For A Church To Exist

Selection from New Jerusalem and Heavenly Doctrine ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

What makes heaven in the case of a person, also makes the church. For as love and faith make heaven, so too love and faith make the church. So from what has already been said about heaven it is plain what the church is.

The name of church is given where the Lord is acknowledged and where the Word is known. For the essential elements of the church are love and faith directed to the Lord and coming from the Lord; and the Word teaches how a person must live, in order to receive love and faith from the Lord.

For a church to exist, there must be teaching from the Word, since the Word is not intelligible without teaching. But it is not teaching alone that makes the church in the case of a person, but living in accordance with that teaching. From this it follows that it is not faith alone which makes the church, but the life of faith, which is charity. The true teaching is the teaching of charity and faith together, not faith without charity. For the teaching of charity and faith together is teaching how to live one's life; but the teaching of faith without charity is not.

Those outside the church who acknowledge one God and who in accordance with their religion live in some sort of charity towards the neighbour are in communion with those who belong to the church. For no one is damned who believes in God and lives a good life. From this it is plain that the Lord's church exists throughout the whole world, although it is especially located where the Lord is acknowledged and the Word is known.

Everyone who has the church present with him is saved; but everyone who does not have it present is condemned.

(NJHD 241-245)

To Do Good From Obedience is from the Natural Man

From Apocalypse Explained ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.  (Rev 3:20)

What It Is To Do Good From Charity

No one can do good from charity unless his spiritual mind is opened, and the spiritual mind is opened only by man's abstaining from doing evils and shunning them, and finally turning away from them because they are contrary to the Divine commandments in the Word, thus contrary to the Lord. When man so shuns and turns away from evils all things that he thinks, wills, and does, are good because they are from the Lord; for the Lord is continually present, knocks at the door, is urgent and wishes to enter, but evils oppose; therefore man must open the door by removing the evils, for it is only when evils are removed that the Lord enters and sups there (Rev. 3:20)

It is said that man opens and removes, because it is from self that man does evils; and inasmuch as the Lord is continually present, knocks at the door, and is urgent, as has been said, man has the ability to refrain from evils as if of himself; this ability is also given to every man. This is why, since man can of himself close heaven to himself he can also as if of himself open heaven, provided he thinks and wills to refrain from evils, looks to the Lord, and when he refrains acknowledges that it is from the Lord.

When, therefore, evils have been removed, whatever man does is good, since it is from the Lord; and whatever man does from the Lord is not natural-moral, but is spiritual-moral. Since, then, charity is from the love of doing good for the sake of good, thus from good, consequently from the Lord, it follows that doing good from charity is spiritual, but doing good from obedience, since it is from a love of reward, is natural. Such is the natural in which those are who are in the entrance to heaven; and to this those come who do good only from obedience, who are such as confirm in themselves, in doctrine and life, that faith produces good works as a tree does fruits.

(Apocalypse Explained 798:6)

Marriage Love is Genuine 'Just to the Extent' that the Truths are Genuine with which the Good is Conjoined

Selection from Heaven and Hell ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

The love of dominion of one over the other entirely takes away marriage love and its heavenly delight, ... marriage love and its delight consists in the will of one being that of the other, and this mutually and reciprocally. This is destroyed by love of dominion in marriage, since he that domineers wishes his will alone to be in the other, and nothing of the other's will to be reciprocally in himself, which destroys all mutuality, and thus all sharing of any love and its delight one with the other. And yet this sharing and consequent conjunction are the interior delight itself that is called blessedness in marriage. This blessedness, with everything that is heavenly and spiritual in marriage love, is so completely extinguished by love of dominion as to destroy even all knowledge of it; and if that love were referred to it would be held in such contempt that any mention of blessedness from that source would excite either laughter or anger.

