In New Christian thought, “charity” has a significantly different meaning than in the common modern English definition. In Swedenborg's works "charity" is usually the English rendering of the Latin word "caritas", which is also the root of the verb “to care.” If we think of “charity” as “a state of caring,” we can start seeing what Swedenborg was trying to convey.

“Caring” does not necessarily have to be emotional. You can take care of someone you don’t like, you can take care of business or errands or duties that have little or no emotional content. Swedenborg would call these “acts of charity,” things done from a desire to be a good person. But the idea of “caring” can elevate, too: When you care about someone it involves real affection, and to care about an idea or mission implies a deep commitment - it is a feeling, an emotional state. The ultimate state of “caring,” of course, would be caring about all of humanity, wanting what’s best for everyone on the planet. This is what Swedenborg would call “true charity,” and it is marked by love - the love of others. Importantly, though, it can't be left as an abstraction; it needs to be grounded out in action.

Or as Swedenborg puts it in Arcana Coelestia 8033: “Charity is an inward affection consisting in a desire which springs from a person's heart to do good to the neighbour, which is the delight of his life.”

At all these levels, though, charity cannot act on its own. It needs tools.

Imagine, for instance, a young mother falling and breaking her leg. Her four-year-old might love her desperately, but cannot take care of her. A paramedic, meanwhile, might see her as just a case number, but will get her stabilized and delivered to a hospital. The difference, obviously, is knowledge. The paramedic has a bunch of tested, true ideas in her head that give her the capacity to care for the mother; the four-year-old does not.

That knowledge is actually part of what Swedenborg would call “faith,” though he’s referring to spiritual things rather than medical ones. In general, “faith” in Swedenborg’s works refers to not just belief in the Lord but also the things we accept as true because they come to us from the Lord and the Lord’s teachings. If we take them and apply them to life, we can do works of charity - we can use knowledge to take care of people and things, to actually do something good. For this reason, faith and charity are often linked in Swedenborgian theology.

And just like the idea of caring, these items of faith can elevate. “Thou shalt not murder” is a good low-level matter of faith, and should certainly be applied if we want to be charitable people. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is a bit higher, a bit more internal, and will help us be charitable on a deeper level. The idea that by loving others we are loving the Lord will take us to a deeper place yet.

And perhaps most beautiful of all is what happens when we reach a state of true charity. If we work to be good because we want to serve the Lord, the Lord will eventually change our hearts, transforming us so that we delight in being good and delight in loving and helping others. At that stage the ideas of faith change from being the masters over our evil desires to being the servants of our good desires. From a loving desire to be good and serve others we will seek and use knowledge that lets us fulfill that mission.

(Izinkomba: Arcana Coelestia 809, 916 [2], 1798 [2-5], 1799 [3-4], 1994, 8120; Charity 11, 40, 56, 90, 199; The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 121; True Christian Religion 367, 377, 392, 425, 450, 453, 576)

1798. That 'Abram said, See, to me You have not given seed' means that there was no internal dimension of the Church, [which is love and faith,] is clear from the meaning of 'seed' as love and faith, dealt with already in 255, 256, 1025, and in what follows below from the meaning of 'an heir'. The fact that love and faith deriving from love constitute the internal dimension of the Church has been stated and shown frequently already. No other kind of faith that constitutes the internal dimension of the Church is meant than the faith which is a product of love or charity, that is, which originates in love or charity.

[2] In a general sense faith embraces everything that is taught by the Church; but doctrinal teachings separated from love or charity do not in any way constitute the internal dimension of the Church, for such teachings are no more than knowledge which is present in the memory and which also exists with the worst of people, even with those in hell. But doctrinal teachings which originate in charity, that is, which are a product of charity, do constitute the internal dimension of the Church, for this dimension is essentially its life. The life itself constitutes the internal aspect of all worship, and so too do all doctrinal teachings that flow from the life that belongs to charity. It is these teachings when they comprise faith that are meant here, and it is faith such as this that constitutes the internal dimension of the Church, as may become clear from the single consideration that anyone who is leading a charitable life has an awareness of all things of faith.

