Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish scientist, engineer and philosopher who spent his last three decades writing theological works, both Biblical interpretation and more philosophical works on the nature of God, humanity, reality and life after death.
Swedenborg said that he received revelation from the Lord, and that he wrote what he did at the Lord’s behest. He also said that he was, throughout those final decades, able to visit heaven and hell and talk to people there.
Not surprisingly, various critics have claimed that Swedenborg was misguided, deceptive, drug-addled and/or schizophrenic. Supporters, however, note that he was described by contemporaries as pleasant and sensible, and that he continued to serve the Swedish government. He was also an apparently humble man who never tried to start a church and avoided public speaking.
Ultimately, though, Swedenborg’s supporters point to his body of work as its own best defense. His take on the Bible is deep and coherent, and his approach to God and reality is astonishingly modern in some ways, less arbitrary than most belief systems and highly accepting of the advances of science.
To put it very briefly, Swedenborg wrote that the Lord is love itself, perfect and eternal, and that the natural world was created as an extension of that love. He wrote that the Lord operates from love into the lives of everyone every moment, trying to get people to accept love while also leaving them free to reject it.
In the system he describes, those who accept the Lord’s love – by choosing to act in loving ways toward others — will, when they die, leave the natural plane of existence and “wake up” to their spiritual existence. In that state they will naturally associate with other loving spirits in heaven. Those who don’t accept the Lord’s love – loving themselves instead – will associate with other selfish spirits in hell. Heaven is “heavenly” not because it is a paradisiacal reward, but because it is full of people who love one another. Hell is “hellish” not because it’s a burning punishment, but because it is full of self-love and people vying for domination.
As Swedenborg describes it, people choose the Lord’s love through two aspects of humanity: the “will,” which wants and feels, and the “understanding,” which thinks and knows. We can reform ourselves by leading with the understanding, learning what’s right and making ourselves do it even if it runs contrary to selfish desires that tend to dominate the will. If we do that and stick to it, the Lord will start removing those selfish desires so love can flow in. Eventually, through a process he calls “regeneration,” our will becomes purified of selfishness and filled with love. At that point it can be united with the understanding so we can think and want everything good and loving without struggle or hesitation. And in that state we are prepared to go to heaven as angels.
This duality of will and understanding is, according to Swedenborg, reflected through nature in a system in which natural thing correspond to spiritual things. For instance, a plowed field corresponds to a mind ready to learn truth; a mountain corresponds to the love of God; water corresponds to true ideas about relatively natural things.
That same system of correspondences exists in many books of the Bible, Swedenborg said, describing on one level the spiritual history of humanity, on a deeper level the spiritual processes we all go through in life and on a deepest level the development of the Lord Himself when he was born into the world as Jesus.
By understanding correspondences, then, we can gain great insight into spiritual things through nature, and can get a full systematic view of spiritual life through the Bible. Swedenborg spent years detailing the correspondences of Genesis, Exodus and Revelation, and his work contains many references to the inner meaning of other passages.
This website is being built by a group of believers, and we are approaching what Swedenborg says with the assumption that it is true. The intent is to create an easy resource for other believers and introduce these ideas to anyone interested.
Biographies:
A five-page treatise from Encyclopedia Brittanica: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/576681/Emanuel-Swedenborg
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Swedenborg
A full, book-length biography, regarded as the standard by most Swedenborgians:
http://www.spiritualfrontier.org/esmain.html
Books:
The Swedenborg Foundation offers downloads of some older translations of Swedenborg’s works. It also sells newer translations and a wide array of related literature.
http://www.swedenborg.com/page.asp?page_name=complete_works
NewChurch.org, a site affiliated with the largest Swedenborgian denomination, offers this bibliography, with brief descriptions of the various works.
http://www.newchurch.org/about/swedenborg/bibliography.html
The Swedenborg Society, a British Foundation, is another major publisher:
http://www.swedenborg.org.uk/bookshop
Swedenborg’s Influence:
This site offers an impressive list of people who read and admired Swedenborg, and a few true believers (including Helen Keller and John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman):
http://www.newchurch.org/about/swedenborg/influence.html
Church Organizations:
The General Church of the New Jerusalem (U.S.), the largest denomination, and runs a college and theological school in suburban Philadelphia. It is relatively conservative, devoted to a literal approach to Swedenborg’s works:
The Swedenborgian Church in North America (U.S.), the world’s oldest denomination, dating from 1817. It is more liberal than the General Church, with a more interpretive stance toward Swedenborg: http://www.swedenborg.org/Home.aspx
The Lord’s New Church (U.S.), established as an offshoot of the General Church. It regards Swedenborg’s works as a Third Testament, equivalent to the Old and New Testaments, opening it to an internal understanding:
http://www.thelordsnewchurch.com/
The Swedenborgian presence in the U.K.:
http://www.generalconference.org.uk/
An affiliate of the General Church of the New Jerusalem in Australia: