Emanuel Swedenborg printed True Christianity (True Christian Religion) 250

years ago, in 1771, which completed his published spiritual works. He wrote
this final work while already in his eighties with the wisdom of some 27
years of exploring the spiritual world daily to learn how to live a successful,
useful and happy spiritual life. In this highly structured work, he
systematically and with clear reason compares the ideals of a sound
spiritual life with the beliefs, rituals and practices of the Catholic and
Lutheran beliefs of his day. True Christianity contains much that is new but
also builds on useful material from earlier works, addressing many key
aspects which make up a healthy spiritual belief and life, which he
illustrated and clarified with fascinating narratives of spiritual encounters.
People who seek practical methods for developing a spiritual life, will find
True Christianity an ideal work to address that. It highlights our need to
understand the nature of God, the reason for creation, and the need for
active self-examination leading to the reformation of our understanding
and regeneration of our will when we apply such steps.
Although Swedenborg uses familiar Christian terms, his definitions often
depart from a conventional understanding of them and infuse them with
fresh power and energy, e.g. 'faith' is not mere blind acceptance without
understanding, but an understanding and acknowledgment of what is true
and good leading to a life based on such knowledge.
Swedenborg provides very informative section headings in his work, which
in themselves form a wonderful outline. So we decided to use as a basis for
this booklet these headings (plus some detail as boxed text mainly for
chapters 9 and 10), to provide you with a flavour of True Christianity’s
usefulness and good summary of all Swedenborg’s work. We are very
grateful to the publishers of the various editions for their excellent
translation skills and for their kind publishing efforts, particularly the
Swedenborg Society and the Swedenborg Foundation
whose works we based this little booklet on. For brevity
and clarity the section numbers have been omitted, so
to read the details and further content we recommend
you purchase or download the complete two-volume
work from the publishers mentioned above. Enjoy
finding ways to apply this material to your life.
Contact details: www.swedenborg.com.au/contact
A new faith leading to heaven

After death when we come into heaven, our happiness is based on the
relationship between our love and our faith. Our faith consists of the things
we know, understand and accept as true and as good, and in having based
our life on that knowledge. Faith consisting of these truths leads to a new
heaven: the Lord Jesus Christ is God, who came into the world to control
the hells and make his own human nature divine. If he had not done so,
nobody could be saved from the influence of the hells because the power
of hell had become stronger than the power of heaven, which meant that
on earth goodness was threatened by evil to the extent that total
damnation threatened us. But now, those who follow his teachings and
seek and accept his assistance are saved from the hells. God is love itself or
goodness and wisdom itself or truth. God took on a human manifestation
as divine truth ('the Word') to force everything in heaven, hell, and in the
church back into the divine design, and so by means of his human
manifestation, which was divine truth, God removed this pending
damnation and redeemed people and angels from this threat. After living a
life on earth in his human manifestation, he united that divine truth or
wisdom to his divine goodness or love. In this way he returned to the divine
nature that he had had from eternity, together with and in the human
manifestation, which had been glorified (made divine). If the Lord had not
come into the world no one could have been saved from hell. The situation
today is similar. So if the Lord does not come into the world again in the
form of divine truth, which is the Word, no one can be saved. These writings
clearly explain the Word so that it may be understood, accepted and
applied by people. The specifics of faith are to learn and to acknowledge
that there is one God, that the divine Trinity exists within him, and that he
is the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ. To believe in him (the Word, the
divine truth) is a faith that saves. We must not do things that are evil
because these act against God. We must do things that are good — these
are the things which belong to God and come from God. We must do these
things as if we ourselves were doing them, but we must believe that they
come from the Lord working with us and through us.
1. God the Creator
The oneness of God
1. The whole of Sacred Scripture teaches that there is one God.
2. The recognition that God exists and that there is one God flows
universally from God into human souls.
3. As a result, every nation in the whole world that possesses religion and
sound reason acknowledges that God exists and that there is one God.
4. For various reasons, different nations and peoples have had and still
have a diversity of opinions on the nature of that one God.
5. On the basis of many phenomena in the world, human reason is capable
of perceiving and concluding, if it wants to, that God exists and that
there is one God.
6. If there were not one God the universe could not have been created or
maintained.
7. Those who do not acknowledge God cut themselves off from the means
of reaching heaven.
The whole point of what the church teaches is to provide a way to learn
about and know God, therefore to deny the existence of God is to deny
everything having to do with the church. God does not cut people off, but
people cut themselves off by this denial. The church on earth and the
angelic heaven act as a unit, like the inner spiritual and outer physical parts
in each of us act as one unit. God created us in such a way that our inner
self is in the spiritual world and our outer self is in the physical world.
Therefore to make us permanent and everlasting beings, God made us
citizens of both worlds so that the spiritual part of us, which belongs in
heaven, could be planted in the physical part belonging to this world the
way a seed is planted in the ground.
8. Nothing about the church is integrated in people who acknowledge
many gods rather than one.
The underlying divine reality
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.
2. The one God is substance itself and form itself. Angels and people are
substances and forms derived from him. To the extent that they are in
him and he is in them, to that extent they are images and likenesses of
him.
3. The underlying divine reality is intrinsic reality and is also an intrinsic
capacity to become manifest.
4. The intrinsic, underlying divine reality and intrinsic capacity to become
manifest cannot produce anything else divine that is intrinsically real
and has an intrinsic capacity to become manifest. Therefore another
God of the same essence is impossible.
5. The plurality of gods in ancient times, and nowadays as well, has no
other source than a misunderstanding of the underlying divine reality.
The infinity of God, or his immensity and eternity
1. God is infinite because he is intrinsic reality and manifestation, and all
things in the universe have reality and manifestation from him.
2. God is infinite because he existed before the world—before time and
space came into being.
3. Since the world was made, God has existed in space independently of
space, and in time independently of time.
4. God’s infinity in relation to space is called immensity; in relation to time
it is called eternity. Yet although these are related, there is nonetheless
no space in God’s immensity, and no time in his eternity.
5. From many things in the world, enlightened reason can see the infinity
of God.
6. Every created thing is finite. The Infinite is in finite objects the way
something is present in a vessel that receives it; the Infinite is in people
the way something is present in an image of itself.
The divine essence, which is divine love and divine wisdom
1. God is love itself and wisdom itself. These two constitute his essence.
2. Because goodness comes from love and truth comes from wisdom, God
is goodness itself and truth itself.
3. Because God is love itself and wisdom itself, he is life itself in its
essence.
4. Love and wisdom are united in God.
5. The essence of love is loving others who are outside of oneself, wanting
to be one with them, and blessing them from oneself.
6. These essential characteristics of divine love were the reason the
universe was created, and they are the reason it is maintained.
God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence
1. It is divine wisdom, acting on behalf of divine love, that has
omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.
2. We cannot comprehend God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and
omnipresence unless we know what the divine design is, and unless we
learn that God is the divine design, and that he imposed that design on
the universe as a whole and on everything in it as he created it.
3. In the universe and everything in it, God’s omnipotence follows and
works through the laws of its design.
4. God is omniscient; that is, he is aware of, sees, and knows everything
down to the least detail that happens in keeping with the divine design,
and by contrast is aware of, sees, and knows what goes against the
divine design.
5. God is omnipresent in his design from beginning to end.
6. Human beings were created as forms of the divine design.
7. The more we follow the divine design in the way we live, the more we
receive power against evil and falsity from God’s omnipotence, receive
wisdom about goodness and truth from God’s omniscience, and are in
God because of God’s omnipresence.
The creation of the universe
We can only get a fair idea of the creation of the universe if we first perceive
some preliminary global concepts.
There is a spiritual world with angels and spirits, and a physical world where
there are people. Both worlds have a sun. The spiritual sun is pure love from
God who is within that sun. The spiritual sun radiates heat, the essence of
which is love, and light, the essence of which is wisdom, and these have an
effect on people’s wills and intellects. The physical world’s sun is pure fire,
and so its heat and light are dead although these serve as a clothing for
spiritual heat and light and as a device through which spiritual heat and
light reach people. In the spiritual world the heat and the light radiating
from the sun are substantial and are called spiritual. So are all the things in
that world which come about from that heat and light. In the physical world
the heat and the light which 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. In both worlds there are three vertical levels which result in
three angelic heavens, and also in three levels of the human mind which
correspond to the three angelic heavens. Everything else here and there
also has three levels. There is a correspondence between things in the
spiritual world and things in the physical world. There is a design that has
been built into each and every thing in each world.
If we remain ignorant of the ideas above we easily slip into the idea that
the universe was created by nature. 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.
[Swedenborg then describes five of his spiritual experiences - memorable
occurrences - on the topic of the creation of the universe.]