[3] Just examine, if you care to do so, any doctrinal teachings, so that you may see what they are and what they are like. Do they not all have regard to charity, and so to faith that derives from charity? Take simply the Ten Commandments, the first of which is that you should worship the Lord God. Anyone who possesses the life of love or charity worships the Lord God, for it is in this that the life within him consists. Another commandment says that you should keep the Sabbath. Anyone in whom the life of love, that is, in whom charity, is present keeps the Sabbath holy since nothing delights him more than worshipping the Lord and declaring His glory day by day. The commandment that you should not kill has regard entirely to charity. Anyone who loves his neighbour as himself shudders at doing him any injury whatever, and even more at killing him. Likewise with the commandment that you should not steal, for the person who possesses the life of charity would rather give from what is his own to his neighbour than take away anything from him. Equally the commandment that you should not commit adultery. A man in whom the life of charity is present is minded rather to protect his neighbour's wife lest anyone should do such great harm to her, and regards adultery as a crime committed against conscience, such as destroys conjugial love and the responsibilities that go with it. Coveting things that belong to the neighbour is also contrary to the mind of those in whom the life of charity is present, for the essence of charity is to will good to others from oneself and what is one's own, thus they in no way covet what belongs to another.

[4] These Commandments, included among the Ten, are more external matters of doctrine concerning faith, which are not simply retained as knowledge in the memory of him in whom charity and the life of charity are present, but are in his heart. They are also inscribed upon him because they are grounded in his charity and so in his very life, in addition to other things of a dogmatic nature that are inscribed upon him which in a similar way he knows from charity alone. For he lives in accordance with a conscience for that which is right. Anything right or true which he is unable to understand and examine in this fashion he nevertheless believes in simplicity - that is, in simplicity of heart - to be right or true because the Lord has so said. Nor is anything wrong with such belief, even if that which is believed is not in itself true, only an appearance of truth.

[5] People may believe for example that the Lord can be angry, punish, tempt, and the like. Also, they may believe that in the Holy Supper the bread and wine have some spiritual meaning, or that flesh and blood are present in some way or other which they are able to explain. But whether they express the one or the other of these views about the Holy Supper, it makes no difference provided that two things are characteristic of these persons: Few people in fact give the matter any thought at all, and if any do give it any thought it makes no difference which view is held provided, a) It is done from a simple heart because it is what they have been taught, and b) They are leading charitable lives. When they hear that the bread and wine mean in the internal sense the Lord's love towards the whole human race, and the things that go with that love, and man's reciprocated love to the Lord and towards the neighbour, they believe it instantly and rejoice that it really is so. This is never the case with those who possess doctrine yet lack charity. They dispute everything and condemn anyone who does not speak - though they say it is to believe - as they do. From these considerations it may become clear to anyone that love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour constitute the internal dimension of the Church.

121. Faith separated from love or caring is like the light of winter, in which everything in the earth is dormant and no flower, fruit, or harvest is produced; but faith together with love or caring is like the light of spring and summer, in which everything blooms and bears fruit: 2231, 3146, 3412, 3413. The light of winter, which is the light of faith separated from caring, turns into deep darkness when light flows in from heaven; and people devoted to that faith become blind and stupid: 3412, 3413. People who separate faith from caring in the teachings they accept and in the lives they lead are in darkness; they do not know what truth is and are mired in falsities, and these constitute [spiritual] darkness: 9186. They plunge themselves into false convictions and therefore into evil practices: 3325, 8094. The errors and false convictions into which they plunge themselves: 4721, 4730, 4776, 4783, 4925, 7779, 8313, 8765, 9224. The Word is closed to them: 3773, 4783, 8780. They do not pay attention to or even see all the many things the Lord said about love and caring and about their fruits, which are good actions: 1017, 3416 (which include examples). They do not know what goodness is, and therefore they do not know what heavenly love is or what caring is: 2417, 3603, 4126, 9995.

[2] Faith separated from caring is no faith at all: 654, 724, 1162, 1176, 2049, 2116, 2343, 2349, 3419, 3849, 3868, 6348, 7039, 7342, 9783. In the other life this kind of faith perishes: 2228, 5820. When people make faith alone the most important principle, the truths they have are corrupted by the falseness of their starting point: 2435. Yet they will not let themselves be convinced otherwise, because it goes against their fundamental belief: 2385. The teachings concerning faith alone are destructive of caring: 6353, 8094. People who separate faith from caring are represented by Cain, Ham, Reuben, the firstborn of the Egyptians, and the Philistines: 3325, 7097, 7317, 8093. People who regard faith alone as ensuring salvation say that it is all right to live an evil life; yet those who devote themselves to leading evil lives actually have no faith, because there is no caring in them: ¹ 3865, 7766, 7778, 7790, 7950, 8094. Inwardly, they are consumed with false thoughts caused by their evil, although they do not realize this: 7790, 7950. This means that goodness cannot be joined to them: 8981, 8983. In the other life they are opposed to what is good and opposed to people who are engaged in doing anything good: 7097, 7127, 7317, 7502, 7545, 8096, 8313. People who are simple-hearted (and are therefore actually wise) know what it is to lead a good life and therefore know what caring is, but they cannot comprehend what faith would be apart from that: 4741, 4754.

