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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4. 2. Divine love and wisdom radiate from the Lord as a single whole. We can see this from several things that I explained in Divine Love and Wisdom, especially the following.

In the Lord, reality and its manifestation are both distinguishable and united (14-17 [Divine Love and Wisdom 14-16]).

In the Lord, infinite things are distinguishably one (Divine Love and Wisdom 17-22).

Divine love is a property of divine wisdom, and divine wisdom is a property of divine love (Divine Love and Wisdom 34-39).

Unless it is married to wisdom, love cannot accomplish anything (Divine Love and Wisdom 401-403).

Love or volition does not do anything without wisdom or discernment (Divine Love and Wisdom 409-410).

As spiritual warmth and light radiate from the Lord as the sun, they make a unity the way divine love and divine wisdom make a single whole in the Lord (99-132 [Divine Love and Wisdom 99-102]).

We can see the truth of the present proposition from what is explained in these passages. However, since people do not know how two things can act in unison if they are different from each other, I should like to show at this point that no unity occurs apart from a form. Rather, the form itself is what makes the whole. Then I should like to show that a form makes a whole more perfectly as its constituents are distinguishably different and yet united.

[2] No whole occurs apart from a form. Rather, the form itself is what makes the whole. Anyone who thinks with real mental focus will see clearly that no whole occurs apart from a form. If a whole occurs, it is a form. Whatever comes into being derives from its form what we refer to as its quality, attributes, changes of state, relationships, and the like. So anything that is not in some form is of no effect, and anything that is of no effect is of no substance. The form itself is the source of all these qualities. Further, since all the constituents of a form--if the form is complete--relate to each other like link to link in a chain, it follows that the form itself is what makes the whole and therefore is the object to which we can attribute quality, state, effect, and so on, all depending on the completeness of the form.

[3] Everything we see with our eyes in this world is this kind of whole, and so is everything we do not see with our eyes, either in the depths of nature or in the spiritual world. An individual is this kind of whole, and so is a human community. Further, the church is this kind of whole, and so is the whole angelic heaven in the Lord's sight. In short, the created universe is this kind of whole not only in its entirety but also in every detail.

If the whole and every part is to be a form, it is necessary that the one who created them all should be form itself and that all the things that have been created in their particular forms should come from that essential form. That is the reason for a number of statements in Divine Love and Wisdom; for example, the following: Divine love and wisdom is substance and is form (Divine Love and Wisdom 40-43). Divine love and wisdom are form in and of themselves, and are therefore wholly "itself" and unique (Divine Love and Wisdom 44-46). Divine love and divine wisdom are a single whole in the Lord (14-17 [Divine Love and Wisdom 14-16], 18-22 [Divine Love and Wisdom 17-22]). They emanate from the Lord as a single whole (Divine Love and Wisdom 99-102 and elsewhere [Divine Love and Wisdom 125]).

[4] A form makes a unity more perfectly as its constituents are distinguishably different, and yet united. It is hard for our discernment to accept this unless it is raised up, because it seems as though the only way a form can make a single whole is if its constituents have some regular similarity.

I have often talked with angels about this. They have told me that this is a mystery clearly grasped by the wise among them but dimly grasped by the less wise. Still, the truth is that a form is more perfect as its constituents are distinguishably different but still united in some particular way. In support of this, angels have cited the communities in the heavens. Taken all together, these communities make up the form of heaven. They have also cited the angels in each community, saying that the more clearly individual angels are on their own--are therefore free--and love the other members of their community on the basis of their own affection, in apparent freedom, the more perfect is the form of the community.

They have also referred by way of illustration to the marriage of what is good and what is true. The more clearly these are two, the more perfectly they can form a unity. It is the same with love and wisdom. Anything unclear is confused, and this is what gives rise to all imperfection of form.

[5] Angels have also offered abundant evidence of the way completely different things are united so that they form a single whole. They have called attention particularly to things within a person, where all the countless parts are similarly differentiated and yet are united--differentiated by membranes and united by ligaments. They have said that it is the same with love and all its components and with wisdom and all its components, which are perceived simply as unities.

There is more on this subject in Divine Love and Wisdom 14-22 and in Heaven and Hell 56, 489 [Heaven and Hell 56, 71, 418]. I include all this because it is a matter of angelic wisdom.