2. The Lord as redeemer

1. Jehovah God came down and took on a human manifestation in order
to redeem people and save them.
2. Jehovah God came down as the divine truth, which is the Word; but he
did not separate the divine goodness from it.
3. In the process of taking on a human manifestation, God followed his
own divine design.
4. The “Son of God” is the human manifestation in which God sent himself
into the world.
5. Through acts of redemption the Lord became justice.
6. Through those same acts the Lord united himself to the Father and the
Father united himself to him.
7. Through this process God became human and a human became God in
one person.
8. When he was being emptied out he was in a state of progress toward
union; when he was being glorified he was in a state of union itself.
9. From now on, no Christians will go to heaven unless they believe in the
Lord God the Saviour.
10. Supplementary material about the state of the church before and after
the Lord’s Coming.
Redemption
1. Redemption was actually a matter of gaining control of the hells,
restructuring the heavens, and by so doing preparing for a new spiritual
church.
2. Without that redemption no human being could have been saved and
no angels could have continued to exist in their state of integrity.
3. The Lord therefore redeemed not only people but also angels.
4. Redemption was something only the Divine could bring about.
5. This redemption could not have happened if God had not come in the
flesh.
6. Suffering on the cross was the final trial the Lord underwent as the
greatest prophet. It was a means of making his human nature divine. It
was not redemption.
7. Believing that the Lord’s suffering on the cross was redemption itself is
a fundamental error, which along with the error about three divine
Persons from eternity, has ruined the whole church to the point that
there is nothing spiritual left in it anymore.

3. The Holy Spirit and divine action

1. The Holy Spirit is the divine truth and also the divine actions and effects
that radiate from the one God, in whom the divine Trinity exists: the
Lord God the Saviour.
2. The divine actions and effects meant by the Holy Spirit are the acts of
reforming and regenerating us. Depending on the outcome of this
reformation and regeneration, the divine actions and effects also
include the acts of renewing us, bringing us to life, sanctifying us, and
making us just; and depending on the outcome of these in turn, the
divine actions and effects also include the acts of purifying us from evils,
forgiving our sins, and ultimately saving us.
3. In respect to the clergy, the divine actions and effects meant by “the
sending of the Holy Spirit” are the acts of enlightening and teaching.
4. The Lord has these powerful effects on those who believe in him.
5. The Lord takes these actions on his own initiative on behalf of the
Father, not the other way around.
6. Our spirits are our minds and whatever comes from them.
Although the Holy Spirit is frequently mentioned in the New Testament, in
the Old Testament we read that the prophets spoke from God’s reality of
being, rather than speaking from the Holy Spirit.
The divine Trinity
1. There is a divine Trinity, which is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
2. These three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are three essential
components of one God. They are one in the way that our soul, our
body, and the things we do are one.
3. This Trinity did not exist before the world was created. It developed
after the world was created, when God became flesh. It came into
existence in the Lord God the Redeemer and Saviour Jesus Christ.
4. At a conceptual level, the idea of a trinity of divine persons from
eternity (meaning before the world was created) is a trinity of gods. This
idea is impossible to wipe out just by orally confessing one God.
5. The apostolic church knew no trinity of persons. The idea was first
developed by the Council of Nicaea. The council introduced the idea
into the Roman Catholic church; and it in turn introduced the idea into
the churches that have since separated from it.
6. The Nicene and Athanasian views of the Trinity led to a faith in three
gods that has perverted the whole Christian church.
7. The result is the abomination of desolation and the affliction such as
will never exist again, which the Lord foretold in Daniel, the Gospels,
and the Book of Revelation.
8. In fact, if the Lord were not building a new heaven and a new church,
the human race would not be preserved.
9. Many absurd, alien, imaginary, and misshapen ideas of God have come
into existence from the Athanasian Creed’s assertion of a trinity of
persons, each of whom is individually God.

4. Sacred Scripture, the Word of the Lord

1. The Sacred Scripture, the Word, is divine truth itself.
2. The Word has a spiritual meaning that has not been known until now.
 (1) What is the spiritual meaning? There is a heavenly divine influence,
a spiritual divine influence, and an earthly divine influence that
emanate from the Lord.
(2) A demonstration that there is a spiritual meaning throughout the
Word and in every part of it is that the Lord spoke in
correspondences when he was in the world. While he was talking
in an earthly way, but he was also talking in a spiritual way.
(3) It is the spiritual meaning that makes the Word divinely inspired
and holy in every word.
(4) The spiritual meaning has been unknown until now; but it was
known to ancient peoples. They also knew about correspondences.
(5) The spiritual meaning is given only to people who have genuine
truths from the Lord.
(6) The Word has amazing qualities because of its spiritual meaning.
3. The Word’s literal meaning is the foundation, the container, and the
structural support for the Word’s spiritual and heavenly meanings.
4. In the literal meaning of the Word, divine truth exists in its
completeness, holiness, and power, including the two deeper meanings
called the spiritual and the heavenly meanings which exist together in
the earthly or literal meaning.
(1) By their correspondence, the precious stones that constituted the
foundations of the New Jerusalem mentioned in the Book of
Revelation mean the truths in the Word’s literal meaning.
(2) The Urim and Thummim on Aaron’s ephod correspond to the things
that are good and true in the Word’s literal meaning.
(3) The precious stones from the Garden of Eden that the king of Tyre
is said to have worn mean the outermost kind of goodness and
truth—the kind found in the Word’s literal meaning.
(4) The curtains, veils, and pillars in the tabernacle represented the
same thing.
(5) The same thing is also meant by the exteriors of the Temple in
Jerusalem.
(6) When the Lord was transfigured he represented the Word in its
glory.
(7) The Nazirites represented the power of the Word in its outermost
form.
 (8) The Word has indescribable power.
5. The teachings of the church have to be drawn from the Word’s literal
meaning and supported by it.
(1) The Word is not understandable without a body of teaching.
(2) A body of teaching has to be drawn from the Word’s literal meaning
and supported by it.
(3) The genuine truth in the Word’s literal meaning, the truth that is
needed for a body of teaching, becomes manifest only to those who
have enlightenment from the Lord.
6. The Word’s literal meaning, the sense of its letter, provides a
connection to the Lord and association with angels.
7. The Word exists throughout the heavens; it is the source of angelic
wisdom.
8. The church is based on the Word; the nature of the church in individuals
depends on their understanding of the Word.
9. Every particular detail in the Word is a marriage between the Lord and
the church, and therefore a marriage between goodness and truth.
10. We may derive heretical ideas from the Word’s literal meaning, but to
confirm them by becoming adamant about those ideas is hurtful.
Many things in the Word are apparent truths; real truths lie hidden
inside them.
Becoming adamant about apparent truths leads to false ideas.
The Word’s literal meaning is a protection for the genuine truths that
lie inside it.
Angel guardians mean the Word’s literal meaning; that is what they
stand for in the Word.
11. While in the world, the Lord fulfilled everything in the Word; by doing
so he became the Word or divine truth even on the last or outermost
level.
12. Before the Word that exists in the world today, there was a Word that
has been lost.
13. Because of the Word, even people who are outside the church and who
do not have the Word have light.
14. If the Word did not exist, no one would know about God, heaven, hell,
or life after death, still less about the Lord.
5. The Ten Commandments explained in both its outer and
inner meanings
1. The Ten Commandments were the holiest thing in the Israelite church.
The text here also contains material about how holy the ark was
considered to be because of the law that was kept inside it.
2. In their literal meaning, the Ten Commandments contain general
principles of faith and life; in their spiritual and heavenly meanings, they
contain absolutely everything.
3. The first commandment: There is to be no other God before me.
4. The second commandment: You are not to take the name of Jehovah
your God in vain, because Jehovah will not hold guiltless someone who
takes his name in vain.
5. The third commandment: Remember the Sabbath day in order to keep
it holy; for six days you will labour and do all your work, but the seventh
day is the Sabbath for Jehovah your God.
6. The fourth commandment: Honour your father and your mother so that
your days will be prolonged and it will be well with you on earth.
7. The fifth commandment: You are not to murder.
8. The sixth commandment: You are not to commit adultery.
9. The seventh commandment: You are not to steal.
10. The eighth commandment: You are not to bear false witness against
your neighbour.
11. The ninth and tenth commandments: You are not to covet your
neighbour’s household; you are not to covet your neighbour’s wife or
his servant or his maid or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your
neighbour’s.
12. The Ten Commandments contain everything about how to love God
and how to love our neighbour.