[3] Everything about the church goes back to goodness and truth and therefore goes back to caring and faith: 7752, 7753, 7754. The church does not exist within us until truths have been planted in our lives and in this way have turned into good actions done from a caring heart: 3310. Caring, and not faith separated from caring, is what constitutes the church: 809, 916, 1798, 1799, 1834, 1844. Caring is the heart of the church: 1799, 7755. Therefore there is no church where there is no caring: 4766, 5826. If all people were viewed from a perspective of caring no matter how they differed in the teachings of their faith and in the forms of their worship, the church would be unified: 1285, 1316, 1798, 1799, 1834, 1844, 2385, 2982, 3267, 3451. How good the church would be if caring were seen as first in importance and faith as second: 6269, 6272. Every church is initially devoted to caring, but with the passage of time turns instead toward faith and eventually to faith alone: 1834, 1835, 2231, 4683, 8094. In the last times of a church there is no faith because there is no caring: 1843. Worship of the Lord consists of a life of caring: 8254, 8256. The nature of our devotion depends on the nature of our caring: 2190. People who constitute the outer church nevertheless have an inner dimension if they have devoted themselves to caring: 1100, 1102, 1151, 1153. The body of teaching of the ancient church consisted of teachings about how to live one's life and was focused on caring, not on faith separated from caring: 2385, 2417, 3419, 3420, 4844, 6628, 7259-7262.

[4] As the Lord regenerates us, he sows and implants truth in our goodness and caring: 2063, 2189, 3310. Otherwise the seed, which is the truth that belongs to religious faith, could not take root: 880. The amount of goodness and truth within us then grows in proportion to the nature and extent of the caring we have allowed ourselves to feel: 1016. The new light experienced by those who are being reborn does not come from faith but from the way caring illuminates faith: 854. As we are being regenerated, the truths that belong to religious faith become a part of us, along with a feeling of pleasure because we love to do them; and later those truths come back to us with that same feeling again, because the truths and the feeling are joined together: 2487, 3040, 3066, 3074, 3336, 4018, 5893.

[5] When people have devoted their lives to loving the Lord and caring about their neighbor, throughout all eternity they lose nothing, because they are joined to the Lord; the outcome is different, though, for people devoted to a faith separated from caring: 7506, 7507. The nature that becomes permanent within us is the nature of our life of caring, not the nature of our faith by itself: 8256. If we have lived a life devoted to caring, all our states of pleasure return to us in the other life and are immensely amplified: 823. Heavenly bliss flows from the Lord into our caring because it flows into our active life, and not into any faith we might have apart from caring: 2363. In heaven we are all evaluated on the basis of our caring; no one is evaluated on the basis of faith separated from caring: 1258, 1394. For all who are in the heavens, what they love is what brings them into association with others: 7085. No one gets into heaven for merely thinking about goodness; we must actually want to do some good: 2401, 3459. If doing what is good is not joined to willing to do what is good and thinking what is good, there is no salvation for us and no joining of our inner self and our outer self: 3987. In the other life the only people who are receptive to the Lord and to faith in him are the ones who have been devoted to caring: 2343.

[6] Goodness ceaselessly longs and strives to join itself to truths; therefore caring ceaselessly longs and strives to join itself to faith: 9206, 9207, 9495. Each type of goodness or caring recognizes the truth that goes with it from among those that belong to religious faith; and each type of truth that belongs to religious faith recognizes the type of goodness or caring that goes with it: 2429, 3101, 3102, 3161, 3179, 3180, 4358, 5807, 5835, 9637. As a result a bond forms between a given truth that belongs to religious faith and a given type of goodness that comes from caring: 3834, 4096, 4097, 4301, 4345, 4353, 4364, 4368, 5365, 7623-7627, 7752-7762, 8530, 9258, 10555 (which include further details). This bond is like a marriage: 1904, 2173, 2508. The law of marriage, as the Lord's Word says, is that two should become one [Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5-6; Mark 10:7]: 162, 10168, 10169. Faith and caring therefore should become one: 1904, 2173, 2508. This means that in order to be genuine, faith must have caring as its essence: 2228, 2839, 3180, 9783. As goodness is the reality underlying a thing and truth is how that thing becomes manifest from goodness, so caring is the reality underlying the church, and faith is how [the church] becomes manifest from goodness: 3049, 3180, 4574, 5002, 9144. The truth that belongs to religious faith gets its life from good actions that embody caring, which means that to care is to lead a life in accord with the truth that belongs to religious faith: 2571, 4070, 4096, 4097, 4736, 4757, 4884, 5147, 5928, 9154, 9667, 9841, 10729. Faith can exist only in the context of caring. If a given kind of faith is not devoted to caring, then there is nothing good in that faith: 2261, 4368. Faith is not alive in us when all we do is know about faith and think about it. Rather, faith comes to life when we will to do, and when we actively do, what it teaches: 9224.

