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.

352. [c] Our faith improves depending on the quantity of truths we have and how well they fit together. This follows from what I said before. Furthermore, it is revealed to anyone who methodically investigates how complex structures function when they are interwoven as one thing: each part strengthens and supports the next; together they make one form; and when that form becomes active, its parts accomplish one action.

Since faith in its essence is truth, our faith becomes more spiritual, and more perfectly spiritual, depending on the quantity of truths we have and how well they fit together. That is, our faith becomes less and less sense-oriented and earthly, because it then rises up into a higher region of our mind. From that perspective it sees below itself a host of things in the nature of the world that strengthen and support it. True faith, achieved through a quantity of truths that fit together like strands in a cable, also becomes more enlightening, perceivable, obvious, and clear. True faith also becomes more easily united with acts of goodwill, and therefore more alienated from evils and progressively more remote from the enticements of the eye and the cravings of the flesh. Therefore faith becomes more truly happy. Above all, it becomes more powerful against evils and falsities, and therefore more and more living and empowered to save.