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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84. Because these two worlds are so distinct from each other, it is quite obvious that the spiritual world is under a different sun than is the physical world. There is just as much warmth and light in the spiritual world as there is in the physical world, but the warmth there is spiritual and so is the light. Spiritual warmth is the good that thoughtfulness does and spiritual light is the truth that faith perceives.

Now, since the only possible source of warmth and light is a sun, it stands to reason that there is a different sun in the spiritual world than there is in the physical world. It also stands to reason that because of the essential nature of the spiritual world's sun, spiritual warmth and light can come forth from it, while because of the essential nature of the physical world's sun, physical warmth [and light] can come forth from it. The only possible source of anything spiritual--that is, anything that has to do with what is good and true--is divine love and wisdom. Everything good is a result of love and everything true is a result of wisdom. Any wise individual can see that this is their only possible source.

489. VII. But for free will in spiritual matters God would be responsible for evil, and thus there could be no imputation of charity and faith. ¹

It follows from the belief held at the present time, a belief which was first hatched by the members of the Council in the city of Nicaea, that God is the cause of evil. That was where the heresy was invented and devised which still persists, that there were three Divine Persons from eternity, and each of them was God in Himself. Once this theory was hatched, its followers had no alternative but to approach each Person singly as God. They put together a belief in the imputation of the Lord God the Saviour's merit or righteousness, and to prevent anyone intruding on the merit with the Lord , took away from man all free will in spiritual matters, and attributed to him utter impotence as far as faith is concerned. And because they deduced everything spiritual in the church solely from that faith, they claimed like impotence in regard to everything the church teaches about salvation. This was the source from which sprang a succession of dreadful heresies, based upon that faith and belief in man's impotence in spiritual matters, as well as that most harmful doctrine of predestination discussed in the preceding section. All these beliefs imply that God is the cause of evil, or that God created both good and evil.

But, my friend, do not place your trust in any Council, but in the Word of the Lord, which is superior to Councils. Is there anything the Roman Catholic councils have not hatched, anything the Council of Dort did not hatch, where that dreadful viper, predestination, was brought to light?

[2] It might be thought that giving man free will in spiritual matters was a mediate cause of evil, and consequently, that if he had not been given such free will, man could not have sinned. But, my friend, pause here for a moment and consider whether any man, if he was to be a man, could have been created without free will in spiritual matters; if that were taken from him, he would cease to be a man and be merely a statue. What is free will but the ability to will and do, to think and speak to all appearance as if from oneself? Since man was given this ability so that he could live as a man, 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 he could use the freedom given him to eat the fruit of the tree of life or the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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