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.

96. Brief Analysis

The scriptural quotation just above is what the one who sat on the throne, that is, the Lord, said to John when John saw the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. (The New Jerusalem means the new church, as the next point will demonstrate [§§99– 101].)

The reason why the falsities in the tenets of faith of the modern-day church have to be examined and rejected first before the truths in the tenets of the new church are revealed and accepted is that the two systems do not agree at any point or at any time. The tenets of the modern-day church are built on faith as their foundation, and yet no one knows whether anything essential to the church lies within that faith or not. The essential elements of the church, which are things that unite themselves to a faith in one God, are goodwill, good works, repentance, and a life in accordance with divine laws. Because these four, together with faith, affect and move both our will and our thoughts, they unite us to the Lord and the Lord to us. Since none of these essential elements plays any part in the faith espoused by the modern-day church at the moment when that faith comes into us — the moment referred to as “the act of justification” — it is completely impossible to know whether that faith is in us or not. Therefore it cannot even be known whether that faith is anything real or is just an idea. We are told that in the moment [of acquiring faith] we are like a stone or a block of wood and that when it comes to receiving faith, we are entirely unable to will, think, cooperate, or adapt or accommodate ourselves to it; see §15 c, d. None of us can even guess, then, let alone know, whether that faith exists within us or not. We do not know whether it is like a flower in a painting we own or like a flower in a field inside us. We do not know whether it is like a bird flying past us or like a bird nesting in us. We ask what signs and indications might lead us to the answers to these questions. The reply is that we may know this from the goodwill, good works, repentance, and following of the law that occur in us once we have faith. We have nevertheless also been told that there is no bond whatever between faith and these things. I leave it to the wise to investigate whether a lack of a bond can be a sign that testifies to anything! For example, our faith (we are told) is not preserved or maintained by the actions just listed; see §12 l, m.

The conclusion to be drawn is that nothing of the church has anything to do with the modern-day faith. Therefore the modern-day faith is not indeed anything; it is just a notion that there is such a thing. Given that this is the nature of that faith, it deserves to be rejected; in fact, since it contains not a single attribute of a church, it rejects itself.

57. I foresee that many people who are now steeped in the absurdities of this faith are going to say, “How can the intellect grasp theological teachings at all? Isn’t something spiritual a thing that is by definition transcendent? Go ahead, though, and see if you can open up the mysteries of redemption and justification so that human reason may see them and finally satisfy its curiosity!”

Anticipating this challenge, I will indeed open up these mysteries, as follows.

As everyone surely knows, there is one God; there is no God other than him. God is love itself and wisdom itself, or goodness itself and truth itself. God himself came down in the form of divine truth, which is the Word, and took on a human manifestation for the purpose of removing the hells, and therefore damnation, from the human race. He accomplished this through battles with and victories over the Devil, that is, over all the hells that were then attacking and trying to spiritually kill every person who came into the world. Afterward he glorified his human manifestation; he did this by uniting divine truth to divine goodness within himself. In this way he returned to the Father from whom he had come forth.

Once we realize this, we understand the following statement in John: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14). And in the same Gospel, “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father” (John 16:28). From the points just made it should also be clear that if the Lord had not come into the world, no one could have been saved, and that the people who are saved are the people who believe in him and live good lives.

This is the face of faith. It appears before our [inner] sight when we have allowed the Word to bring us into the light of day. It is the face of the faith of the new church. (See the faith of the new heaven and the new church in universal form and in a specific form below, §§116, 117.)