6. Faith
From the standpoint of time, faith is primary, but from the standpoint of
purpose, goodwill is primary.
1. The faith that saves us is faith in the Lord God our saviour Jesus Christ,
because he is a God who can be seen, in whom is what cannot be seen.
2. Faith is believing that people who live good lives and believe the right
things are saved by the Lord.
The first step toward faith in him is acknowledging that he is the Son of
God.
3. The way we acquire faith is by turning to the Lord, learning truths from
the Word, and living by those truths.
The underlying reality of spiritual faith: -
This will help to understand more clearly what is said further below on
faith, goodwill, free choice, repentance, reformation and regeneration, and
the assignment of spiritual credit or blame.
The basic components of a spiritual faith are:
(1) trust in the Lord God our Saviour Jesus Christ,
(2) confidence that he saves those who live good lives and believe the right
things.
The essential material to build and support this faith is truth from the Word.
This faith results in:
(1) spiritual sight;
(2) harmony among truths;
(3) conviction;
(4) acknowledgment engraved on the mind.
The progressive states of this faith are:
(1) a newborn faith, a growing faith, a mature faith;
(2) faith based on genuine truth, and faith based on things that seem true;
(3) faith based on memory, faith based on reason, faith based on light
radiated from heaven;
(4) earthly faith, spiritual faith, heavenly faith;
(5) faith based on life experiences, and faith based on miracles;
(6) faith that is free and faith that is coerced.
A general overview plus a more specific idea of the form of this faith is
covered off in the very first section of this booklet under the title "New
heavenly faith".
Merely earthly faith is actually a persuasion that pretends to be faith: -
The categories of earthly faith are:
(1) illegitimate faith, in which false beliefs have been mixed with true ones;
(2) promiscuous faith based on truths that have been falsified, and
adulterous faith based on good things that have been contaminated;
(3) closed or blind faith, which is a faith in mystical things that we believe
in, although we do not know whether they are true or false, beyond reason
or contrary to it;
(4) faith, which is faith in many gods;
(5) half-blind faith, which is faith in some other god besides the true one,
or among Christians, faith in someone else besides the Lord God our
Saviour;
(6) hypocritical or pharisee-like faith, which is faith of the mouth but not of
the heart;
(7) imaginary and backwards faith, which presents falsity as truth and
bolsters it with clever argumentation.
4. Having a quantity of truths that are bound together like strands in a
cable elevates and improves our faith.
The truths of faith can be multiplied to infinity.
Truths of faith come together to form structures that are like fascicles
of nerves.
Our faith improves depending on the quantity of truths we have and
how well they fit together.
However numerous these truths of faith are and however divergent
they appear, they are united by the Lord who is the Word and who is
the God of heaven and earth, the God of all flesh, the God of the
vineyard or the church, the God of faith, who is the light itself and the
truth itself and who is eternal life.
5. Faith without charity (goodwill) is not faith. Goodwill without faith is
not goodwill. Neither of them is alive unless it comes from the Lord.
(a) We are able to acquire faith for ourselves.
(b) We are able to acquire goodwill for ourselves.
(c) We are also able to acquire the life within faith and goodwill for
ourselves.
(d) Nevertheless, no faith, no goodwill, and none of the life within faith
or goodwill come from ourselves; instead they come from the Lord
alone.
 The difference between earthly faith and spiritual faith? When we
believe in the Lord, our earthly faith has spiritual faith within it: -
Our faith starts out as something earthly, but as we move toward the Lord
it becomes spiritual; and the same applies to our goodwill. The difference
between earthly and spiritual faith and goodwill is based on there being
two worlds, the physical world and the spiritual world. Each world has a
sun. From each sun emanates heat and light. The heat and light from the
sun of the spiritual world have an intrinsic life in them from the Lord, who
is within that sun. But the heat and light from the sun of the physical world
have no intrinsic life in them; they serve as vessels for the two higher forms
of heat and light, serving to convey that higher heat and light to people.
The heat and light from the sun in the spiritual world are the source of all
that is spiritual, and its heat and that light are themselves spiritual as well,
because they have spirit and life within them. The heat and light from the
sun in the physical world are the source of all physical things. Physical things
in and of themselves have no spirit or life.
Faith relates to light, and goodwill to heat, so if we are in the light and heat
that emanate from the sun of the spiritual world, we have a faith and a
goodwill that are spiritual. If we are limited to the heat and light that
emanate from the sun of the physical world, we are limited to a faith and a
goodwill that are earthly.
Spiritual light lies within physical light as if in a vessel or container, and
spiritual heat lies within physical heat in the same way. Therefore spiritual
faith lies within earthly faith, and spiritual goodwill within earthly goodwill.
The two come together with every step we take as we progress from the
physical world into the spiritual world. We make this progress as we believe
in the Lord, who is the light itself, the way, the truth, and the life, as he
himself teaches.
The more spiritual our faith and our goodwill become, the more we are
drawn away from our self-centeredness. We do not focus on ourselves, on
payment, or on reward; we focus only on the pleasure of perceiving truths
that relate to faith and doing good actions that relate to love. The more our
spirituality increases, the more blissful that pleasure becomes. This process
is the source of our salvation, which is called eternal life.
6. The Lord, goodwill, and faith form a unity in the same way our life, our
will, and our intellect form a unity. If we separate them, each one
crumbles like a pearl that is crushed to powder.
(a) The Lord flows into everyone with all his divine love, all his divine
wisdom, and all his divine life.
(b) Therefore the Lord flows into everyone with the entire essence of
faith and goodwill.
(c) The qualities that flow in from the Lord are received by us according
to our state and form.
(d) If we separate the Lord, goodwill, and faith, however, instead of
being a form that accepts these qualities we are a form that
destroys them.
7. The Lord is goodwill and faith within us. We are goodwill and faith
within the Lord.
(a) Our partnership with God is what gives us salvation and eternal life.
(b) It is impossible for us to have a partnership with God the Father.
What is possible is a partnership with the Lord, and through the
Lord, with God the Father.
(c) Our partnership with the Lord is reciprocal: we are in the Lord and
the Lord is in us.
(d) This reciprocal partnership between the Lord and us comes about
through goodwill and faith.
8. Goodwill and faith come together in good actions.
(a) “Goodwill” is benevolence toward others; “good works” are good
actions that result from benevolence.
(b) Goodwill and faith are transient and exist only in our minds unless,
when an opportunity occurs, they culminate in actions and become
embodied in them.
(c) Goodwill alone does not produce good actions; even less does faith
alone produce them. Good actions are produced by goodwill and
faith together.
9. There is faith that is true, faith that is illegitimate, and faith that is
hypocritical. From its cradle, the Christian church was attacked and torn
apart by schisms and heresies.
(a) There is only one true faith; it is faith in the Lord God our Saviour
Jesus Christ. It exists in people who believe that he is the Son of God,
 that he is the God of heaven and earth, and that he is one with the
Father.
(b) Illegitimate faith is all faith that departs from the one and only true
faith. Illegitimate faith exists in people who climb up some other
way and view the Lord not as God but only as a human being.
(c) Hypocritical faith is no faith at all.
10. With evil people there is no faith.
(d) Evil people have no faith, because evil relates to hell and faith
relates to heaven.
(e) All people in Christianity who are dismissive of the Lord and the
Word have no faith, no matter how morally they behave or how
rationally they speak, teach, or write, even if their subject is faith.

