Commentary

 

The Big Ideas

By New Christian Bible Study Staff

A girl gazes into a lighted globe, showing the solar system.

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

Footnotes:

From Swedenborg's Works

 

True Christianity #490

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490. Everything God created was good, as the first chapter in Genesis makes clear. As we read there in verses 10, 12, 18, 21, and 25, "God saw that it was good. " Then in verse 31 we read, "God saw all that he had made, and yes, it was very good. " This is also apparent from the fact that human beings were originally in paradise. Evil arose from humankind, as is evident from the state of Adam after or as the result of the Fall, namely, that he was expelled from paradise.

From these points it is clear that if we had not been given free choice in spiritual matters, God himself, not us, would have been the cause of evil, and therefore both good and evil would have been created by God. It is atrocious, though, to think that he created evil. God endowed us with free choice in spiritual matters, and therefore he was not the creator of evil. He never inspires anything evil within us. This is because he is goodness itself. God is omnipresent in goodness and constantly urges and demands that he be received. If he is not received, he still does not leave, because if he were to leave, we would instantly die; in fact, we would collapse into a nonentity. Our life and the subsistence of everything we are made of is from God.

[2] God did not create evil. It is something we ourselves introduced, because we turn what is good, which continually flows in from God, into what is evil, and by means of that evil we turn ourselves away from God and toward ourselves. When we do so, the delight connected with that goodness remains but becomes a delight in evil. (Without a seemingly similar delight remaining, we would no longer be alive, because delight produces the life of our love.) Nevertheless, these two kinds of delight are completely opposite to each other. We do not realize this as long as we are alive in this world, but after our death we will recognize it and sense it very clearly. There, the delight that accompanies a love for what is good turns into heavenly blessedness, but the delight that accompanies a love for what is evil turns into something horrible and hellish.

From all this it stands to reason that all of us are predestined to heaven and none of us is predestined to hell. We devote ourselves to hell by abusing our freedom in spiritual matters; then we embrace the types of things that emanate from hell. As was noted above [475-478], we are all kept in the central area between heaven and hell, so that we are in an equilibrium between good and evil and therefore have free choice in spiritual matters.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Explained #984

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984. And they blasphemed the name of God. That hereby is signified the falsification of the Lord's Word, even to the destruction of the Divine truth in the heavens, is evident from the signification of blaspheming, as denoting to falsify Divine truth even to its destruction in heaven (concerning which see n.778); and from the signification of the name of God, as denoting Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, thus the Word (concerning which see n. 962). Hence by blaspheming the name of God is signified the falsification of the Word, even to the destruction of the Divine truth in the heavens. Concerning the falsification of the Word, even to the destruction of the Divine truth in heaven, see above (n. 778, 888, 914, 916 at the end, 950).

Continuation concerning the Sixth Precept:-

[2] Man is so created that he may be a spiritual and celestial love, and thereby an image and likeness of God. Spiritual love, which is the love of truth, is the image of God; and celestial love, which is the love of good, is the likeness of God. All the angels in the third heaven are likenesses of God, and all the angels in the second heaven are images of God.

Man cannot become the love which is an image or likeness of God except by the marriage of good and truth; for good and truth intimately love each other, and ardently desire to be united that they may be one. The reason is, that Divine Good and Divine truth proceed unitedly from the Lord; consequently, they must be united in an angel of heaven, and in a man of the church.

This union is by no means possible except by the marriage of two minds into one. For, as before said, man was created that he might be an understanding of truth, consequently, a truth; and woman was so created that she might be an affection of good, thus a good. In them, therefore, the conjunction of good and truth is possible. For conjugial love, which descends from that conjunction, is the veriest medium by which a man becomes the love that is the image or likeness of God. For the married pair who are in conjugial love from the Lord, love each other mutually and reciprocally from the heart, thus from what is inmost, and, hence, although they are apparently two, yet they are actually one. They are bodily two, but one as to life. This may be compared with the eyes, which are two as to the organs, but one as to sight; similarly with the ears, which are two as to the organs, but one as to hearing. So also the arms and the feet are two as to their members, but one as to use; the arms being one in action, and the feet one in walking. It is the same with the rest of the pairs with man; they also have reference to good and truth; the organ or member which is on the right to good, and that on the left to truth. It is similar with the husband and his wife, between whom there is love truly conjugial. They are two as to their bodies, but one as to life. Therefore, also, two conjugial partners, in heaven, are not called two angels but one. From these things it is clear that by marriage a man becomes a form of that love, and therefore a form of heaven, which is an image and likeness of God.

[3] Man is born into the love of evil and falsity, which love is the love of adultery, and cannot be turned and changed into spiritual love, which is an image of God, and still less into celestial love which is a likeness of God, except by the marriage of good and truth from the Lord; and not in fulness, except by the marriage of two minds and of two bodies.

It is therefore evident why it is that marriages are heavenly and adulteries infernal. For marriage is an image of heaven, and love truly conjugial an image of the Lord; while adultery is an image of hell, and the love of adultery an image of the devil. Conjugial love also appears in the spiritual world in form as an angel, and the love of adultery in form as a devil. Reader, treasure this up within thee, and inquire whether it be true, after death, when thou livest a man-spirit, and thou wilt see.

  
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Translation by Isaiah Tansley. Many thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.