1. True Christianity

Containing a Comprehensive Theology of the New Heaven and the New Church

The Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church

THE faith of the new heaven and the new church is stated here in both universal and specific forms to serve as the face of the work that follows, the doorway that allows entry into the temple, and the summary that in one way or another contains all the details to follow. I say "the faith of the new heaven and the new church" because heaven, where there are angels, and the church, in which there are people, act together like the inner and the outer levels in a human being. People in the church who love what is good because they believe what is true and who believe what is true because they love what is good are angels of heaven with regard to the inner levels of their minds. After death they come into heaven, and enjoy happiness there according to the relationship between their love and their faith. It is important to know that the new heaven that the Lord is establishing today has this faith as its face, doorway, and summary.

711. Understanding What Has Just Been Presented Makes It Possible to See That the Holy Supper Includes All the Qualities of the Church and All the Qualities of Heaven, Both Generally and Specifically

The material under the previous heading showed that the Lord himself is in the Holy Supper, that the divine goodness that comes from his love is the flesh and the bread, and that the divine truth that comes from his wisdom is the blood and the wine. Therefore the Holy Supper has three things within it: the Lord, his divine goodness, and his divine truth. Since these are the three things that the Holy Supper includes and contains, it follows that it contains the characteristics that are found universally throughout all of heaven and the church; and because all the individual qualities depend on these universal characteristics the way contents depend on their context, it also follows that the Holy Supper includes and contains all the individual qualities found in heaven and the church.

Therefore the first conclusion to be drawn from this is that since the Lord's flesh and blood and likewise the bread and wine mean divine goodness and divine truth, each of which comes from the Lord and in fact is the Lord, the Holy Supper contains, then, all the qualities of heaven and all the qualities of the church both generally and specifically.

201. 4. The spiritual meaning of the Word has been unknown until now. All things that exist in the material world correspond to something spiritual; likewise all things that exist in the human body, as I have shown in the work Heaven and Hell, 87-115. No one has known until now, however, what correspondence is. In the earliest times, correspondence was very well known. To the people who lived at that time the study of correspondences was the supreme field of study. It was so universal that the writing in all their books and codices displayed the use of correspondences. The Book of Job, a book of the early church, is full of correspondences. The Egyptian hieroglyphics and the earliest myths were no different. All the early churches were churches that represented spiritual things in symbolic ways. Their worship was established with rituals and rules that consisted entirely of correspondences.

The same was true for all aspects of the church among the children of Israel: their burnt offerings, sacrifices, food offerings, and drink offerings were correspondences down to the last detail. So was the tabernacle and everything in it. So were their feast days - the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Feast of First Fruits. So was the priestly role performed by Aaron and the Levites, as well as the clothing of their sacred office. (The specific spiritual things to which all the above correspond are shown in Secrets of Heaven, published in London.) In addition, all the statutes and judgments that shaped their worship and their lives were correspondences.

Divine attributes present themselves in the world in the form of correspondences; therefore the Word was written entirely in correspondences. For the same reason, the Lord spoke in correspondences, since he spoke from what is divine.

Divinity is present in nature in the form of things that correspond to divine attributes and that have divine attributes known as heavenly and spiritual qualities hidden deep within them.