[7] There is no salvation through faith, but there is salvation through a life in accord with the truths that faith teaches, which is a life of caring: 379, 389, 2228, 4663, 4721. People who have been taught by their church to think that faith alone saves, but who nevertheless do what is right because it is right and do what is good because it is good, are saved, because they are in fact devoted to caring: 2442, 3242, 3459, 3463, 7506, 7507. If having thoughts about faith were all that were required for salvation, everyone would be saved: 2228, 10659. Caring creates a heaven within us; faith apart from caring does not: 3513, 3584, 3815, 9832, 10714, 10715, 10721, 10724. In heaven all are evaluated on the basis of their caring, not their faith: 1258, 1394, 2364, 4802. Our faith does not join us to the Lord; what joins us to the Lord is living by the truths that faith teaches: 9380, 10143, 10153, 10310, 10578, 10645, 10648. The "tree of life" [Genesis 2:9; 3:22, 24; Revelation 2:7; 22:2, 14] is the Lord, its "fruits" are good actions that come from caring, and its "leaves" are faith: 3427, 9337. Faith is "the lesser light" and love is "the greater light" [Genesis 1:16]: 30-38.

[8] Angels of the Lord's heavenly kingdom do not know what faith is, so much so that they do not even mention it; but angels of the Lord's spiritual kingdom talk about faith because they reason about matters of truth: 202, 203, 337, 2715, 3246, 4448, 9166, 10786. Angels in the Lord's heavenly kingdom say only "Yes, yes" or "No, no"; but angels from the Lord's spiritual kingdom discuss whether something is so or not when they are talking about spiritual truths, which are matters of faith: 2715, 3246, 4448, 9166, 10786 (these passages deal with the interpretation of the Lord's words "Let your communication be ‘Yes, yes; no, no. ' Whatever is more than these comes from evil" [Matthew 5:37]). The reason heavenly angels are like this is that they put the truths that belong to religious faith directly into their lives, rather than putting them first into their memories the way spiritual angels do; and as a result heavenly angels have a higher perception of everything that has to do with faith: 202, 597, 607, 784, 1121, 1387, 1398, 1442, 1919, 5113, 5897, 6367, 7680, 7877, 8521, 8780, 9995, 10124.

[9] The trust or assurance that is called "saving faith" in the most valid sense is found only in people whose lives are devoted to doing what is good, people therefore who are devoted to caring: 2982, 4352, 4683, 4689, 7762, 8240, 9239-9245. Few people know what this assurance is: 3868, 4352.

[10] The difference between believing the truth that comes from God and actually believing in God: 9239, 9243. It is one thing to know about some truth, another thing to acknowledge it, and still another thing to have faith in it: 896, 4319, 5664b. Faith has a factual aspect, a rational aspect, and a spiritual aspect: 2504, 8078. The first phase of faith is to acknowledge the Lord: 10083. Everything that flows into us from the Lord is good: 1614, 2016, 2751, 2882, 2883, 2891, 2892, 2904, 6193, 7643, 9128.

[11] A faith that you have talked yourself into is no faith at all: 2343, 2682, 2689, 3417, 3865, 8148.

[12] For various reasons it seems as though faith comes before caring, but this is an illusion: 3324. We can know simply from the light of reason that goodness (and therefore caring) comes first and that truth (and therefore faith) comes second: 6273. Goodness (and therefore caring) is actually primary and is the first element of the church; while truth (and therefore faith) is actually secondary and is the second element of the church, even though it may not seem that way: 3324, 3325, 3330, 3336, 3494, 3589, 3548, 3556, 3570, 3576, 3603, 3701, 3995, 4337, 4601, 4925, 4926, 4928, 4930, 5351, 6256, 6269, 6272, 6273, 8042, 8080, 10110. Among the ancients as well there was disagreement as to whether faith or caring was the first element or firstborn of the church: 367, 2435, 3324.

Imibhalo yaphansi: