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

Voetnoten:

19. 1. The one God is called Jehovah from "being," that is, from the fact that he alone is [and was] and will be, and that he is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega. "Jehovah" means "I am" and "to be," as is generally known. We know from the Book of Creation, or Genesis, that God was called "Jehovah" from most ancient times. In the first chapter he is called "God," but in the second and subsequent chapters he is called "Jehovah God. " Later on the descendants of Abraham through Jacob forgot the name of God owing to their long sojourn in Egypt. Then in the event recorded in the following passage it was recalled to memory:

Moses said to God, "What is your name?" God said, "I Am I Who Am. So you will say to the Children of Israel, 'I Am sent me to you. ' And you will say, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, sent me to you. This is my name to eternity, and this is how I will be remembered from generation to regeneration. " (Exodus 3:13-15)

Since God alone is "I Am" and being, or "Jehovah," therefore nothing exists in the created universe that does not derive its underlying reality from him. (How this happens will be discussed below [21, 75-76, 78].) The same thing is meant by these words: "I am the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega" (Isaiah 44:6 and Revelation 1:8, 11; 22:13). This means that on every level of existence he is the one and only entity, the source of all things.

[2] God is called the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, because alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet and omega is the last; so together they mean all things as a whole.

In the spiritual world, every alphabetical letter has a meaning. A vowel, because it carries tone, means a feeling or some kind of love. Spiritual and angelic speech, and also writing, depends on these meanings - but this is a mystery that has not been known until now. There is in fact a universal language shared by all angels and spirits. It has nothing in common with any human language in our world. After death everyone inherits that language, because it is latent in everyone from creation. In the spiritual world, then, everyone can understand everyone else. I have often been allowed to hear that language. I have compared it with languages in the physical world and have ascertained that it has not even the least thing in common with any earthly language. It differs by its very origin, which is that every letter of every word has a meaning. This is why God is here called the Alpha and the Omega, meaning that on every level of existence he is the one and only entity, the source of all things. (For more on how this language and its written form flow from angels' spiritual thought, see the work Marriage Love 326-329; see also what follows in this work [280].)

75. The Creation of the Universe

Because this first chapter is on God the Creator, there should also be some mention of his creation of the universe, just as the next chapter on the Lord the Redeemer also needs to address redemption. We cannot, however, get a fair idea of the creation of the universe unless some preliminary global concepts first bring our intellect into a state of perception. These global concepts are as follows:

[2] (1) There are two worlds: a spiritual world where there are angels and spirits, and a physical world where there are people.

(2) Both worlds have suns. The sun in the spiritual world is pure love from Jehovah God, who is within that sun. The spiritual sun radiates heat and light. The essence of the heat it radiates is love, and the essence of the light is wisdom. That heat and that light have an effect on people's wills and intellects. The heat affects the will; the light affects the intellect.

The sun in the physical world is pure fire. As a result, the heat and the light from it are dead. Physical heat and light serve as a clothing for spiritual heat and light and as a device through which spiritual heat and light reach people.

[3] (3) In the spiritual world both the heat and the light that radiate from the sun are substantial and are called spiritual. So are all the things in that world that come about from that heat and light.

In the physical world, these two comparable things, the heat and the light, that radiate from this sun are material and are called physical. So are all the things in this world that come about from this heat and light.

[4] (4) In both worlds there are three levels. They are called vertical levels. These result in the three areas where the three angelic heavens are set up. They also result in the three levels of the human mind, which correspond to the three angelic heavens. Everything else both here and there also has three levels.

[5] (5) There is a correspondence between things in the spiritual world and things in the physical world.

[6] (6) There is a design that has been built into each and every thing in each world.

[7] (7) First we need to get an overall idea about the above. Otherwise the human mind, in its utter ignorance of all this, easily slips into the idea that the universe was created by nature; and only out of respect for the authority of the church will it say that nature was created by God. If people do not know how God created nature, when they take a deep look at the subject they slip headfirst into a materialist philosophy that denies God.

Now, because it would take a large volume to lay out and properly demonstrate these seven points one by one, and because a section on that topic would not be integral to the theological system laid out in this book, I want to present only some memorable occurrences. From these an idea of how God created the universe can be conceived, and after conception some offspring representing that idea can be born.