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.

54. Brief Analysis

The leaders of the church today insist that the intellect has to be held under obedience to faith. In fact, they say that true faith is a faith in the unknown — a blind faith, a faith of the night.

This is the first absurdity. Faith has to do with truth and truth has to do with faith. In order for truth to become part of our faith, we have to see it in its own light; otherwise what we are believing in could be false.

There are many further absurdities that flow forth from faith as the church today defines it: God the Father bore a Son from eternity. The Holy Spirit emanates from both the Father and the Son. Each of these three is a person and a god in his own right. Both the body and the soul of the Lord originated from his mother. These three persons, and therefore three gods, created the universe. One of them came down and took on a human manifestation in order to reconcile the Father to us and save us. We are saved through the assigning, attributing, and transferring of his justice to those of us who by grace have acquired faith and believe the absurdities just listed. Prior to receiving that faith, we are like a statue, a log of wood, or a stone. Just hearing the Word allows faith to flow into us. Faith alone has the power to save us apart from the works of the law, even if that faith is untouched by goodwill. Faith produces a forgiveness of our sins without our having to go through repentance first. On the basis of that forgiveness of sins and nothing else, even if we have not repented we are nevertheless made just, regenerated, and sanctified. Then goodwill, good works, and a restoration of wisdom spontaneously come upon us.

From the body of teaching based on the idea of three gods, these and many other teachings like them flow forth like illegitimate offspring conceived as the result of an ongoing illicit affair.

20. Brief Analysis

Although scarcely anyone has realized it, on these four points Protestants agree with Roman Catholics so closely that there is hardly any meaningful difference between them, except that Catholics unite faith to goodwill but Protestants separate the two. In fact, the agreement between them is so little known that even theology professors are going to be astounded by this statement.

The reason why this is unknown is that Roman Catholics rarely turn to God our Savior; they turn instead to the pope as Christ’s vicar, and also to the saints. Therefore they have let their tenets regarding the assigning of Christ’s merit and our being justified by faith lie dormant. Nevertheless, the points above in §§3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 taken from the Council of Trent (which were ratified by Pope Pius IV, as shown in §2) make it abundantly clear that these are among the tenets that are received and acknowledged by Catholics. Compare these with the tenets from the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord in §§9, 10, 11, and 12, and you can see that the distinctions between them are not substantial; they are merely verbal. By reading and carefully comparing the quotations earlier in this work, the church’s theology professors will indeed be able to see (although not fully) the agreement between the Protestant and the Catholic views on these points. Some further illustrations of the agreement will be given in the following sections, so that theology professors, and also less highly educated clergy and lay people, will be able to see it.