489. In contrast, the life pleasures of people who have lived in heavenly love in the world change into the kinds of corresponding things that exist in the heavens, things that come into being from heaven's sun and from its light. The things which that light renders visible have hidden within them divine realities. What comes to view from this source moves the deeper reaches of angels' minds and the outer levels of their bodies as well; and since a divine light (which is divine truth emanating from the Lord) is flowing into their minds, which have been opened by heavenly love, it presents in outward form things that answer to the pleasures of their love. In the chapter that dealt with representations and appearances in heaven (170-176) and the chapter on the wisdom of heaven's angels (265-275), I have explained that the things presented to angels' sight in the heavens answer to their own deeper natures or to elements of their faith and love, and therefore to their intelligence [and] wisdom.

[2] Since I have begun supporting this general proposition by examples drawn from my experience, to shed light on what has been said so far on the basis of the causes of things, I should also like to bring in at this point something about the heavenly pleasures into which the natural pleasures turn for people who live in heavenly love in the world.

People who have loved divine truths and the Word from a deep affection, or from an affection for the truth itself, live in the light, in uplands that look like mountains, and are constantly bathed in the light of heaven there. They know nothing of the kind of darkness we have at night in the world, and they live in a springtime climate as well. Their scenery offers them views like fields ripe for harvest and vineyards. Everything in their houses gleams as though it were made of precious stones. Looking through their windows is like looking through pure crystal. These are their visual pleasures; but they are actually deeper pleasures because of their correspondence with divine heavenly qualities, since the truths from the Word that they have loved correspond to the harvest fields, vineyards, precious stones, windows, and crystals. ¹

[3] People who have applied the teachings of the church from the Word directly to their lives are in the inmost heaven and more than anyone else are absorbed in the pleasures of wisdom. They see divine realities in particular objects. They actually do see the objects, but the corresponding divine realities flow directly into their minds and fill them with a sense of blessedness that affects all their sensory functions. As a result, everything they see seems to laugh and play and live (on this, see above, 270).

[4] If people have loved learning and have developed their rational ability accordingly and thereby gained intelligence, and if they have acknowledged the Divine Being at the same time, their delight in knowledge and pleasure in reasoning changes in the other life into a spiritual pleasure that is the delight of firsthand knowledge of what is good and true. They live in gardens where you can see flower beds and lawns beautifully marked off, surrounded by rows of trees with arcades and promenades. The trees and flowers change from day to day. Looking at all this brings pleasure to their minds generally, and the specific changes make it constantly new. Further, since all this corresponds to divine qualities, and since these people are drawn to their knowledge of correspondences, they are constantly being filled with new insights and thereby having their spiritual rational faculty perfected. They enjoy these pleasures because gardens, flower beds, lawns, and trees correspond to information, insights, and the intelligence that ensues. ²

[5] If people have given the Divine credit for everything and regarded nature as relatively dead, simply subservient to spiritual concerns, and if they have convinced themselves of this, they are in heavenly light; and everything that presents itself to their eyes derives a kind of translucence from that light. In that translucency they see innumerable shadings of light that their inner sight seems to drink directly in. This is how they perceive deeper pleasures. The objects in their houses look like diamonds with similar variegations of light. I have been told that their walls look like crystal and are therefore also translucent, and that within them one can see what looks like fluid forms representative of heavenly things, again with constant variety. This is because this kind of translucence corresponds to an intellect that has been enlightened by the Lord, with the shadows that arise from faith in and love of natural things taken away. Things like this - and infinitely more - are what people who have been in heaven are talking about when they say that they have seen what the eye has never seen, and that from the grasp of divine things conveyed to them in this connection, they have heard what the ear has never heard.

[6] If people have not acted covertly but have wanted everything they were thinking to be out in the open to the extent that civil law allows, then since they have thought nothing but what was honest and fair because of the Deity, in heaven their faces are radiant. Because of that radiance, the details of their thoughts and affections are visible in their faces as though presented in a form; and in both speech and action they are virtual images of their feelings. They are more beloved than others. When they are talking, their faces dim a little, but after they have spoken, then the very things they have said can be fully and plainly seen in their faces. Further, since everything around them answers to their deeper natures, everything takes on a countenance that enables others to see clearly what they represent and mean. Spirits who have found pleasure in covert activity get as far from them as they can, and seem to themselves to slither away from them like snakes.

[7] People who have regarded adultery as unspeakable and have lived in chaste love of their marriage are more in the pattern and form of heaven than anyone else. This gives them a total beauty and a constant flower of youth. The pleasures of their love are indescribable, and increase to eternity. This is because all the joys and delights of heaven flow into that love; and this in turn is because that love comes down from the Lord's union with heaven and with the church and in general from the union of the good and the true that is heaven in general and in every individual angel in particular (see above, 366-386). Their external pleasures are so wonderful that they cannot be described in human words.

Still, what I have said about the correspondences of pleasures for people who are involved in heavenly love is only a little.

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