7. Goodwill – Loving Our Neighbour – and Good Actions

1. There are three universal categories of love:
Love for heaven (‘usefulness’ or love for the Lord and for our
neighbour);
Love for the world (love for wealth, possessions, all that please our
senses, beautiful clothes, spacious accommodations, social groups to
belong to);
Love for ourselves (love for respect, glory, fame, status, seeking and
getting high positions and becoming a leader).
(So that the points presented later can be seen clearly (also what is later
said on free choice, reformation and regeneration, etc), we first need
to present the following six points…)
(1) The will and the intellect.
They are two faculties that constitute our life. They are distinct from each
other, yet they are created to be one. When these are married, they are
called “the mind” (which also constitutes our spirit).
Our will is the place in us for all things of goodness, and our intellect is the
place in us for all things related to truth. Everything in the universe—
everything that is in the divine design—relates to goodness and truth.
Likewise everything in us relates to our will and our intellect. Goodness in
us belongs to our will and truth in us belongs to our intellect. In fact, these
two faculties – the will and intellect – are “lives” within us, vessels for
goodness and truth, the places where love and faith exist in us, since love
relates to goodness and faith relates to truth. The will and the intellect
constitute our spirit where our wisdom and intelligence and our life in
general reside. The body is merely an obedient servant. The will and the
intellect become a single mind in the way goodness and truth become one
as in a marriage. Goodness is the underlying reality of a thing and truth is
the resulting manifestation of the thing. Therefore in us our will is the
underlying reality of our life and our intellect is the resulting manifestation
of our life, because the goodness in our will takes shape and presents itself
to be seen in our intellect.
(2) Everything is related to goodness and truth, emanate from God,
and are the source of all things. The divine design is to unite them
as it is in all who are in heaven.
(3) Love in general: -
Love is our very life itself. The nature of our love determines the nature of
our life and of the entire nature of us as a human being. Our dominant or
leading love (what we love above all else) is the love that constitutes us,
and it has many other loves which form part of it and are obedient to it. We
focus on it in each and every thing we do. It is what motivates us. Our
nature is completely shaped by the dominant force in our lives. That force
differentiates us from other people. If we are good, our heaven is created
to accord with it. If we are evil, our hell is created to accord with it. It is our
will, our self, and our nature. It is the underlying reality of our life, it is our
true self. What our love enjoys we experience as good, and what our love
does not enjoy we regard as evil.
(4) Love for ourselves and love for the world.
Love for self is wanting good things for ourselves alone and not wanting
good things for others unless we benefit because we want to look good or
to be liked. Loving people whom we call our own is the same as loving
ourselves, because we look at them as though looking at ourselves,
includes those who praise us, respect us, and look up to us. Love for self is
when we despise our neighbours in comparison with ourselves and if we
think of people as our enemies because they do not favour, revere, or
adore us. We are deeper in this love if we hate and persecute our
neighbours for feeling that way. And we are deeper still in this love if we
have a burning desire for revenge against our neighbours and long for their
destruction, because if we have this nature, we eventually love to be
savage.
Heavenly love is a love for usefulness because it is useful. But if we love
usefulness and good actions for our own sake, then we love our church, our
country, human communities, and the people around us only as our
minions because they serve us, placing them beneath ourselves. The more
we have a heavenly kind of love (when we love actions that are useful and
good and are experiencing heart-felt delight when we do them), the more
we are led by the Lord. This heavenly kind of love is the kind of love the
Lord has; it is the kind of love that comes from him. Our self-centeredness
is nothing but evil, it is our hereditary evil. It is loving ourselves more than
God and loving the world more than heaven. The nature of love for
ourselves is that the more the reins are let out — i.e. the more removed
that external constraints are such as fear of the law and its penalties, fear
of losing our reputation, respect, advantage, position, and life — the more
our love for ourselves rushes on, until it wants to control not the entire
planet, heaven and even God himself. It has no limit or end. This limitless
desire for control lies hidden within all people who are in love with
themselves, although it is not visible to the world as long as the reins and
constraints just mentioned hold them back. They always crave more.
There are two kinds of ruling power: one comes from love for our
neighbour; the other comes from love for ourselves. They are opposite to
each other. If we have ruling power because we love our neighbours, we
want what is good for all. We love nothing more than being useful and
serving others... In this case, the more we are promoted to high positions,
the happier we are, not because of the high positions but because of the
useful things we can then do with a wider scope and greater magnitude.
Such is ruling power in the heavens. But if we have ruling power because
we love ourselves, we want what is good for no one except ourselves... for
our honour and glory. The particular love for ruling power that people have
had stays with them after their life in the world. People who had power
because they loved their neighbour are entrusted with power in the
heavens. People who had ruling power in the world because they loved
themselves are thrown out of office after their life in the world comes to
an end. They are then forced into slavery.
Love for the world is wanting to redirect other people’s wealth to ourselves
with whatever skill we have, using trickery and deception (provided we do
not fear the law or losing our reputation), and have no concern for how our
neighbour is doing. It is putting our heart in riches and letting the world
distract us and steer us away from spiritual love (love for our neighbour)
and heaven.
Yet love for the world is not as opposite to heavenly love as love for
ourselves is. Examples of love for the world can be a love for wealth in order
to be promoted to higher positions; love for honour and high position for
the sake of increasing our wealth; love for wealth for the sake of various
benefits that gratify us; love for wealth for the sake of wealth itself, etc.
Our purpose in gaining the wealth is the use we hope to get out of it, and
this purpose or use determines the quality of the love. The nature of any
love is the nature of the purpose it has; everything else about it serves as a
means.
Love for ourselves and love for the world are completely opposite to love
for the Lord and love for our neighbour. Therefore love for ourselves and
love for the world, as I have just described them, are hellish loves. In fact,
they rule in hell. They also create a hell in us. Love for the Lord, however,
and love for our neighbour are heavenly loves. In fact, they rule in heaven.
They also create a heaven in us.
(5) Our outer and inner selves.
We have been created to be in the spiritual world and the physical world at
the same time. The spiritual world is where angels are. The physical world
is where people are. Because we have been created that way, everyone has
been given an inner level or self so we can be in the spiritual world and an
outer level or self so we can be in the physical world.
The inner and outer self are different in good people than in evil people. In
good people the inner level is in heaven and its light and their outer level is
in the world and its light; and the light of heaven within them illumines the
light of the world. Their inner and outer levels are united like cause and
effect. With evil people, however, their inner level is in hell and its light,
which compared to heaven’s light is pitch dark. The outer level of evil
people can be in the same light that good people are in. Therefore they are
upside-down. This explains how evil people are capable of speaking and
teaching about faith, goodwill, and God, but not from faith, goodwill, and
God the way good people can.
The inner self that is spiritual is actually an angel of heaven. Even while it is
alive in our body, it is in a community with angels, although it does not
realize that. After it is released from the body, it comes to live among those
angels. In people who are spiritual, the inner parts of their mind are actually
raised up toward heaven, because heaven is their predominant focus. In
people who are merely earthly, however, the inner parts of their mind are
turned away from heaven toward the world, because the world is their
predominant focus.
People who have only a general concept of the inner and outer self believe
that the inner self is the part that thinks and wills while the outer self is the
part that speaks and acts, since thinking and willing are internal while
speaking and acting are external. One thing is important to realize,
however. When we are thinking and willing good things in relation to the
Lord and all that is the Lord’s, and when we are thinking and willing them
in relation to our neighbour and all that is our neighbour’s, then our
thinking and willing are coming from an inner self that is spiritual, because
they are coming from true faith and a love for what is good. But when we
have evil thoughts about the Lord and our neighbour and evil intentions
toward them, then our thinking and willing are coming from an inner self
that is hellish, because they are coming from a false faith and a love for
what is evil. So the more we focus on loving the Lord and our neighbour,
the more spiritual our inner self is. From that inner self we think and will...
but the more we focus on loving ourselves and the world, the more our
thinking and willing come from hell, although we speak and act otherwise.
The more our thinking and willing come from heaven, the more our
spiritual self opens and adapts. And the more our thinking and willing come
from the world, not heaven, the more our inner spiritual self closes and our
outer self opens and adapts. This opening is an opening to the world and
this adaptation is an adaptation to the things that are in hell.
People whose inner spiritual selves have opened to heaven and the Lord
are in the light of heaven. They have enlightenment from the Lord and a
resulting intelligence and wisdom. They see truth from the light of truth.
They sense what is good from a love for what is good. People whose inner
spiritual selves have closed, however, do not know what the inner self is.
They do not believe in the Word, life after death, or anything related to
heaven or the church. Because they have a light that is merely earthly, they
believe that nature arises from itself, not from God. They see what is false
as true and sense what is evil as good.
The inner and outer levels discussed here are the inner and outer levels of
our spirit. Our body is only an element added on the outside as a container
for all the above. Our body does nothing on its own— it acts on behalf of
the spirit that is inside it. It is important to know that after our spirit parts
company with our body, it still thinks, wills, speaks, and acts. Thinking and
willing remain our inner level and speaking and acting then become our
outer level.
(6) People who are merely earthly and sense-oriented.
“Sense-oriented people” judge everything on the basis of their physical
senses, not believing anything unless they can see it with their eyes and
touch it with their hands. They are earthly in the lowest way as the inner
levels of their mind that see in heaven’s light are closed to the point where
they see nothing true related to heaven or the church. Their thinking occurs
on an outermost level and not inside where the light is spiritual. People like
this are inwardly opposed to things related to heaven and the church. They
are able to reason sharply and skilfully, because their thinking is so close to
their speech as to be practically in it, and because they attribute all
intelligence solely to the ability to speak from memory. Some of them can
defend whatever they want. They have great skill at defending things that
are false. After they have defended falsities convincingly, they themselves
believe those falsities are true. They base their reasoning and defence on
mistaken impressions from the senses that the public finds captivating and
convincing.
Sense-oriented people are more deceptive and ill-intentioned than others.
Inhabitants of hell are sense-oriented, the deeper the hell, the more sense-
oriented they are. Sense-oriented people do not see anything that is
genuinely true in the light. Instead, on every topic they debate and argue
whether it is so. The educated and the scholarly who are deeply convinced
of falsities — especially people who oppose the truths in the Word — are
more sense-oriented than others, although that is not how they seem to
the world. People who are sense-oriented are the foremost developers of
heresies.
The ancients had a term for people who debate on the basis of sense
impressions alone and speak against genuine truths in the Word and the
church: they called them serpents of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. Unless our thought is lifted above the level of our sense impressions,
we have very little wisdom. Wise people think above the level of sense
impressions. When our thinking rises above sense impressions, it enters a
clearer light and eventually comes into the light of heaven. From this light
we get the awareness of truth that constitutes real intelligence. For wise
people, sense impressions have the lowest priority and are subservient to
things that are deep inside.
There are sense impressions that we have in common with animals and
sense impressions that we do not have in common with animals. The more
we lift our thinking above sense impressions, the more human we are.
Without acknowledging God and living by his commandments, however,
none of us can lift our thinking above sense impressions and see the truths
that relate to the church. It is God who lifts and enlightens us.
2. When the three universal categories of love are prioritized in the right
way they improve us; when they are not prioritized in the right way they
damage us and turn us upside down.
3. All individual members of humankind are the neighbour we are to love,
but in different ways depending on the qualities of goodness they have.
4. The ‘neighbour’ we are to love is humankind collectively, which is one’s
community, great or small, and as a group of communities, which is
one’s country.
5. On an even higher level, the neighbour we are to love is the church, and
on the highest level, our neighbour is the Lord’s kingdom.
6. Loving our neighbour is not in fact loving the person but loving the
goodness that is inside the person.
7. Good will and good actions are two distinct things, which are wishing
people well and treating them well respectively.
8. Goodwill itself is acting justly and faithfully in our position and our work
and with the people with whom we interact.
9. Acts of kindness related to goodwill consist in giving to the poor and
helping the needy, although with prudence.
10. There are obligations that are related to goodwill, some of which are
public, some relate to the household, and some are personal.
11. The recreations related to goodwill are lunches, dinners, and parties.
12. The first step toward goodwill is removing evils; the second step is doing
good things that are useful to our neighbour.
13. As long as we believe that everything good comes from the Lord, we do
not take credit for the things we do as we practice goodwill.
14. When a moral life is at the same time a spiritual life, it is a life of
goodwill.
15. A friendship bond of love that we form with others without considering
their spiritual nature is damaging after death.
16. There are such things as illegitimate goodwill, hypocritical goodwill, and
dead goodwill: -
Genuine, living goodwill is when goodwill and faith jointly focus on the
Lord, since the Lord, goodwill, and faith are the three essential elements
for salvation because then the Lord is in them both. When these three
elements are not united, goodwill is illegitimate, hypocritical, or dead.
Goodwill should be an integral part of faith in the one God, because it is an
earthly goodwill if it is only appended to faith which is not spiritual but an
illegitimate goodwill. Hypocritical goodwill is when people behave
devotedly, piously and prayerfully before God while desiring at heart to be
worshiped themselves, wishing to be adored. Dead goodwill is what people
have when their faith is dead. The nature of the faith determines the nature
of the goodwill, so the faith in people who do no good works is a dead faith.
Faith is also dead in people who do not believe in God or worship idols as
holy. The goodwill people have when they believe that there is no God
other than nature is not illegitimate, hypocritical, or dead, but it is
nonexistent because it is not attached to any faith, and so the term goodwill
does not apply, because goodwill derives its quality from faith.
17. The love bond between evil people is actually a deep mutual hatred: -
Hell’s pleasures are opposite to heaven’s so there is a huge gap between
them. The pleasures of heaven flow down into this gap from above and the
pleasures of hell flow up into it from below. While we are alive in the
physical world we are in the middle of this gap so that we can stay in
balance and in a state of freedom to turn ourselves toward heaven or
toward hell. In their outer selves, evil people simulate morality in order to
expand their social network and explore where a potential exists for
enjoying the pleasures that they love and that set their inner selves on fire.
The only thing holding them back and limiting their actions is fear of the
law and fear for their reputation and their life. This is the nature of the
friendship that evil people extend to anyone. The friendship between
blatantly evil people, such as thieves, is like family, as long as their minds
have come together to target something to steal. During that time they kiss
each other like kin and enjoy each other’s company while plotting someone
else’s ruin. But deep inside themselves they all regard their companions as
their enemies. Clever thieves see this enmity in their companions and are
afraid of it. There is no friendship between them, instead there is a deep
hatred.
18. The connection between loving God and loving our neighbour: -
The Ten Commandments contain everything about how to love God and
how to love our neighbour. The first tablet covers all aspects of loving God.
The second tablet covers all aspects of loving our neighbour. The first five
of its commandments relate to our behaviour, or what are called our
“works.” Its other two commandments relate to our will and to the origins
of goodwill: they tell us that we should not covet what our neighbours have,
and that by not doing so, we have their well-being in mind. In people who
have goodwill the two tablets are connected. Loving God and loving our
neighbour are connected. God flows into our concepts of him and brings
us true acknowledgment of him. He also flows into us and brings us his love
for people. If we accept only the first inflow but not the second, we receive
that inflow with our intellect but not our will. If we accept both types of
inflow we receive the inflow with our will and then our intellect—that is,
with our whole mind. We then develop an inner acknowledgment of God
that brings our concepts of God to life. Goodwill makes the connection,
because God loves every one of us but cannot directly benefit us; he can
benefit us only indirectly through each other. For this reason he inspires us
with his love, just as he inspires parents with love for their children. If we
receive this love, we become connected to God and we love our neighbour
out of love for God. Our love for God makes us willing and able to love our
neighbour.

