The New Church

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"New Church" redirects here. For the Amsterdam church, see New Church (Amsterdam).
See also: Swedenborgianism

The New Church is the name for a religious movement described in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). In these writings it is predicted that the Lord would establish a "New Church," following the first "Church" of traditional Christianity. In these writings "Church" means the state of reception of God by humankind. God has always had a relationship with humankind, and it has gone through a series of spiritual stages. The New Church, which is the final stage, is believed to be the renewal of Christianity based on the Lord's Second Coming. The Second Coming of the Lord is seen as His coming in Spirit, revealing Himself plainly in the deeper meaning of the Bible. The final spiritual stage of humanity is when the Lord is fully received and married to the Church. This marriage is thought to be depicted in the marriage imagery seen in the Bible, especially the book of Revelation.

Of all the organizations that believe in the New Church movement none of them were founded by Swedenborg, but by those who read the books he published.

The New Church is seen by members of New Church organizations as something which the Lord is establishing with all those who believe that the Lord, Jesus Christ is the One God of Heaven and Earth, and that obeying His commandments is necessary for salvation. Therefore, it is thought that any Christian holding these beliefs is part of this New Church movement. New Church organizations acknowledge the universal nature of the movement, yet each strives to best embody New Church teachings within their own organization. The basis of New Church belief is that the Lord has come again in His Holy Spirit to reveal the inner truth of the Old and New Testaments, that the Christian Church fell, was judged, and that a New Christian Era has begun.

Other names for the movement are also used including New Christians, Neo-Christians, New Church, Church of the New Jerusalem, The Lord's New Church. Those outside of the church more commonly refer to the movement as Swedenborgianism; however, some adherents of The New Church doctrine seek to distance themselves from this title, since it implies a following of Swedenborg rather than the following of the Lord, Jesus Christ, which it is believed to be.

Contents

[edit] Doctrine of The New Church

The following doctrine is laid out in the works published by Emanuel Swedenborg. These doctrines were drawn from and can be supported by the Old and New Testaments. Among these works are, True Christian Religion, Heaven and Hell, Married Love, The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine, Heavenly Secrets, The Doctrine of the Lord, and many more. In these works the doctrine of The New Church is defined.

