Frequently Asked Questions
What does the New Church teach about the Cross?
What does the New Church teach about the Second Advent?
What does the New Church teach about the Trinity?
What does the New Church teach about the nature of Evil?
What does the New Church teach about Salvation?
What is the New Church?
The New Church is a Christian church made up of everyone around the world who acknowledges the Lord and shares a belief in the Old and New Testament as well as the Writings for the New Church.
Is the New Church Christian?
Members of the New Church worship the Lord Jesus Christ, the one God of heaven and earth, Creator and Redeemer. However, the doctrine of the New Church differs from that of both Catholic and Protestant churches. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ as seen in His Divine Human. After the Lord was born of Mary, He slowly replaced the human parts He received from her with Divine parts He received from His soul (which was Jehovah God or the Divine Itself). Through the resurrection, the Lord became both Man and God, both Divine and Human. It is this Jesus that we worship.
How new is the New Church?
The revelation that created the New Church was given to the human race through Emanuel Swedenborg between 1745 and 1772. However, Swedenborg himself did not found a church or any religious organization. It was really only after his death that people started to organize themselves into churches separate from other Christian churches.
There have been New Church congregations in the United States since the early 1800s and a New Church congregation in Pittsburgh (which is now the Pittsburgh New Church) since the mid-1800s.
How big is the New Church?
There are larger and smaller New Church groups and congregations everywhere in the world. The Pittsburgh New Church consists of about 200 members and friends. There are more than 20,000 members and friends of the New Church around the world.
Who was Emanuel Swedenborg?
Emanuel Swedenborg was an eighteenth century Swedish scientist and philosopher. He contributed greatly to the scientific and philosophical communities of Sweden and Europe throughout his life, especially while serving as Assessor of Mines in Sweden. He designed a model for a flying machine, wrote several books on economics and coinage, and was one of the greatest anatomists of the time, making amazing discovering about the brain, the movement of the heart and lungs, and much else.
Swedenborg never stopped his scientific and philosophic service to Sweden, but focused more and more on his lifelong interest in religion. During the second half of his life, Swedenborg experiences a series of religious visions and a calling from the Lord to write and publish what he was learning. For the last 27 years of his life, Swedenborg produced a series of 25 volumes of theological writing. This was a unified system of new Christian theology and was the foundation for what Swedenborg called the new church.
What does the New Church teach about the Cross?
The Lord endured His crucifixion in order to conquer death and overcome the hells. This was, in fact, just the last and most terrible trial in a series that started as soon as He was born. Through His life on earth, Jesus put evil in its place and saved the human race by uniting His human (the part of Himself He inherited from Mary) with His divine (the part of Himself He already had as His soul). This was His Glorification.
The crucifixion was not a “deal” to buy the sins of the human race with the blood of a loving father’s only son.
What does the New Church teach about the Second Advent?
The prophetical, spiritual visions that John saw in Revelation has already been fulfilled. The Lord’s second coming happened in the spiritual world, not in the natural world. The descent of the New Jerusalem has begun through the revelation of the inner meaning of te stories of the Old and New Testaments.
What does the New Church teach about the Trinity?
The New Church acknowledges one God, the Creator of the universe. Within God, there is a trinity of aspects: the unknowable divine itself (called the Father), Jesus Christ, the knowable Divine Human (called the Son), and the operation of these two aspects in your life (called the Holy Spirit). These are not three separate persons and are not three separate gods. Everyone has a similar trinity within themselves. Each of us has a soul, a mind, and the actions of those two things which affect other people.
What does the New Church teach about the nature of Evil?
Good comes only from the Lord, but evil originates in ourselves. Evil is not some external force, there is no Devil that exists as some opposite to God. Instead, evil comes from inside us when we choose to lead ourselves instead of being led by the Lord. We exist in an equilibrium between these two, and we freely choose who way to go.
What does the New Church teach about Salvation?
Salvation is never instantaneous but is the result of a process of spiritual rebirth or regeneration. This process relies on two things: (1) the gift of remnants of the Lord’s own good and truth that He freely plants in us to balance any evil inclinations we might have, thus keeping us in equilibrium between the influence of good and the influence of evil; and (2) the ability to make free, rational choices and to therefore choose to do good in stead of evil. The central purpose of the Lord’s government of all of creation is to ensure that these two elements are never destroyed in any single person.
Plenty of additional information can be found throughout this website and at www.newchurch.org, or contact the pastor’s office with your question.
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