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.

17. 1 The churches that separated from Roman Catholicism during the Reformation disagree with each other on many points of theology, but there are four points on which they all agree: there is a trinity of persons in the Divine; original sin came from Adam; Christ’s merit is assigned to us; and we are justified by faith alone.

6. Concerning free choice:

(a) Free choice was by no means extinguished by Adam’s sin, but was attenuated in its powers and bent down (Session 6, chapter 1).

(b) If any say that our free choice, once it is moved and stirred by God, does not cooperate at all through giving assent to God’s stirring and calling, in order to dispose and prepare us for obtaining the grace of justification, or that even if it wants to, it cannot refuse its consent, but, like something inanimate, does nothing whatever and is merely passive, let them be anathema (Session 6, canon 4).