Religious Doctrine, The Goodness of Faith, And Freedom | NCE Spotlight

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:


2799:5


In Hosea: I will strike a pact with them on that day—with the
wild animal of the field, and with the bird in the heavens and
the creeping animal of the ground. And bow and
sword and war I will break off from the earth, and
I will make them lie down securely. (Hosea 2:18) This is about
the Lord’s kingdom. Breaking bow, sword, and war means
that no one there fights over doctrine or truth.


3242:1


Here is how matters stand with a person who focuses on the truth
taught by faith: None are allowed into the Lord’s kingdom but
those who have the goodness taught by faith, because the goodness
taught by faith has to do with life. A religious life stays with
us [after death], but religious doctrine does not, unless it is
integrated into our life. Still, people who focus on the
truth of faith (that is, who champion faith and describe it as
essential, because that is how they have been taught) but live
good lives (that is, are Christian at heart, not just on their
lips) are in the Lord’s spiritual kingdom. 


2873


For this reason, we are all distinguished from each other in
the next life according to our type of freedom. To put the
same thing another way, we are distinguished according to what we
love and are affected by. Consequently, we are distinguished
according to the pleasures of our life, which is the same as
saying we are distinguished according to our life.