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

Fußnoten:

489. If We Had No Free Choice in Spiritual Matters, God Would Be the Cause of Evil, and We Could Not Be Credited [with Goodwill or Faith]

The notion that God is the cause of evil follows from the modern-day belief that was first hatched by those who participated in the Council of Nicaea. At that event a heresy was thrown together and cooked up that still persists today, which is that there are three divine persons from eternity, each of which is a God on his own. Once that egg was hatched, the followers had no choice but to turn to each divine person as an individual god. The participants at Nicaea put together a belief that the merit or justice of the Lord God the Savior is assigned to us. Then, to prevent the idea that we actually acquire the Lord's merit, they took away any idea that we have free choice in spiritual matters, and brought in the notion that we are completely powerless in regard to that faith. Because they centered all the spiritual teaching of the church on that belief alone, they declared the existence of a similar spiritual powerlessness in regard to everything the church teaches about salvation. As a result, horrific heresies came into being, one after another, founded upon that faith and the notion of human powerlessness in spiritual matters, including predestination, that most damaging of concepts, which was covered under the preceding heading [485-488]. All these teachings entail the idea that God is the cause of evil or that God created both good and evil.

My friend, do not put your trust in any council. Put your trust in the Lord's Word, which is high above councils. Look at all the notions hatched by Roman Catholic councils! Look at the egg the Synod of Dort laid from which the horrendous viper of predestination came forth!

[2] Now you might suppose that the free choice granted to human beings in spiritual matters is a mediate cause of evil, and therefore that if free choice of this kind had not been granted to us, we would not be able to sin. But, my friend, stop for a moment here and consider whether any human being could be created so as to be human without having free choice in spiritual matters. If this were taken away from us, we would be statues and no longer human. What is free choice except the power to will and do and think and speak to all appearances as if we did so on our own? Because this ability was granted to us so that we could live as human beings, two trees were placed in the Garden of Eden - the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This means that from the freedom that has been granted to us we can eat fruit from the tree of life and we can eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

485. If We Had No Free Choice in Spiritual Matters, There Would Be Nothing in Us That Would Allow Us to Forge a Partnership with the Lord, and Therefore [There Would Be] No Ascribing [of Goodness to Us], Only Mere Predestination, Which Is Detestable

As was fully demonstrated in the chapter on faith [336-391], without free choice in spiritual matters no one would have any goodwill or faith, still less a partnership between those two things. From the points made there it follows that if we had no free choice in spiritual matters there would be nothing in us that would allow the Lord to form a bond with us. Without a reciprocal partnership [with the Lord] reformation and regeneration would be impossible, and therefore there would be no salvation.

An irrefutable result of this is that without a reciprocal partnership of the Lord with us and us with the Lord, there would be no ascribing [of goodness to us]. Convincing ourselves that [after death] there is no assigning of spiritual credit for goodness or blame for evil (because we lack free choice in spiritual matters) has many consequences, and they are severe. They will have to be unveiled in the last part of this book, where we will explore the heresies, absurdities, and contradictions that flow forth from today's belief that the merit and justice of the Lord God the Savior are assigned to us.