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.

79. As predicted, there is such great darkness in the Christian denominations of today that during the day there is no light from the sun, and during the night there is no light from the moon or the stars. The one and only cause of this is the teaching that we are justified by our faith alone. This teaching presents faith as the sole means of being saved, although it also asserts that no one has ever seen a sign that this faith is flowing in, progressing, making a home, working, or achieving any results in us. We are told that this faith has nothing to do with our obeying the law of the Ten Commandments, or our goodwill, good works, repentance, or efforts to live a new life — these actions have no impact whatever on our faith; instead these actions arise spontaneously, but are completely useless for preserving our faith or gaining us salvation.

This teaching holds that faith of this kind grants the reborn, or those who have received their badge of freedom, exemption from being subject to the law. In addition, Christ covers up their sins before God the Father. God the Father then forgives those sins (since he has not seen them) and bestows upon these people renewal, sanctity, and eternal life. These thoughts and many others like them lie at the core of this teaching.

Its outward features remain outside this core; they are the activities of goodwill, good works, acts of repentance, and the following of the law, which are actually extremely valuable. Christian authorities present them, however, as lowly, humble servants; faith is the lady of the house. As servants, they are allowed to follow along behind her, but not to have any contact with her. Nevertheless, because these preachers and teachers are aware that lay people are counting on these activities as well as their faith to save them, they take great care to ensure that these topics are included in their sermons and conversations. They even pretend to combine these activities with, and find a place for them in, the process of justification. They do so, however, only to please the ears of the crowd and to keep their own oracular pronouncements from sounding too much like riddles or sorcery.

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.