and that there is no predestination.