1. I. ­ Tutte le altre opere non sono opere di carità in senso stretto, ma sono riflessi, oppure semplici buone azioni esteriori ovvero debiti di riconoscenza. Insegnamenti per la nuova Gerusalemme sulla Fede I la fede è un riconoscimento interiore della verità

Oggigiorno, le persone ritengono che fede non significhi altro che ritenere vero qualcosa perché lo insegna la chiesa e perché non risulta familiare all'intelletto. Infatti si dice comunemente: “Credi, e non dubitare”. Se qualcuno replica “Non capisco”, gli viene risposto: “Ecco perché devi credere.” Il risultato è che la fede di oggi è una fede nell'ignoto e può essere chiamata fede cieca; e siccome è trasmessa da una persona all'altra, è una fede tramandata dal passato. Diventerà chiaro nelle seguenti pagine che questa non è una fede spirituale.

34. IV. La fede cristiana in una prospettiva generale

La fede cristiana in una prospettiva generale, concerne la venuta del Signore ab aeterno, che è Jehovah, nel mondo per soggiogare l'inferno e per glorificare la sua natura umana. Senza di ciò, nessun essere umano avrebbe potuto essere salvato; e sono salvati coloro che credono in lui.

67. THE FAITH OF THE NEW HEAVEN AND NEW CHURCH IN UNIVERSAL FORM. This faith is as follows: The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, came into the world to conquer the hells and glorify His humanity, and without this no mortal could have been saved; and those are saved who believe in Him.

[2] We say, in universal form, because it is a universal tenet of faith, and a universal tenet of faith must enter into each and every component of that faith.

It is a universal tenet of faith that God is one in person and essence, in whom is the Trinity, and that the Lord is that God.

It is a universal tenet of faith that no mortal could have been saved unless the Lord came into the world.

It is universal tenet of faith that the Lord came into the world to dislodge hell from mankind, and that He dislodged it by combats against it and victories over it. Thus He conquered it and forced it back into order, in obedience to Him.

It is a universal tenet of faith also that the Lord came into the world to glorify the humanity that He assumed in the world, or in other words, to unite it to the Divine from which He came. Thus He keeps hell, having been conquered by Him, in order and in obedience to Him to eternity.

Since neither of these objectives could have been achieved except through temptations or trials even to the last of them, and the last of them was the suffering of the cross, therefore He underwent even that.

These are the universal tenets of faith as regards the Lord.

[3] The universal tenet of Christian faith on the part of mankind is to believe in the Lord, for believing in Him brings about conjunction with Him, through which comes salvation. To believe in Him is to have confidence that He saves, and because no one is capable of this confidence but one who lives rightly, therefore living rightly, too, is meant by believing in Him.

[4] We have considered these two articles of Christian faith in particular elsewhere: first, as regards the Lord, in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord; and secondly, as regards mankind, in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding Charity, in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding Faith, and in The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem. And we now consider both in our explanations dealing with the book of Revelation.