  • The Lord created mankind because He is Love Itself, and Love seeks to make others outside of self happy. The purpose of creation was that God be conjoined to mankind by the reciprocation of His Love. To be in His Love is to love others, and by loving others one also loves Him. He has always provided through revelation of Himself that this end may be met. When, on account of humankind choosing evil, connection with Him was almost entirely lost He had to reveal Himself in a way that would never lose effect.
  • The Creator of the Universe (Jehovah) came into this world within the human form of Jesus Christ. He came in order to permanently restore mankind's ability to have conjunction with Him and by His Divinely Human life show people the path to spiritual freedom.
    • Jesus was uniquely born with a Divine soul. From His Divine Will He struggled against every evil that humanity encounters by allowing the evils of Hell to attack Him on the battleground of His Human form. He overcame evil in every instance, and made His Human form One with His uniquely Divine Soul, even as to the flesh and bones. Jesus Christ, thus, entirely became the One God through a process of removing the natural human imperfections and uniting His Divine Soul with His Human form.
    • The New Church has been seen as a proponent of Modalism, however, it does not see God as appearing in three sequential modes. God is seen as the One Divine Person, Jesus Christ, who has a Divine Soul of Love, Divine Mind of Truth, and Divine Body of Activity. Jesus, the Word made flesh, became entirely One with His Divine Soul from the Father to the point of having no distinction of personality. It is believed that this doctrine retains both the Unity of God as well as the full Divinity of Christ, and thus that it is not necessary to split God into a Trinity of persons. The Oneness Pentecostal view is similar.
  • Following Him is seen as the only loving and rational choice one can make, since He is the One Source of all love and truth. If one is learning truth or doing good, it is from Him, whether or not one consciously knows that He is the source.
    • His direct instruction is found in the Word of the Old and New Testament, and it is clearly explained in His revelation to Emanuel Swedenborg, who was prepared mentally and spiritually by the Lord to receive a rational revelation, which unfolds the inner meaning of scripture, which reveals the answers to the mysteries of faith, leads into all truth, and speaks of the Father plainly.
  • Every one of us can become angels if we choose to stop doing evil actions and allow the Lord's presence to grow within us. All angels in Heaven and Devils in Hell were once people on earth.
  • The Lord created us all to go to heaven, but He does not make anyone go there. We freely choose our eternal destiny.
    • People of all faiths come into heaven if they have followed their beliefs sincerely and loved God and their neighbors. A person is seen as responsible for their reaction to the truth when it is made known to them. Those who love evil tend to choose to reject the truth, whereas those who love good choose to receive it openly. When good people enter heaven they all come to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the One God of Heaven and Earth.
    • Those who go to Hell have chosen Hell because they enjoy Hellish delights, which in Hell are only allowed to be enjoyed as fantasy.
  • The spiritual marriage of two people does not end with death but continues in heaven to eternity. There, the two remain male and female as to form, and become one angel as to their soul. As a couple they live a life of useful service in the Lord's Heavenly Kingdom, which is perfected to eternity.
  • This earth and all of nature is part of the Lord's Kingdom, and in nature we can see the Love and Wisdom of the Lord manifested, but not apart from written revelation.
  • Much of the Bible is believed to have not only a literal sense, but a spiritual sense as well, which work together by means of correspondence. In other words, the Bible is seen as a kind of spiritual allegory, which uses words as symbols that each point to a particular spiritual form or concept. On the deepest level the Bible is a story of the Lord's life and internal process of glorification (making his human form divine).
  • The Last Judgment has already taken place in the spiritual world, and was begun and fully completed in 1757[1].
  • Members of the New Church believe the One God, Jesus Christ, revealed Himself in Person to Swedenborg. Swedenborg was an instrument of the Lord in receiving and writing the Heavenly Doctrine, as he has stated. This doctrine, unlike other Christian doctrine, is seen as being a doctrine from God, and not a doctrine formulated by any mere man or council of men.

[edit] References

Swedenborg, Emanuel. The Apocalypse Explained. 6 vols. Translation revised by J. Whitehead. New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1911-12.

_______ . Arcana Coelestia. 12 vols. Translation revised and edited by J. F. Potts. New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1905-1910.

_______. Conjugial Love. Translated by S. Warren, translation revised by L. Tafel. New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1915.

_______. Divine Love and Wisdom. Translation revised by J. Ager. New York: Swedenborg Society, 1908.

_______. Divine Providence. Translated by W. Wunsch. New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1963.

_______. Heaven and Hell. Translated by J. Ager, revised and edited by D. Harley. London: Swedenborg Society, 1958.

_______. The True Christian Religion. 2 vols. Translated by J. Ager. New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1906.

[edit] Call for Restoration

It is a New Church belief that both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches have been in a fallen state or in a Great Apostasy, and that the central doctrines common to the whole of Christianity have been flawed since the First Council of Nicaea, when it was decided that God was composed of three persons. A similar view was proposed by Michael Servetus, who was prosecuted by John Calvin and burned at the stake by the Geneva city council for the alleged heresy of denying the doctrine of the Trinity. Servetus wrote a book called Restoration of Christianity. An English translation of this book was recently published in 2007. He proposed a restoration of Christianity, which would come about by correcting the traditionally held doctrines of the Church.

The primary doctrine which he saw as being flawed was that of the Trinity, which states that there are three persons in the Godhead. Servetus believed this idea split God into a three headed Cerberus, or three separate beings. He reasoned that the idea of three separate infinite personalities did not seem logical. He therefore began to try to explain how Jehovah and Jesus were not two entities, but one Divine Person, or in other words how Jesus was God in Human form. Compare this view with modern Unitarians who see only the Father as God, and commonly deny the Divinity of Jesus. He was very concerned about the unity of God, and also the Divinity Of Christ, but denied that the doctrine of the trinity of persons was the way to support these two essentials of Christian doctrine.

