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.

69. As for the notion that when we are undergoing conversion we are like a log of wood, this is a teaching that the church of today acknowledges — in a great many words — as its own legitimate offspring. For example, it says that human beings are completely powerless in spiritual matters; see §15 a, b, c. It says that in the process of being converted we are like a block of wood, a stone, or a statue; we cannot adapt or accommodate ourselves to grace; and we are like something that has no senses; see §15 c, d. It says that we have only the power to move our bodies and attend public worship, where we can hear the Word and the gospel; see §15 e. But it does say that the reborn, using power from the Holy Spirit, cooperate to some extent with him through the new capabilities and gifts they have received; see §15 k. And many more teachings of this kind.

We are told that this is how we are in regard to our conversion and in regard to our repenting of the evil things we have done; but this is yet another offspring, hatched from the same egg and the same womb — namely, justification by faith alone. The purpose in their saying this is to remove altogether the works that we do and prevent our works from coming into any contact whatsoever with our faith.

[2] Yet this attitude goes against the common sense we all have about repentance and about the process of our conversion; so they add the following statement to the others: “There is a great difference between baptized and unbaptized people. According to Paul’s teaching, ‘All those who have been baptized have put on Christ,’ and are therefore truly reborn. They now have a ‘freed choice.’ For this reason they not only hear the Word of God but are also able to assent to it and embrace it with faith”; see §15 m and the Formula of Concord, page 675.

I call on the wise to consider whether this last statement aligns at all with the others. Is it not a contradiction to say that all Christians go through their process of conversion like a log of wood or a stone, so much so that they cannot accommodate themselves to grace, and yet all Christians have been baptized and baptism entails being able not only to hear the Word of God but also to assent to it and embrace it with faith?

Therefore the comparing of a Christian to a log of wood or a stone must be eradicated from the churches in the Christian world. It must disappear, just as every strange phenomenon we see while we are asleep disappears when we wake up. It is highly offensive to human reason.

[3] In order to clarify what the new church teaches about our process of conversion, I would like to copy some words from an account of a memorable occurrence in Revelation Unveiled.

Surely we all see that every human being has the freedom to think about God and the freedom not to think about God. We all, then, have just as much freedom in spiritual matters as we do in civic and moral matters. The Lord grants all of us this freedom continually. We ourselves, then, are responsible and accountable for what we think.

It is this ability to choose what we think that makes humans human. It is the lack of this ability that makes animals animals. Therefore we possess the power to reform and regenerate ourselves seemingly on our own, provided we acknowledge at heart that this power comes from the Lord.

All who practice repentance are reformed and regenerated. We do this reforming and regenerating seemingly on our own. Even the ability to do things “seemingly on our own” comes from the Lord, because it is the Lord who gives us the will and the power and never takes them away from anyone.

It is absolutely true that we cannot contribute anything to our own regeneration. Nevertheless we were not created statues. We were created human beings so that we would be able to do this regenerating seemingly on our own but actually with the Lord’s help. This responding through love and faith and forging a partnership with him is the one and only thing the Lord wants us to do for him.

Briefly put: Take action on your own, and yet trust that the Lord is helping you. This is what it means to take action seemingly on your own.

The ability to act on our own is not an attribute we were created with. Being able to act on one’s own is an attribute that belongs to the Lord alone. He constantly grants it to us.

If we do what is good and believe what is true seemingly on our own, we become an angel of heaven. If we do what is evil and believe what is false (which are also things we do seemingly on our own), we become a spirit of hell. (The fact that this, too, is something we do seemingly on our own is attested to by our prayers asking to be protected from the Devil, so that he does not lead us astray and bring his evil into us.)

When we believe we are acting on our own, we are always at fault, whether what we do is good or evil. When we believe that we are acting seemingly on our own, we are not at fault. Whatever we believe we are doing on our own becomes a part of us. If it is something good, we view it as our property and claim it as our own, when in fact it belongs to God and comes from him. If it is something evil, we again view it as our property and claim it as our own, when in fact it belongs to the Devil and comes from him. [Revelation Unveiled 224:9– 10]

For the purposes of this brief survey I will forego explaining a number of other things, including the point in the proposition above about adopting [false] principles of reason that are based on the teaching that we are justified by our faith alone and the teaching concerning the person of Christ, and using those principles to judge the uses and benefits of the sacraments (baptism and the Holy Supper); and the point that from the earliest centuries of Christianity until now, heresies have been leaping forth from a single source: the body of teaching based on the idea that there are three gods. These points will be presented and demonstrated in the work itself.

46. Brief Analysis

Surely every group of religious and reasonable people on the face of the earth knows and believes that there is one God; that doing good things is being with God; that doing evil things goes against God; that we must apply our own soul, heart, and powers to doing what is good and not doing what is evil, even though these faculties and abilities actually flow into us from God; and that the religious life consists in doing all the above. Surely everyone can see, then, that to confess three persons within the Divine and to declare that salvation has nothing to do with good works is to remove religious life from the church.

The Protestant assertion that salvation has nothing to do with good works is made in the following passages. Faith makes us just apart from good works; see §12 a, b. Good works are not necessary either for our salvation or for our faith, because salvation and faith are not preserved or maintained by our good works; see §12 g, h, l, m. Therefore there is no bond that unites faith and good works.

If we go back to the assertion that good works nevertheless spontaneously follow faith like fruit issuing forth from a tree — see §13 k, m — then we must ask this: Who does these good works? In fact, who would bother thinking about them or feel spontaneously moved to do them when they know and believe that these works contribute nothing to their salvation, and that none of us on our own can do any good for our own salvation, and so on?

If someone asserts that Protestants do nonetheless unite good works to their faith, I reply that if you deeply examine that union, you find that it is not actually a uniting but rather an appending of good works to faith. Good works are an appendage that is tacked on; they are not an integral part or even securely attached. They are like the shadows that are added to a painting to make it look more realistic. Religious practice, though, has to do with our lives; it consists in good works that we do in accordance with the truths taught by our faith. Clearly, then, religious practice is not in actuality an appendage; it is the thing itself.

To many people, though, living a religious life is like a horse’s tail; you can remove it if you want, because it serves no purpose. Who could come to any other reasonable conclusion from statements such as the following when taken at face value?

It is foolish to dream that the works enjoined by the second tablet of the Ten Commandments make us just before God; see §12 d.

Any who believe they will gain salvation because they do acts of goodwill are insulting Christ; see §12 e.

Good works must be completely excluded from any discussion of our justification and eternal life; see §12f.

There are many other such statements there as well.

When we go on to read that good works necessarily follow faith, and that if they do not follow faith, our faith is false and not true (see §13 o, p, v, and many other passages), who among us pays any attention to this? Or if we do pay attention to it, do we do good works consciously? Because good works that somehow flow out of us when we are unaware of them are surely as lifeless as if they had been done by a statue.

If we look more deeply into the cause of this teaching, we find that the leading reformers first assumed faith alone as their standard dogma in order to be differentiated from Roman Catholics, as I mentioned above (§§21, 22, 23). Later on they attached acts of goodwill so as not to go against Sacred Scripture and so that their denomination would be viewed as a religion and something wholesome.