8. Free Choice
1. The precepts and dogmas of the church of today regarding human free
choice.
We have free choice in spiritual matters. We need to believe in God, turn
ourselves around, live according to the precepts of the Word, fight against
the lusts of our flesh, and prepare ourselves as new creatures. Yet the
church of today [written 1770] is in fact headed in the opposite direction.
It casts the idea of free choice out of its sanctuaries, as is clear from the
following teachings taken from the book called the Formula of Concord—a
book Lutherans swear to observe. The following statements were copied
from the Formula of Concord in the Leipzig edition of 1756: “… because of
our corrupt powers and depraved nature, our earthly free choice is active
and effective only in areas that are displeasing and hostile to God... We
believe that in spiritual and divine matters, the mind, heart, and will of
unreborn human beings are entirely unable to understand, believe,
comprehend, think, will, start, finish, enact, work, or cooperate through
their own natural powers… Some church fathers and more recent
theologians say, ‘God draws, but he draws the willing,’ meaning that our
will plays some role in our conversion. But this does not square with sound
teachings, which confirm that human free choice plays no role in
conversion… Conversion is entirely the work, gift, and product of the Holy
Spirit, which brings it about and develops it by its own strength and power
through the Word in our mind, heart, and will, as if we were a passive
subject. We do nothing for the process; we only experience it… We have
nothing to contribute to our own conversion…” (etc).
2. The fact that two trees—the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil [Genesis 2:9]—were placed in the Garden of Eden
means that free choice in spiritual matters has been granted to
humankind.
3. We are not life, but we are vessels for receiving life from God.
4. As long as we are alive in this world, we are held midway between
heaven and hell and kept in spiritual equilibrium there, which is
freedom of choice.
5. The fact that evil is an option available to everyone’s inner self makes it
obvious that we have free choice in spiritual matters.
6. If we had no free choice in spiritual matters, the Word would be useless
and therefore the church would be nothing.
7. If we had no free choice in spiritual matters, there would be nothing in
us that would allow us to forge a partnership with the Lord, and
therefore there would be no ascribing of goodness to us, only mere
predestination, which is detestable.
Predestination is a horrible notion, an offspring of the faith of today’s
church, born from the belief that we are absolutely powerless and have no
choice in spiritual matters. It arises from that belief and notions that our
conversion to God is more or less passive. In other such teachings it is said
that we are chosen by the pure grace of God exclusive of any human
action… and that our being chosen takes place where and when God
wants—it is entirely up to him… It used to seem incredible to me that any
Christian could ever come to such a deranged conclusion, let alone spread
it around by word of mouth or bring it to light by publication; and I refused
to believe it even though such a conclusion was in fact drawn by a select
group of clergy at the Synod of Dort in Holland, and was afterward written
out in a careful hand and distributed to the public… The belief that God
predestines people to hell is savage.
8. If we had no free choice in spiritual matters, God would be the cause of
evil, and we could not be credited with goodwill or faith.
9. Every spiritual gift the church has to offer that comes to us in freedom
and that we freely accept stays with us; what comes to us in other ways
does not.
10. Although our will and intellect exist in this state of free choice, the doing
of evil is forbidden by law in both worlds, the spiritual and the earthly,
since otherwise society in both realms would perish.
11. If we did lack free choice in spiritual matters, then in a single day
everyone on the whole planet could be induced to believe in the Lord;
but in fact this cannot happen, because what we do not accept through
our free choice does not stay with us. Miracles are not happening today
 because they are coercive; they take away our free choice in spiritual
matters.

