The New Church - Main Doctrines

Main Doctrines

There are two essential doctrines of the New Church: the first is that one God as one person in Jesus Christ is to be worshipped, and the second is that one must live according to His commandments. "There are two essentials which constitute the church, and hence two principal things of doctrine — one, that the Lord's Human is Divine; the other, that love to the Lord and charity toward the neighbor constitute the church, and not faith separate from love and charity." These "two things, the acknowledgment of the Lord, and a life according to the precepts of the Decalogue, which are the two essentials of the New Church." It is by these two essential doctrines that conjunction with the Lord and salvation is effected. "All things of the doctrine of the New Church have reference to these two, because they are its universals, on which all the particulars depend, and are its essentials, from which all the formalities proceed" If one is unaware of these two essential doctrines of the New Church and yet has believed in one God and lived a good life, they will be taught this by angels after death.

Swedenborg held that God is one person revealed in Jesus Christ, which was later independently expressed by modern day Oneness Pentecostalism. He stated that the doctrine of a trinity of three persons originated in the fourth century with the adoption of the Nicene Creed to combat the heresy of Arianism, but this was unknown to the early Apostolic Church, as shown by the Apostles' Creed which preceded the Nicene Creed.