1. Survey of Teachings of the New Church Meant by the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation

[Author’s Preface]

AFTER publishing, within the span of a few years, several larger and smaller works on the New Jerusalem (which means the new church that the Lord is going to establish), and after unveiling the Book of Revelation, I resolved to publish and bring to light the teachings of the [new] church in their fullness, and thus to present a body of teaching that was whole. But because this work was going to take several years, I developed a plan to publish an outline of it, to give people an initial, general picture of this church and its teachings. When a general overview precedes, all the details that follow, of however wide a range, stand forth in a clear light, because they each have their own place within the overall structure alongside things of the same type.

This briefing does not include detailed argumentation; it is shared as advance notice, because the points it contains will be fully demonstrated in the work itself.

First, however, I must present the teachings concerning justification as they exist today, in order to highlight the differences between the tenets of today’s church and those of the new church.

50. Goodwill cannot be united to the faith of the modern-day church; there is no marriage there that could give birth to a good work. This is because the assigning of Christ’s merit is thought to do everything for us. It is thought to forgive our crimes, to make us just, to regenerate us, to sanctify us, and to give us salvation and the life of heaven — and all for free with no effort on our part. If this is true, though, what is goodwill and what is its supposed marriage with faith? It is pointless and meaningless. What is goodwill but an accessory or an adjunct to the assigning of Christ’s merit and to the process whereby we are made just? Goodwill is good for nothing.

Furthermore, a faith based on the idea that there are three gods is wrong, as I have shown above (see §§39, 40). How can true goodwill have a relationship with a wrongheaded faith?

There are two reasons people give for believing that the modern-day faith has no bond with goodwill. One is that they describe this faith as spiritual in nature, but they see goodwill as merely earthly and moral in nature; and in their opinion no relationship is possible between what is spiritual and what is earthly. The second reason they give is to keep anything that comes from ourselves, and therefore any desire for reward, from becoming mixed up with our faith, since faith is the only thing that saves us.

It is in fact true that there is no bond between goodwill and that faith; but there is a bond between goodwill and the new faith, as described in §§116, 117.

109. The notion that Christ’s righteousness or merit is assigned to us permeates the entire theological system in today’s Protestant Christian world. It is because of this assigning that our faith (which Protestant Christianity takes to be the sole means of being saved) can be referred to as our righteousness before God; see §11 d. The assigning that happens as a result of our faith clothes us with the gifts of righteousness, much as a newly crowned monarch is adorned with royal insignia.

In reality, however, this assigning accomplishes nothing if all it involves is that we are called righteous. It does no work within us; it only flows into our ears, unless this assigning of righteousness includes an actual transfer of righteousness to us through some process of its being shared with us and incorporated into us. This conclusion follows from the list of things that are claimed to be the effects of this assigning: our sins are forgiven, and we are regenerated, renewed, sanctified, and therefore saved. This claim is clearer still from the fact that Christ is said to dwell in us and the Holy Spirit is said to work in us as a result of that faith; and therefore we are not only considered to be righteous but actually are righteous. It is not just the gifts of God that reside in the reborn, but because of their faith, Christ too and in fact the entire holy Trinity dwells in them as his temple; see §15 l. Both we as people and the works we do should be called, and should be, completely righteous; see §14 e.

From these points it undoubtedly follows that “the assigning of Christ’s righteousness” must mean an actual transfer of righteousness to us through some process of its being incorporated into us, through which we become a partaker in it.

Now, because this concept of assigning is the root, the start, and the foundation of faith and of all the work faith does for our salvation, and because it is therefore the sanctuary and shrine at the center of all Christian church buildings today, it is important to add as an appendix [to this work] an examination of this notion of assigning, presented point by point as follows.

1. After we die we are all assigned either blame for the evil or else credit for the goodness to which we have devoted ourselves.

2. It is impossible to incorporate one person’s goodness into another person.

3. Given that this is impossible, it is an imaginary faith to believe that Christ’s righteousness or merit is assigned to or transferred into us.