9. Repentance
1. Repentance is the beginning of the church within us: -
The extended community that is known as the church consists of all the
people who have the church within them. The church takes hold in us when
we are regenerated, and we are all regenerated when we abstain from
things that are evil and sinful and run away from them… Acts of repentance
are the things that actually produce the church within us. Acts of
repentance include any and all actions that result in our not willing, and
consequently not doing, evil things that are sins against God. Before
repentance, we stand outside regeneration… When the thought of eternal
salvation penetrates our will, however, then it is truly inside us. The will is
the real self, because it is where our love dwells; our thoughts are outside
us, unless they come from our will, in which case our will and our thought
act as one, and together make us who we are… For repentance to be
genuine and effective within us, it has to be done both by our will and by
thinking that comes from our will. It cannot be done by thought alone.
Therefore it has to be a matter of actions, and not of words alone.
2. The “contrition”* that is nowadays said to precede faith and to be
followed by the consolation of the Gospel is not repentance.
[*contrition: from Latin contritus 'ground to pieces', crushed by guilt ]
3. By itself, an oral confession that we are sinners is not repentance.
4. From birth we have a tendency toward evils of every kind. Unless we at
least partly remove them through repentance, we remain in them, and
if we remain in them we cannot be saved.
What “fulfilling the law” really means. There is a saying that no one can
fulfill the law, especially since someone who breaks one of the Ten
Commandments breaks them all [Matthew 5:19; James 2:10–11]. But this
formulaic saying does not mean what it seems to. The proper way to
understand it is that people who purposely or deliberately behave in a way
that is contrary to one commandment in effect behave contrary to the rest,
because doing something against one commandment purposely and
deliberately is the same as completely denying that that behaviour is sinful
and rejecting any argument to the contrary. And people who thus deny and
reject the very idea of sin do not care whether any given act is labelled a
sin or not. This is the type of resolve developed by people who do not want
to hear anything about repentance. People who, through repentance, have
laid aside some evils that are sins, though, develop a resolve to believe in
the Lord and to love their neighbour. They are held by the Lord in a
resolution to abstain from many other things as well. Therefore if it
happens that because they did not realize what was going on or because
they were overwhelmed by desire, they commit a sin, it is not held against
them. It was not something they had planned to do, and they do not
support what they did.
5. Having a concept of sin and then looking for sin in ourselves is the
beginning of repentance.
6. Active repentance is examining ourselves, recognizing and admitting
our sins, praying to the Lord, and beginning a new life.
7. True repentance is examining not only the actions of our life but also
the intentions of our will.
8. Repentance is also practiced by those who do not examine themselves
but nevertheless stop doing evils because evils are sinful; this kind of
repentance is done by people who do acts of goodwill as a religious
practice.
9. We need to make our confession before the Lord God the Saviour, and
also to beg for his help and power in resisting evils.
10. Active repentance is easy for people who have done it a few times;
those who have not done it, however, experience inner resistance to it.
11. Those who have never practiced repentance or looked at or studied
themselves eventually do not even know what damnable evil or saving
goodness is.

