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

Fotnoter:

46. In Everything That It Does, the Lord's Divine Providence Is Focusing on What Is Infinite and Eternal

It is widely recognized in Christian circles that God is infinite and eternal. In fact, it says in the doctrine of the Trinity named after Athanasius that God the Father is infinite, eternal, and omnipotent, as are God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, but that there are not three infinite, eternal, and omnipotent beings, but only one. It follows from this that since God is infinite and eternal, only what is infinite and eternal can be attributed to him.

However, we finite beings cannot grasp what anything infinite and eternal is--and yet at the same time we can. We cannot grasp it because the finite cannot contain the infinite; and we can grasp it because there are abstract notions that enable us to see that certain things do exist even though we cannot see what their nature is.

There are such notions about the infinite--for example, that because God is infinite, or Divinity is infinite, God is reality itself or essence itself and substance itself, love itself and wisdom itself, what is good itself and what is true itself, the Only--in fact, the essential Human. Then too, if we say that the infinite is the all, then infinite wisdom is omniscience and infinite power is omnipotence.

[2] These concepts, though, will get lost in the dim depths of our thought and perhaps even fall from incomprehension into denial unless we can rid them of elements that our thought gets from the material world, particularly those two essential features of the material world called space and time. These can only limit our concepts and make abstract concepts seem like nothing at all. However, if we can rid ourselves of them the way angels do, then the infinite can be grasped by means of the things I have just listed. This leads to a grasp of the fact that we ourselves are real because we have been created by the infinite God who is the All, that we are finite substances because we have been created by the infinite God who is substance itself, that we are wisdom because we have been created by the infinite God who is wisdom itself, and so on. For if the infinite God were not the All, substance itself, and wisdom itself, we would not be real, or would simply be nothing, or would be only ideas of existence, according to those dreamers called idealists.

[3] Material presented in the work Divine Love and Wisdom may serve to show that the divine essence is love and wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 28-39), that divine love and wisdom are substance itself and form itself and that divine love and wisdom are substance and form in and of themselves, and are therefore wholly "itself" and unique (Divine Love and Wisdom 40-46), and that God created the universe and everything in it not from nothing but from himself (Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284). It follows from this that everything that has been created, especially ourselves and the love and wisdom within us, is real, and is not just an image of reality.

If God were not infinite, then, nothing finite would exist; if the Infinite were not the All, there would not be anything; and if God had not created everything from himself, there would be nothing real, nothing at all. In short, we are because God is.

386. The second experience.

One morning on waking from sleep I saw two angels coming down from heaven, one from the south, the other from the east of heaven; they were both in chariots to which were harnessed white horses. The chariot in which the angel from the south of heaven rode shone as if of silver, and that in which the angel from the east of heaven rode shone as if of gold; and the reins they held in their hands shone as if touched by the flame-coloured light of dawn. That was how the two angels looked to me at a distance; but when they came near, they did not appear in a chariot, but in the form of angels, which is the human form. The one coming from the east of heaven wore a shining purple robe; the one from the south of heaven a violet robe. When these angels reached the lower levels beneath the heavens each ran towards the other, as if racing to see who could arrive first, and embraced and kissed each other.

I was told that the two angels had been very close friends during their lives in the world, but one was now in the eastern heaven, the other in the southern one. The eastern heaven is the home of those who have love from the Lord, the southern heaven is that of those who have wisdom from the Lord. After talking for some time about the splendours of their heavens, their talk turned to this topic: whether heaven in its essence is love or whether it is wisdom. They agreed at once that one depends on the other, but they discussed which was the origin of the other.

[2] The angel from the heaven of wisdom asked the other: 'What is love?' He replied that love arising from the Lord as a sun is the heat which gives life to angels and men, so it is the Being of their life; and the things derived from love are called affections, and it is these which give rise to perceptions and thus to thoughts. 'From this flows the consequence that wisdom is by its origin love, consequently thought is by its origin an affection belonging to that love. It can be seen by considering the derivatives in their proper sequence that thought is nothing but the form taken by affection. This fact is unknown because thoughts are exposed to light, but affections to heat, so that people reflect on thoughts, but not on affections. Thought being nothing but the form taken by an affection belonging to some love or other can also be illustrated by speech, since this is nothing but a form of sound; it is also similar in that sound corresponds to affection, and speech to thought, so that affection makes a sound, and thought articulates it into words. This can also be made obvious, if we say: "Take sound away from speech - is there anything left of speech? Likewise take affection away from thought - is there anything left of thought?" It is now plain from this that love is the whole of wisdom, and consequently the essence of the heavens is love, and their coming-into-being is wisdom; or what is the same thing, the heavens are the product of Divine love, and they come into existence from Divine love by means of Divine wisdom. Therefore, as I said before, one depends upon the other.'

[3] At that time I had with me a recently arrived spirit, who on hearing this asked whether it was similar with charity and faith, since charity belongs to affection, and faith to thought.

'Yes, exactly similar,' replied the angel. 'Faith is nothing but the form of charity, just as speech is of sound. Faith is also formed by charity, as speech is by sound. We in heaven know how this forming occurs, but I have not time to explain it here. By faith,' he added, 'I mean spiritual faith, in which life and spirit come solely from the Lord by means of charity, for this is spiritual and the means by which faith is acquired. Faith without charity therefore is purely natural faith, and this is lifeless faith; it also links itself with purely natural affection, which is nothing but longing.'

[4] The angels were talking on this subject spiritually, and spiritual speech includes thousands of things beyond the power of natural speech to express, and remarkably enough these things cannot enter into the ideas of natural thought. After talking on both these subjects the angels went away, and as they receded, each towards his own heaven, stars appeared round their heads; and when they were at some distance from me I saw them again in chariots, as before.