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

脚注:

325. 2. Consequently, under divine providence everyone can be saved; and everyone is saved who believes in God and lives a good life. What has just been presented shows that everyone can be saved. There are people who think that the Lord's church exists only in the Christian world because only there is the Lord known and only there is the Word found. Still, there are a good many people who believe that the church of God is wider, spread out and scattered through all regions of the world, even among people who do not know about the Lord and do not have the Word. They say that it is not these people's fault and that they cannot help being ignorant. It would fly in the face of God's love and mercy if anyone were born for hell when we are all equally human.

[2] Since many Christians (though not all) have a belief that there is a wider church called "a communion," it follows that there must be some very general principles of this wider church that comprises all religions, so that they do make up one communion. We shall see that these most general principles are belief in God and living a good life, in the following sequence. (a) Belief in God brings about God's union with us and our union with God; and denial of God brings about severance. (b) Our belief in God and union with him depend on our living a good life. (c) A good life, or living rightly, is abstaining from evils because they are against our religion and therefore against God. (d) These are the general principles of all religions, through which everyone can be saved.

10309. 'The man who makes any like it, to make an odour with it' means an imitation - springing from self - of the worship of God expressed through affections for truth and good. This is clear from the meaning of 'making any like it' as imitating the worship of God, for 'making' means imitating, and the incense to which this refers means the worship of God, as above; and from the meaning of 'making an odour' as producing what is pleasing. And since this is done through affections for truth and good, these affections are what is meant by such pleasure; for 'odour' means the perception of something enjoyable, and so means that which is pleasing, 10292. It is evident that any imitation of this springs from self, for it says that 'he who makes it will be cut off from his people'. The proprium or self is the source of any endeavour that springs from an affection which desires truth and good not for their own sake but for a selfish reason; and doing something for a selfish reason implies doing it for the sake of personal gain, important positions, and reputation as the ends in view, and not for the sake of the welfare of one's neighbour and the glory of the Lord. Consequently that endeavour springs from evil and not from good; or what amounts to the same thing, it springs from hell and not from the Lord. This therefore is what should be understood by an imitation - springing from self - of the worship of God expressed through affections for truth and good, meant by 'making an incense like it, to make an odour with it'. The people therefore who do this are those who love the world more than heaven, and themselves more than God. Also, when they think secretly within themselves they have no belief at all in heaven nor in the Lord; but when they think openly, as they do when talking in the presence of other people, they talk about heaven and the Lord with more emotion and conviction than others express. How much more depends on the degree to which they burn with the desire for personal gain, important positions, and reputation. Their condition at this time is such that inwardly they are black and outwardly shining white, that is, they are devils in the shape of angels of light. For their interiors which ought to lie exposed to heaven are closed, and their exteriors which lie exposed to the world are open. And if they are moved at this time by an affection that seemingly belongs to love to raise their eyes and hands towards heaven, they are nevertheless like statues skillfully made to portray that pose; and they also appear to angels as such statues. Indeed, can you believe it, there are in hell very many such as these who are present with and inspire people like them in the world, especially with preachers who for selfish reasons imitate the worship of God by expressing affections for truth and good. Furthermore the Lord allows them to act in this way, because at the same time they also perform a useful function; for good people can still receive the Word properly from them. They can do so because the reception of the Word by a person, no matter whose mouth it goes out of, depends on the character of the good governing that person. But such externals, being mere postures, are stripped away from them in the next life, and then their spirit is shown to be black, as it had been while they were in the body.