Servetus was a foreshadowing of Emanuel Swedenborg, an Enlightenment philosopher and theologian who developed the idea of the One Divine Human, Jesus Christ, being Jehovah fully manifested in the flesh. He wrote the book True Christian Religion, which attempts to systematically refute the traditional Christian doctrines on the Trinity of persons, and salvation by faith alone, and replaces it with a new doctrine, which can be supported Biblically. Some of the characteristics of this doctrine can be seen above.

"This has been done to the end that the Christian Church, which is founded upon the Word and is now at its end, may again revive and draw breath through heaven from the Lord."

- Conjugial Love, paragraph # 532

[edit] History

Swedenborg spoke of "the New Church" that would be founded on the theology in his works, but he himself never tried to establish an organization. At the time of his death, few efforts had been made. But May 7, 1787, 15 years after Swedenborg's death, the New Church movement was founded in England, a country Swedenborg often visited and where he also died. By 1789 a number of Churches had sprung up around England and in April of that year the first General Conference of the New Church was held in Great Eastcheap, London. New Church ideas were carried to United States by missionaries. One famous New Church man was Johnny Appleseed. Early missionaries also went to parts of Africa as Swedenborg himself believed that the "African race" was "in greater enlightenment than others on this earth, since they are such that they think more interiorly, and so receive truths and acknowledge them." (A Treatise concerning the Last Judgment, n. 118) Although potentially odd-sounding today, at the time this was viewed as intensely liberal and so members of the New Church movement accepted freed African converts to their homes as early as 1790. Several of them were also involved in abolitionism.[2]

In the U.S., the organized New Church movement was organized in 1817 with the founding of the General Convention of the New Church (sometimes referred to as the Convention,) now also known as the Swedenborgian Church of North America.

The movement in the United States grew increasingly stronger until the late 19th century, when a controversy about doctrinal issues and the authority of Swedenborg's writings caused a faction to split off to form the Academy of the New Church which would become the General Church of New Jerusalem (sometimes referred to as the General Church,) with headquarters in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. In the 1930s, a doctrinal issue about the authority of Swedenborg's theological writings arose in the General Church. Members in the Hague branch of the General Church saw Swedenborg's writings as the Word of the Third Testament, which they wrote about extensively in their Dutch magazine De Hemelsche Leer. Actions by the leading Bishop of the General Church caused those holding this new doctrinal view to split off to form The Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma.

Today, the General Church has about 5,000 members in 33 churches. The Swedenborgian Church of North America, with headquarters in Newtonville, a suburb of Boston, now has 37 active churches with about 1,500 members in the U.S. The Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma, with headquarters in Bryn Athyn, now has about 28 active churches with about 1900 members worldwide. The most recent membership figures for the Four Church Organizations 2000[3]:

  • General Conference (Great Britain): 1,314
  • General Convention (USA): 2,029
  • General Church of the New Jerusalem: 5,563
  • The Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma: 1,000

The Lord's New Church is primarily associated with South Africa, although roughly 200 members are in the United States, and concerned with justice issues there. The nations of Australia and Germany are estimated to have 504 and 200 members, respectively. When counting additional members in Asia, Africa, and South America, current sources put the total of organized New Church members as between 25,000-30,000.

[edit] Influence

Notable persons influenced either by Swedenborg's writing or by the New Church include:

Sir Isacc Pitman inventor of Shorthand was a prominent member of the Greek styled New Jerusalem church in Bath which closed in 2005. William Harbutt (Inventor of Plasticine) was a member at Bath too.

There are 25 churches left in England and a handful of ministers. The denomination in the 19th cent had over a hundred churches in the UK often very grand churches very Anglican in style with large chancels, side pulpits and altars. Nearly all of these churches have closed or rebuilt in the late 20th cent. Some remain in London.

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