10. Reformation and Regeneration

1. Unless we are born again and created anew, so to speak, we cannot
enter the kingdom of God.
2. The Lord alone generates or creates us anew, provided we cooperate;
he uses both goodwill and faith as means.
3. Because we have all been redeemed, we are all capable of being
regenerated, each of us in a way that suits the state we are in.
To clarify, I need first to say something about redemption. The Lord came
into the world for two main reasons: to move hell away from both angels
and people; and to glorify his own human nature. Before the Lord’s Coming,
hell had grown so much that it was assaulting the angels of heaven. By
placing itself between heaven and the world, hell had also become able to
intercept the communication between the Lord and human beings on
earth; as a result, no divine truth or goodness from the Lord was able to get
through to human beings. A total damnation threatened the entire human
race, and the angels of heaven would not have been able to maintain their
integrity for long either.
In order to move hell out of the way and to remove the impending threat
of total damnation, the Lord came into the world, relocated hell, brought it
under control, and made heaven accessible again, so that he would be able
to be present among people on earth and regenerate and save those who
were living according to his commandments. All who are regenerated are
saved. This is what is meant by the statement in the heading that because
we are all redeemed, we are all capable of being regenerated. And because
being regenerated is the same thing as being saved, we are all also capable
of being saved.
Therefore the teaching of the church that without the Lord’s Coming no
one could have been saved should be taken to mean that without the Lord’s
Coming no one could have been regenerated.
As for the second purpose for which the Lord came into the world—to
glorify his human manifestation—he did this in order to become the
Redeemer, the Regenerator, and the Saviour to eternity. There is a belief
that because the Lord carried out a redemption while he was in the world,
therefore we have all already been redeemed. We should not believe that.
We should believe instead that forevermore he redeems people who
believe in him and do what he says. On this topic, see further in the chapter
on redemption.
The reason why the heading asserts that we are capable of being
regenerated in a way that suits the state we are in is that the uneducated,
for example, are regenerated in a different way than the educated. People
with different interests are regenerated in different ways. People who are
in different lines of work are regenerated in different ways. People who
study the outer meanings of the Word are regenerated in a different way
than those who study its inner meanings. Those who inherited an earthly
goodness from their parents are regenerated in a different way than those
who inherited evil from their parents. People who have become heavily
involved from an early age in the pointless pursuits of this world are
regenerated in a different way than people who have discontinued those
activities, whether they stopped them sooner or later in their lives. Briefly
put, people who constitute the Lord’s outer church are regenerated in a
different way than people who constitute his inner church. The variety is in
fact infinite, just like the variety of faces and minds. Despite the variety,
however, absolutely all of us are capable of being regenerated and saved
in a way that suits the state we are in.
All people who have been regenerated go to the heavens. There are three
heavens: the highest, the middle, and the lowest. If we acquire love for the
Lord as a result of our regeneration, we come into the highest heaven. If
we acquire love for our neighbour, we come into the middle heaven. If we
practice only an outer goodwill and acknowledge the Lord as God the
Redeemer and Saviour, we come into the lowest heaven. All such people
are saved, but in different ways.
The reason why all are capable of being regenerated and saved is that the
Lord is present with, and brings his divine goodness and truth to, every
human being. This is the source of everyone’s life and everyone’s faculty of
understanding and will and also everyone’s free choice in spiritual matters.
No human being is lacking these attributes. Everyone has also been given
means that teach commandments concerning good and evil and the idea
that there is a God. Christians find these teachings in the Word; non-
Christians find them in whichever religion they are in. From this it follows
that everyone is capable of being saved. It is our own fault, not the Lord’s
fault, if we are not saved. It is our fault because we have not cooperated.
The chapter on redemption showed that the Lord’s redemption and his
suffering on the cross were two distinct things, and they should not in any
way be confused with each other. That chapter also taught that both
redemption and the suffering on the cross allowed the Lord to take on the
power to regenerate and save people.
The gospel means the good news that we can be regenerated and therefore
saved. This would not have been possible if the Lord had not brought about
redemption, that is, if he had not taken power away from hell through
battles against it and victories over it, and if he had not glorified his human
manifestation, that is, made it divine.
The principal teaching of the Word concerns our regeneration through
spiritually washing away evils and exercising goodwill. The Ten
Commandments are the starting point of our reformation.
4. Regeneration progresses analogously to the way we are conceived,
carried in the womb, born, and brought up.
5. The first phase in our being generated anew is called “reformation”; it
has to do with our intellect. The second phase is called “regeneration”;
it has to do with our will and then our intellect.
First it is important for you to know the difference between the intellect
and the will [see Chapter 7 section (1) above].
The evils we are born with are in the will that is part of our earthly self; this
earthly will puts pressure on the intellect to agree with it and to have
thoughts that harmonize with its desires. Therefore if we are to be
regenerated, this regeneration has to happen by means of our intellect as
an intermediate cause using pieces of information that our intellect
receives, from our parents and teachers, from reading the Word, listening
to discourses, reading books, and having conversations. The things that our
intellect receives as a result are called truths. Therefore to say that we are
reformed by means of our intellect is the same as saying that we are
reformed by means of truths that our intellect receives. Truths teach us
who to believe, what to believe, and also what to do and what to will. After
all, whatever we do, we do from our will and in accordance with our
understanding.
Our intellect teaches us what is evil and what is good and that it is possible
for us to will good rather than evil tendencies our will is born with, so it
follows that our intellect is the means by which we have to be reformed.
During our reformation phase, we come to mentally see and admit that evil
is evil and goodness is good, and make the decision to choose what is good.
When we actually try to abstain from evil and do what is good, the phase
called our regeneration begins.
To enable us to see intellectually what is possible for us to choose, we have
been granted the ability to lift our intellect almost all the way into the light
enjoyed by the angels in heaven. This lifting allows us to see what we ought
to will and what we ought to do in order to be successful during our time
in this world and so to be blessed with happiness after death to eternity.
We become successful if we gain wisdom for ourselves and keep our will
obedient to that wisdom.
We become unsuccessful and unhappy, however, if we devote our intellect
to obeying our will. The reason for this is that from the time we are born,
our will has a tendency toward evils of various kinds, including horrendous
evils. If our will was not restrained by our intellect and instead we let it run
free, we would quickly fall into criminal behaviour; because of our inborn
savage animal nature, for purely selfish reasons we would wipe out and
butcher everyone and anyone who failed to show us favour or indulge our
lusts.
If our intellect were incapable of being perfected on its own, and of then
perfecting our will, we would not be human at all; we would be animals. If
there were no separation between our will and our intellect and if the
intellect could not rise above the will, we would be unable either to think
or to say what we thought. We would not be able to act in reasonable ways;
we would act on instinct alone. We would be completely incapable of
knowing anything about God or seeing him through what we knew; as a
result, we would be unable to form a partnership with him and live forever.
We have thoughts and we will things as if we did so on our own. This feeling
that we think and will on our own is what allows for a reciprocal partnership
with the Lord. No partnership can exist without reciprocation. No
partnership would exist between an active element and a responsive
element if there were no point of contact between them. God alone is an
active force. We allow ourselves to experience that active force and we
cooperate with it to all appearances as if we were acting on our own,
although inwardly we are actually acting from God.
So the first step in our being generated anew is to receive truths in our
intellect. The second step is to intend to put those truths into practice, so
that eventually they are actually put into practice.
No one can justifiably be called a “reformed” person solely on the basis of
his or her knowledge of truth. A truly reformed person is someone who
desires the truth because it is true. This desire attaches itself to our will,
and if it persists, forges a partnership between our will and our intellect.
Then our regeneration begins as described later below.
But here is what some people are like when their intellect has been lifted
up but the love in their will has not. People in this state shine intellectually
as if they possessed wisdom and yet their will is contrary to wisdom. Some
who are in this state can masquerade as angels of light, both among people
in this world and, after they die, among angels of heaven. After a brief
examination there, however, their clothes are removed and they are
thrown out naked. They cannot be detected in this world, because here
their spirit is not visible; it is covered over with a mask, like the one a comic
actor wears on stage. The fact that they can use their faces and words to
masquerade as angels of light is both a result and a sign of the fact that
they can lift their intellect almost all the way into angelic wisdom, above
the love in their will, as I mentioned before. Since our inner and our outer
self can go in opposite directions like this, and because our body is cast off
but our spirit remains, it is clear then that a dark spirit can live behind a
bright face, and a raging spirit can lie behind soothing words. Therefore it
is important to know people for what they are, not by their mouth but by
their heart—that is, not from what they say but from what they do.
6. Our inner self has to be reformed first; our outer self is then reformed
through our inner self. This is how we are regenerated.
Our inner self has to be reformed first and our outer self is then reformed
through our inner self. Our inner self is our will, which is the source of the
thoughts we have when we are left to ourselves, such as when we are at
home. Our outer self is what we do and say in company or in public. Our
inner self, then, is goodwill and faith— goodwill that belongs to our will,
and faith that occupies our thoughts. Before we undergo regeneration,
goodwill and faith constitute our earthly self, which is divided into an inner
and an outer level. This is clear from the fact that when in company or in
public we are not allowed to act the way we do when left to ourselves at
home. What causes the split into an inner and outer level is that civil law
prescribes punishments for those who do evil things and rewards for those
who do good things. Since no one wants to be punished and everyone
wants to be rewarded, we therefore force ourselves to create an outer self
that is separate from our inner self. The reward may take the form of
wealth or a good reputation; we achieve neither one unless we live
according to the law. This is why morality and benevolence are practiced
outwardly, even by people who have no morality or benevolence inwardly.
This is the origin of all hypocrisy, flattery, and pretence.
As for the earthly self being split into two levels, this is an actual division of
both will and thought. Every action that we take originates in our will; every
word we say originates in our thought. Below our first earthly will, we
ourselves create a second will and a second thought process, which also
belong to our earthly self. The will that we create ourselves could be called
our bodily will, because it drives the body to behave in moral ways. The
thought process that we create ourselves could be called lung-related
thought, because it drives our lips and tongue to say things that show a
good understanding. Behind this self-made thought and will lies the inner
earthly self.
Now, about the nature of the inner earthly self that we are born with. Its
will has a tendency toward evils of every kind and therefore its thinking has
a tendency toward falsities of every kind. This inner self, then, is what needs
to be regenerated. If it is not regenerated, it harbours hatred toward
everything related to goodwill and anger at everything related to faith. It
follows, then, that our inner earthly self must be regenerated first, and our
outer self must then be regenerated through our inner self. This sequence
follows the divine design. To regenerate our inner self through our outer
self would go contrary to the divine design, because the inner self acts as
the soul of the outer self, not only in a general way but in every detail. The
inner self is present in everything we say, without our even realizing it.
Every created thing in the world, both animate and inanimate, has an inner
level and an outer level. The one level does not exist in the absence of the
other, any more than an effect can exist without a cause. Every created
thing is considered valuable if it is inwardly good, and worthless if it is
inwardly bad, even where inner badness lies within outer goodness. Every
wise person in the world and every angel in heaven evaluates people and
things in this way.
In our world, the inside is sometimes valued highly on the basis of what is
outside, but only by people who themselves have no inner goodness and
who therefore judge things by appearances. This is not how it works in
heaven, however. The body that can be turned this way and that around
the spirit and can be bent from evil to good is removed by death, and then
only the inner self remains, which constitutes the spirit. Then even from far
away such people look like a snake that has shed its skin, or rotten wood
whose shiny bark has been removed.
For those who have been regenerated, their inner level is good and their
outer level, which appears to be like anyone else’s, is actually as different
from that of the people just mentioned as heaven is from hell, since it has
a soul of goodness inside. After death it means nothing any more whether
people in this world were of high rank and lived in a mansion and walked
around with an entourage, or lived in a hut and were waited on by a child.
It does not matter if they were an archbishop or a shepherd tending a few
sheep in the woods. What is on the outside derives its value from what is
on the inside and not the other way around.
7. Once our inner self is reformed, a battle develops between it and our
outer self; whichever self wins will control the other self.
8. When we have been regenerated, we have a new will and a new
intellect.
9. People who have been regenerated are in fellowship with the angels of
heaven; people who have not been regenerated are in fellowship with
the spirits of hell.
10. The more we are regenerated, the more our sins are laid aside; this
relocating of them is the “forgiving of sins.”
11. Regeneration would be impossible without free choice in spiritual
matters.
12. Regeneration is not possible without the truths that shape faith and are
joined with goodwill.

