True Christian Religion

original: "NOVI CÆLI ET NOVÆ ECCLESIÆ"
B 3

The Handiworkoriginal: "Opificium." This refers to God as a craftsman or master builder who designs the universe with specific purposes. of the one God exists in every single use because He dwells within the end; for whoever is in the end is also in the means, since the end is intimately within all the means, acting through them and guiding them. Those who do not contemplate the Universe as the Handiwork of God, and as the Dwelling-place of His Love and Wisdom, but rather as the handiwork of nature and a dwelling-place for the sun's heat and light, close off the higher reaches of their minds to God. Instead, they open the lower parts of their minds to the devil. In doing so, they cast off what is Human and put on what is bestial. They not only believe themselves to be like beasts, but they actually become so: they become foxes in their cunning, wolves in their ferocity, leopards in their deceit, tigers in their cruelty, and crocodiles, serpents, or owls according to their specific natures. Those who are like this even appear from a distance in the Spiritual World as these very beasts; for their love of evil takes on that outward shape.

14. VII. THAT THE PERSON WHO DOES NOT ACKNOWLEDGE GOD IS EXCOMMUNICATED FROM THE CHURCH, AND DAMNED.

The reason a person who does not acknowledge God is excommunicated from the Church is that God is the "all" of the Church; the Divine things called "theology" are what constitute the Church. Therefore, the denial of God is the denial of everything belonging to the Church. This denial itself excommunicates the person—thus the person excommunicates themselves; it is not God who does it. Such a person is damned because, by being excommunicated from the Church, they are also excommunicated from Heaven. For the Church on earth and the angelic Heaven act as one, just like the Internal and External, or the Spiritual and Natural in a human being.

God created humans so that their Internal self would be in the Spiritual World and their External self in the Natural World. Thus, a person is created as a citizen of both worlds for a specific reason: so that the spiritual (which belongs to Heaven) may be implanted in the natural (which belongs to the world), much like a seed is planted in the soil, so that the person may become stable and endure forever.

A person who has excommunicated themselves from the Church (and thus from Heaven) by denying God has closed off their Internal Man in regard to the will, and thus in regard to their innate love. For the human will is the receptacle of one's love and becomes its dwelling place. However, they cannot close off their Internal Man in regard to the Understanding; if they could and did do this, a human would no longer be human. Instead, the love of the person's will infatuates the higher parts of the Understanding with falsehoods. Consequently, the Understanding becomes, as it were, closed to the truths of faith and the goods of charity, becoming more and more opposed to God and the spiritual things of the Church.

In this way, the person is excluded from communion with the Angels of Heaven. Once excluded, they cast themselves into communion with the Satans In Swedenborg’s theology, "Satans" refers specifically to inhabitants of hell who are characterized by false thinking and intellectual pride, as opposed to "Devils," who are characterized by evil desires. of Hell and think as one with them. All Satans deny God and think foolishly about God and the spiritual things of the Church. A person joined to them does the same. When such a person is in their own Spirit—which happens when they are left alone at home and allow their thoughts to be led by the delights of the evil and the false which they have conceived and brought forth—they think of God as non-existent. They think of "God" merely as a voice echoing from pulpits to keep the common people bound to obedience to the laws of justice that govern Society.

They also think that the Word The Holy Scripture., from which ministers preach about God, is something visionary and a collection of stories given a sacred status by authority. Furthermore, they think that the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) or the Catechism is just a little book that, once worn out by the hands of children, should be tossed aside—for it commands that parents be honored, that one should not kill, commit adultery, steal, or bear false witness, and who does not already know these same things from civil law?

Regarding the Church, they think it is merely a congregation of simple, gullible, and faint-hearted people who claim to see what they do not see. They think of other humans, and of themselves as humans, in the same way they think of beasts; and they think of life after death in the same way as the life of a beast after it dies. This is how the Internal Man thinks, no matter how differently the External Man speaks. For as has been said, every person has an Internal and an External, and it is the Internal that makes the person—this is called the Spirit, and it lives after death. The External, by which one acts the hypocrite through outward morality, is buried; and then, because of the denial of God, the person is damned. Every person, as to their Spirit, is associated with their own kind in the Spiritual World and is as one with them. It has often been granted to me to see the spirits of men...