When one wills or loves what the other wills or loves each has freedom, since all freedom is from love; but where there is dominion no one has freedom; one is a servant, and the other who rules is also a servant, for he is led as a servant by the lust of ruling. But all this is wholly beyond the comprehension of one who does not know what the freedom of heavenly love is. Nevertheless from what has been said above about the origin and essence of marriage love, [who are in Divine good from Divine truths; and marriage love is genuine just to the extent that the truths are genuine with which the good is conjoined.  And as all the good that is conjoined with truths is from the Lord, it follows that no one can be in true marriage love unless he acknowledges the Lord and His Divine; for without that acknowledgment the Lord cannot flow in and be conjoined with the truths that are in man.], it can be seen that so far as dominion enters, minds are not united but divided. Dominion subjugates, and a subjugated mind has either no will or an opposing will. If it has no will it has also no love; and if it has an opposing will there is hatred in place of love.

The interiors of those who live in such marriage are in mutual collision and strife, as two opposites are wont to be, however their exteriors may be restrained and kept quiet for the sake of tranquillity. The collision and antagonism of the interiors of such are disclosed after their death, when commonly they come together and fight like enemies and tear each other; for they then act in accordance with the state of the interiors. .... For in the other life everyone's interiors are set at liberty; and they are no longer restrained by outward bounds or by worldly considerations, everyone then being just such as he is interiorly.

(Heaven and Hell 380)

Men - Human Forms Receptive of Life

Selection from Apocalypse Explained ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Life regarded in itself, which is God, cannot create another that shall be the only life; for the life that is God is uncreate, continuous, and inseparable; and from this it is that God is ONE.

But the life that is God can create forms out of substances that are not life, in which it can be, and give to them the appearance of living. Such forms are men; and since they are receptacles of life they could not when first created be anything else than images and likenesses of God; images from the reception of truth and likenesses from the reception of good; for life and its recipient are fitted to each other as the active and passive, but do not mingle. For this reason human forms, which are recipients of life, live, not from themselves, but from God who alone is life; consequently, as is well known, every good of love and every truth of faith is from God, and nothing of these is from man; for if man had the least portion of life as his own he would be able to will and do good from himself, and to understand and believe truth from himself, and thus to claim merit; and yet if he so believes, the form recipient of life closes itself above and becomes perverted, and intelligence perishes.

Good and its love and truth and its faith are the life that is God, for God is good itself and truth itself; and therefore in these God dwells in man. And from all this it follows, that man of himself is nothing, and is something only so far as he receives from the Lord, and at the same time acknowledges that it is not his own but is the Lord's; then the Lord gives him to be something; yet not from himself but from the Lord.

(Apocalypse Explained 1121:3)

The Lord Foresees and Provides

From Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

The Lord's Providence is in the veriest singulars of all things, but not according to such an order as man proposes to himself, because things to come are both foreseen and provided; and that the case is like that of a person building a palace, who first collects materials of every kind, and lays them together in heaps, where they lie without order, while the kind of palace to be formed from them exists solely in the understanding of the architect.

(Arcana Coelestia 6486)

A Life of Faith

From a passage in Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

... the life of faith causes a man to be spiritual, but not faith except insofar as it has been implanted in the life. The life of man is his love, and that which he loves he wills and intends, and that which he wills and intends, he does. This is the being of man, but not that which he knows and thinks and does not will. This being of man cannot in any wise be changed into another being by thinking about mediation and salvation; but by regeneration anew, which is being effected during a great part of his life; for he must be conceived, born, and grown up anew; and this is not effected by thinking and speaking, but by willing and acting.

(Arcana Coelestia 7779:3)

Who Then Can Be Saved?

Portion from Heaven and Hell ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Anyone who thinks from any enlightened reason can see that no man is born for hell, for the Lord is Love Itself and His Love is to will the salvation of all. Therefore, He has provided a religion for everyone, and by it an acknowledgment of the Divine and an interior life; for to live in accordance with one's religious belief is to live interiorly, since one then looks to the Divine, and so far as he looks to the Divine he does not look to the world but separates himself from the world, that is, from the life of the world, which is exterior life.

(Heaven and Hell 318)