11. Attributing Spiritual Credit or Blame

1. The faith of the church of today, which is claimed to be the sole thing
that makes us just, and the belief that Christ’s merit is assigned to us
amount to the same thing.
2. The concept of assigning that is part of the faith of today has a
doubleness to it: there is an assigning of Christ’s merit, and there is an
assigning of salvation as a result.
3. The concept of a faith that assigns us the merit and justice of Christ the
Redeemer first surfaced in the decrees of the Council of Nicaea
concerning three divine persons from eternity; from that time to the
present this faith has been accepted by the entire Christian world.
4. The concept of a faith that assigns the merit of Christ was completely
unknown in the apostolic church that existed before the Council of
Nicaea; and nothing in the Word conveys that concept either.
5. The merit and justice of Christ cannot be assigned to anyone else.
6. There is an assigning of spiritual credit, but it is based on whether our
actions have been good or evil.
7. There is no way in which we can simultaneously hold the views of the
new church and the views of the former church on faith and the
assignment of spiritual credit; if we did hold both these views at once,
they would collide and cause so much conflict that everything related
to the church would be destroyed in us.
8. The Lord ascribes goodness to everyone; hell ascribes evil to everyone.
9. It is what our faith is united to that determines the verdict we receive.
If we have a true faith that is united to goodness, the verdict is eternal
life; if we have a faith that is united to evil, the verdict is eternal death.
10. No spiritual credit or blame is assigned to us on the basis of what we
think; it is assigned only on the basis of what we will.

12. Baptism
1. Without knowing that the Word has a spiritual meaning, no one can
know what the two sacraments (baptism and the Holy Supper) entail
and what they do for us.
2. The washing called baptism means a spiritual washing, which is the
process of being purified from evils and falsities and therefore the
process of being regenerated.
3. Baptism was instituted as a replacement for circumcision because
circumcision of the foreskin symbolized circumcision of the heart; the
intent was to create an internal church to replace the external church,
 which as a whole and in every detail was an allegory of that internal
church.
4. The first function of baptism is to bring people into the Christian church
and at the same time to bring them into the company of Christians in
the spiritual world.
5. The second function (of baptism) is for Christians to know and
acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Saviour, and to
follow him.
6. The third function of baptism, and its ultimate purpose, is to lead us to
be regenerated.
7. The baptism of John prepared the way so that the underlying reality of
God could descend into the world and bring about redemption.

13. The Holy Supper

1. Without knowing about the correspondences of physical things with
spiritual things, no one can know the functions and benefits of the Holy
Supper.
2. When we know correspondences, we realize what “the Lord’s flesh”
and “the Lord’s blood” mean; we see that they mean the same thing as
“bread” and “wine” do. That is, “the Lord’s flesh” and “bread” mean the
divine goodness that comes from his love and also all the goodness
related to goodwill, and “the Lord’s blood” and “wine” mean the divine
truth that comes from his wisdom and also all the truth related to faith;
“eating” them means making them our own.
3. Understanding what has just been presented makes it possible to see
that the Holy Supper includes all the qualities of the church and all the
qualities of heaven, both generally and specifically.
4. The Lord himself and his redemption are fully present in the Holy
Supper.
5. The Lord is present and opens heaven to those who approach the Holy
Supper worthily; he is also present with those who approach it
unworthily, but he does not open heaven to them. Therefore as
baptism brings us into the church, so the Holy Supper brings us into
heaven.
6. We come forward worthily to take the Holy Supper when we have faith
in the Lord and goodwill toward our neighbour—that is, when we have
been regenerated.
7. When we come forward worthily to take the Holy Supper, we are in the
Lord and the Lord is in us; therefore through the Holy Supper we enter
into a partnership with the Lord.
8. When we come forward worthily to take it, the Holy Supper functions
as God’s signature and seal confirming that we have been adopted as
his children.

14. Close of the Age; Coming of the Lord; the New Church
1. The “close of the age” means the end of the church, when its time is
over.
2. Today the church is at its end; the Lord foretold and described this
event in the Gospels and in the Book of Revelation.
3. This, the Christian church’s final hour, is the same kind of night in which
the former churches came to an end.
4. After this night comes the morning, which is the Lord’s Coming.
5. The Lord’s Coming is not his coming to destroy the visible heaven and
the inhabitable earth and to create a new heaven and a new earth, as
many have supposed because they have not understood the Word’s
spiritual meaning.
6. The purpose of this coming of the Lord—his Second Coming—is to
separate the evil from the good, to save those both past and present
who believe in him, and to form them into a new angelic heaven and a
new church on earth; if he did not do this, “no flesh would be saved”
(Matthew 24:22).
7. This Second Coming of the Lord is not taking place in person but in the
Word, since the Word is from him and therefore he is the Word.
8. This Second Coming of the Lord is taking place by means of someone to
whom the Lord has manifested himself in person and whom he has
filled with his spirit so that that individual can present the teachings of
the new church on the Lord’s behalf through the agency of the Word.
9. “The new heaven” and “the new Jerusalem” in the Book of Revelation
Chapter 21 mean this Second Coming of the Lord.
10. This new church is the crown of all the churches that have ever existed
on this planet.

Additional Material
The spiritual world
1. The nature of the spiritual world
The work Heaven and Hell describes many things about the spiritual world,
because every human being comes into that world after death. That work
also covers the states people go through there.
We live on after death, because we are born human, created in the image
of God, and because the Lord teaches us this in his Word. We are still
human beings after we die—so much so that we do not realize we are not
still in the physical world. As we used to in the world, we see, hear, speak,
walk, run, sit, lie down, sleep, wake up, eat, drink, enjoy making love to our
spouse. Briefly put, we are still human in every way. Our death is not the
extinction of our life but a continuation of it. Death is just a transition.
We are still human beings after we die, even though we are no longer
visible to the physical eyes of people still in the world. This is clear from the
Lord himself, who showed that he was still human by touching people and
eating things; yet he also disappeared from before their eyes. But who
would think that the Lord stopped being human just because he
disappeared? People were able to see the Lord because the eyes of their
spirit were opened at the time. When the eyes of our spirit are opened,
things that are in the spiritual world appear to us just as clearly as things
that are in the physical world. The difference between people in the
physical world and people in the spiritual world is that people in the
spiritual world are clothed in a substantial body, whereas people in the
physical world are clothed in a material body that has a substantial body
inside it. Substantial people see other substantial people just as clearly as
physical people see other physical people. Because of the difference
between what is material (physical) and what is substantial, however,
substantial people cannot see physical people and physical people cannot
see substantial people.
From eyewitness experience of many years now, I can pass on to you that,
just as in the physical world, in the spiritual world there are landmasses,
plains and valleys, mountains and hills, springs and streams; there are parks
and gardens, woods and forests. There are cities there, with mansions and
homes. There are also written documents and books; jobs and businesses;
gold, silver, and precious stones. To put it briefly, that world contains every
single thing that exists in the physical world, although in heaven those
things are immensely more perfect. The main difference, though, is that
everything that comes into view in the spiritual world, such as houses,
gardens, food, and so on, is created in a moment by the Lord. The things in
that world are created to correspond with what is inside the angels and
spirits, namely, their feelings and thoughts. The living things that come into
view in the physical world, on the other hand, come forth from some kind
of seed and grow.
In the spiritual world, the state of every race and people in general and of
each individual in particular depends on their acknowledgment and
worship of God. All those who acknowledge God at heart, and from now
on, who acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as God the Redeemer and
Saviour, are in heaven.
2. to 12. Various people, nations, and faiths in the spiritual world.
[Swedenborg was able to meet theologians, view nations, and
understand faiths when he was present in the spiritual world.]
www.swedenborg.com.au