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

脚注:

27. Since all who will be born hereafter will come into the spiritual world, that world must be of such size and nature that the natural world inhabited by people on earth cannot be compared with it. This is evident from the countless multitude of people who since the beginning of creation have passed into the spiritual world and are gathered there. It is also to be deduced from the constant future increase of the human race which will add to them; and there will be no end to this, as was shown in an earlier chapter (nos. 6-13) since the reproduction of the human race on earth will not come to an end.

[2] I have several times seen, when my eyes were opened, what a countless multitude of people there is there already. It was so great it could hardly be counted, for there were tens of thousands in only one place and one district. So how many must there be in the rest? All there are gathered into communities, which are very numerous, and each community in its own position forms three heavens with three hells beneath. So there are some who are high up, some mid-way, some beneath them, and there are some in the lowest regions or hells under them. Those in the upper levels live like people in cities with populations as large as some hundreds of thousands. From this it is plain that the natural world, inhabited by people on earth, cannot be compared to that world in point of the numbers of people there. So when a person passes from the natural world into the spiritual, it is like going from a village to a large city.

[3] Neither can the natural world be compared with the spiritual in terms of its character. A further proof of that is that not only do all the things appear there which exist in the natural world, but countless more in addition, never seen in this world nor capable of being seen. For there spiritual things are expressed each according to its own model, looking like natural things and with infinite variety between them. The spiritual surpasses the natural in quality to such an extent that there are few things which can be perceived by natural senses; for these do not grasp a thousandth part of what the spiritual mind can. All the activity of the spiritual mind is expressed in forms visible to people there. This is why the magnificent and astonishing sights of the spiritual world are indescribable. These too are increasing as the numbers of the human race in the heavens multiply. For everything there takes on the appearance of forms corresponding to each person's state in respect of love and faith, and hence of intelligence and wisdom. Thus as the numbers increase, so continually does their variety. That is why people who have been raised up into heaven have said that they saw and heard there what no eye has ever seen and no ear has ever heard.

[4] These proofs are enough to establish that the spiritual world is such that the natural world cannot be compared with it. See further on what it is like in HEAVEN AND HELL, in the sections on the two kingdoms of heaven (20-28); the communities of heaven (41-50); representations and appearances in heaven (170-176); and the wisdom of the angels of heaven (265-275) But the descriptions there are only a small selection.

179. There are degrees of love and wisdom, and therefore degrees of heat and light, and so, too, degrees of atmospheres. Unless one is aware of the existence of degrees, and of what they are and their nature, the following observations cannot be comprehended, since there are degrees in every created thing, thus in every form. Therefore in this third part of Divine Love and Wisdom we must take up degrees.

That there are degrees of love and wisdom can be plainly seen from the love and wisdom of the angels of the three heavens. Angels of the third heaven excel angels of the second heaven in their love and wisdom, and these in turn excel angels of the lowest heaven, and this to such an extent that they cannot dwell together. The degrees of their love and wisdom distinguish them and separate them.

So it is that angels of the lower heavens cannot ascend to angels of the higher heavens, and if it is granted them to ascend, they do not then see those higher angels, nor anything of their surroundings. The reason they do not see them is that the love and wisdom of those higher angels is in a higher degree, which transcends their perception. For every angel is an embodiment of his love and wisdom, and love together with wisdom is in its form the human being, because God, who is love itself and wisdom itself, is a human God.

[2] I have been granted several times to see angels of the lowest heaven ascend to angels of the third heaven, and when they had worked their way up there, I heard them complain that they did not see anyone, even though they were surrounded by those higher angels. They were afterward then informed that the higher angels were invisible to them because they were incapable of perceiving those angels' love and wisdom, and that it is an angel's love and wisdom that cause him to be seen as a person.