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.

81. Astoundingly, the teaching that faith is the only thing that justifies us occupies every square inch throughout the entire Protestant world; that is, within the clergy it rules as virtually the only theology. This position is what all candidates for the ministry eagerly learn, consume, and absorb in college. Then, as if they were people inspired with heavenly wisdom, they teach that position in their churches and publish it in their books. Through it they pursue and achieve the name, reputation, and glory of having superior erudition. Because of it they are given diplomas, fellowships, and awards. And all this goes on, despite the fact that as a result of that teaching alone the sun today is darkened, the moon is deprived of its light, and the stars of the heavens have fallen, that is, have been destroyed.

I have been given absolute proof that the teaching that faith assigns us justice has so blinded human minds today that they do not want, and are therefore virtually unable, to see any divine truth in the light of the sun or in the light of the moon. They can see it only in the light of a fireplace by night. I can therefore make this assertion: If divine truths about the true partnership between goodwill and faith, about heaven, about the Lord, and about the eternal happiness that comes from him were to be written in silver letters and sent down from heaven, people who believe that we are justified by faith alone would not even consider them worth reading. The complete opposite would happen, though, if a paper asserting that faith alone makes us just were to be sent up from below.

We also read in the Formula of Concord that the article concerning justification by faith alone, or concerning the justice that we acquire through faith, is the most important of all Christian teachings, and that works of the law must be completely excluded from this article (pages 17, 61, 62, 72, 89, 683; appendix, page 164).

23. The Council of Trent has the following to say in regard to the faith that makes us just: The perpetual consent of the Catholic Church has been that faith is the beginning of human salvation, and the foundation and root of all justification. Without faith, it is impossible to please God and to come into the company of his children; see §5 a above. The same document also says that faith comes from hearing the Word of God; see §§4 d, [8].

As you can fully see from statements given above in §§4, 5, 7, and 8, that Roman Catholic council united faith and goodwill or faith and good works. The Protestant churches, named for the founders mentioned above, separated faith and goodwill or good works, however, and declared that the ingredient that actually saves us is faith and not goodwill or good works; they separated the two so as to differentiate themselves from Roman Catholics with regard to goodwill and faith, since these two are the essential characteristics of the church. I have heard this assertion a number of times from the founders of the Protestant churches themselves.

I have also heard from them that they reinforced this separation [of faith and goodwill] with arguments such as the following: On our own, none of us can do the type of good things that contribute to our salvation; we cannot fulfill the law either. They also separated faith and goodwill to prevent our own sense of merit (which arises from doing good works) from becoming part of our faith.

From the statements presented from the Formula of Concord in §12 above it is clear that the points just made were the origins and purposes behind the Protestant denial that good actions and goodwill play any role in our acquisition of faith and therefore of salvation. The following are among the statements presented there: Faith actually does not make us just if it has been formed through acts of goodwill, although Catholics say it does; see §12 b. For many reasons we must reject the proposition that good works are necessary for our salvation. One reason is that Papists adopted these views in support of a bad cause; see §12 h. People ought to reject the decree of the Council of Trent [and whatever else is used to support the opinion] that our good works preserve and maintain our salvation and faith; see §12 m. Not to mention many other such statements in the Formula of Concord.

In the following sections [§§24– 27] you will see that Protestants do in fact unite faith and goodwill and attribute to them a shared power to save; the only difference between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic views concerns how our good works come into existence.