Puna

 

The Big Ideas

Ni New Christian Bible Study Staff

A girl gazes into a lighted globe, showing the solar system.

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

Mga talababa:

Mula sa Mga gawa ni Swedenborg

 

Divine Love and Wisdom # 42

Pag-aralan ang Sipi na ito

  
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42. It is the same with love and wisdom, the only difference being that the substances and forms that are love and wisdom are not visible to our eyes as are the organs of our external senses. Still, no one can deny that those matters of love and wisdom that we call thoughts, perceptions, and feelings are substances and forms. They are not things that go floating out from nothing, remote from any functional and real substance and form that are their subjects. There are in fact countless substances and forms in the brain that serve as the homes of all the inner sensation that involves our discernment and volition.

What has just been said about our external senses points to the conclusion that all our feelings, perceptions, and thoughts in those substances and forms are not something they breathe out; they themselves are functional and substantial subjects. They do not emit anything, but simply undergo changes in response to the things that touch and affect them. There will be more later [210, 273] on these things that touch and affect them.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

Mula sa Mga gawa ni Swedenborg

 

Arcana Coelestia # 5707

Pag-aralan ang Sipi na ito

  
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5707. 'And he multiplied Benjamin's portion above the portions of all theirs' means that the good imparted to the intermediary exceeded the forms of good imparted to the truths in the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'portions' as forms of good, dealt with immediately above in 5706; from the representation of 'Benjamin' as the intermediary, dealt with in 5411, 5413, 5427, 5428, 5447, 5586, 5612; and from the representation of the ten sons of Jacob, above whose portions he multiplied Benjamin's portion, as the truths present in the natural, dealt with in 5403, 5419, 5427, 5458, 5512. From all this it is evident that 'he multiplied Benjamin's portion above the portions of all theirs' means the good imparted to the intermediary exceeded the forms of good imparted to the truths in the natural.

[2] The reason Why the good imparted to the intermediary exceeded the forms of good imparted to the truths in the natural is that the intermediary is interior, and what is interior possesses forms of good in greater abundance than what is exterior. Few know what is implied by this - by what is interior possessing forms of good and truth in greater abundance than parts that are more external do. The reason for this is that up to now few, if any, have known that what is interior is distinct and separate from what is exterior, so distinct that the two can be separated from each other; and that once they have been separated the interior goes on living but the exterior dies. But as long as they exist joined together what is exterior receives life from what is interior. If people knew this first they could then know what the interior is like compared with the exterior - that what is interior possesses thousands of things which are seen in the exterior only as a simple whole. For what is interior exists in a purer sphere, what is exterior in a grosser one; and what exists in a purer sphere is capable of receiving individually thousands of things more than that which exists in a grosser sphere can. This is the reason why, when a person who has led a good life enters heaven after death, he is able to receive thousands and thousands more of those things that constitute intelligence and wisdom, and also happiness, than when he had been living in the world. For in heaven he lives in a purer sphere and in the interior parts of his being, having cast off the grosser parts belonging to the body. From all this one may now see what is implied by the statement that the good imparted to the intermediary exceeded the forms of good imparted to the truths in the natural, meant by 'he multiplied Benjamin's portion above the portions of all theirs'.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.