Devil/Satan

Who (or What) is Swedenborg?

Satan and the devil are mentioned frequently in the Bible, with

"Satan" used mostly as a name and “the devil” or “devils” used more to describe a type of being. Not much background is offered, so people long ago seized on Isaiah 14:12-13, which refers to “Lucifer” trying to put his throne “above the stars of God,” being “cut down to earth” and being “fallen from heaven.” That grew into the story of a former archangel whose pride led him to challenge God, who then expelled him from heaven to become the prince of darkness and ruler of hell.

The trouble with that is that “Lucifer” is a fanciful translation at best; most modern scholars render it as “day-star” or “morning star,” and interpret the verses as a reference to the king of Babylon. No archangels, no Satan, just a linguistic grenade launched at one of Israel’s great enemies.

Swedenborg says that both “Satan” and “devil” are spiritual references to hell itself, and to the infernal lusts that exist both in hell and in potential within us. Specifically, “Satan” refers to the love of evil itself, the lowest state of all the hells; “devil” refers to the love of falsity and deceit, a slightly milder but still hellish state. So when the serpent in Revelation is referred to as “the Devil, and Satan,” it means both of the ruling loves of hell. And when Jesus is tempted in the wilderness (by the devil in some gospels, by Satan in others) he was actually facing the evil desires he had inherited along with his human body from his mother.

In fact, Swedenborg says that everyone in hell was once a person. There are no ruling demons or fallen angels to run things and torture people; people tend to torture each other by continually striving to do evil to each other. Hell is ruled by evil itself. Similarly, everyone in heaven was also once a person; there are no “created angels.” And heaven is ruled by love itself -- which is the Lord.

This makes sense if you think about it. If God could create angels who would be both free and good, why would he bother creating people? Just make more angels; they’re much better anyway. As for demons, the Lord is love itself and creates everyone for heaven; he could not create something evil any more than heat could choose to avoid one sector around a fire, or for light to skip one area in its shining. Evil is, in fact, not something that exists of itself; it is the lack of goodness, the rejection of love. God is existence; he could not create non-existence.

So contrary to popular belief and Christian mythology, there is no Satan lurking to spear you with his blood-red trident. There is, however, the potential for you to be satanic if you don’t turn to the Lord. So turn to the Lord!

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Passages from Swedenborg

Apocalypse Explained 740

[2] The reason why they are called the devil and Satan is, that the devil and Satan signify hell, the devil signifying that hell from which evils come, and Satan that hell from which falsities come; the latter hell is called Satan, because all who are in it are called satans, and the former hell is called the devil because all who are in it are called devils. That there was no devil or Satan who before the creation of the world had been an angel of light, and was afterwards cast down with his crew into hell, is evident from what has been said in Heaven and Hell (n. 311-316), under the head "Heaven and hell are from the human race."

True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 312

Devils and satans in hell have made clear to me the inner quality of people who have not been reformed by the Lord. Devils and satans constantly have it in mind to kill the Lord. Because they cannot achieve this, they try to kill people who are devoted to the Lord. Since they cannot accomplish this the way people in the world could, they attack people with every effort to destroy their souls, that is, to demolish the faith and goodwill they have. The actual hatred and desire for revenge inside these devils look like fires that are dark and fires that are bright. Their hatreds look like dark fires and their desires for revenge look like bright fires. These feelings are not in fact fires, but they look like fires.

One can sometimes glimpse the savagery of the devils' hearts in visual form in the air above those devils. It looks as if they are battling, slaughtering, and massacring angels. Their feelings of anger and hatred against heaven are the source of these dreadful daydreams.

For another thing, these devils and satans look at a distance like wild animals of every kind - tigers, leopards, wolves, foxes, dogs, crocodiles, and snakes of all kinds. When devils and satans see tame animals in symbolic forms, they imagine themselves attacking the animals and trying to slaughter them.

I have seen devils that looked like dragons and were standing next to women with babies whom the dragons were trying to devour, like the situation we find in Revelation 12. These portrayals represent the devils' hatred against the Lord and his new church.

People in the world who want to destroy the Lord's church are similar to thesedevils and satans, although it does not seem that way to others who know these people, because their bodies - the instruments with which they practice moral actions - absorb their desires and keep them hidden. To the angels, however, who look at their spirits, not their bodies, these people look like the devils just mentioned. Who could ever realize things like this if the Lord had not opened someones sight with the gift of looking into the spiritual world? Otherwise these points, along with many other things eminently worth knowing, would have remained forever hidden from the human race.

True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 713

The universal qualities mentioned above also have three opponents: the Devil, evil, and falsity. The Devil (which means hell) is against the Lord; evil is against goodness; and falsity is against truth. These three negative qualities work together. Wherever the Devil is, there you also have evil and falsity.

Heaven and Hell (Dole) n. 544

People in the world still believe that there is a devil who rules the hells and that he was created as an angel of light but was cast into hell with his gang after he led a rebellion. The reason for this belief is that the Word talks about the devil and Satan, and about Lucifer as well; and in these cases the Word is understood literally. However, in these passages the devil and Satan mean hell. The devilmeans the hell toward the rear where the worst people live, the people called evil demons; and Satan means the hell that is toward the front where the less malevolent people live, the people called evil spirits. Lucifer means the people who are from Babel or Babylon, the ones who extend their control all the way into heaven.

We can also see that there is no devil to whom the hells are subject from the fact that all the people who are in the hells, like all the people in the heavens, are from the human race (see 311-317), that there are millions there from the beginning of creation to the present day, and that everyone there is the kind of devil he or she became by opposition to the Deity while in the world (see above, 311-312).

Apocalypse Revealed (Rogers) n. 99

"'Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison.'" This symbolically means that their goodness of life will be infested by evils emanating from hell.

Being thrown into prison by the devil has this symbolic meaning because thedevil means a hell that is inhabited by people caught up in evils, and so abstractly the evil that exists there and that emanates from there (no. 97).

Apocalypse Revealed (Rogers) n. 550

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan. (12:9) This symbolizes those people meant by the dragon now turned away from the Lord to themselves and from heaven to the world, and so whose focus on their person made them sensual, who could not help but be caught up in the evils of their lusts and the resulting falsities, and who, in consequence of their separation from the Lord and heaven, became devils and satanic spirits.

Just who are meant by the dragon may be seen in no. 537. They are people who make God three entities and the Lord two, and put the Ten Commandments among works that do not lead to any salvation, and who are therefore called "that serpent of old," "the Devil and Satan." A serpent symbolizes someone whose carnal nature has made him sensual (no. 424), who has turned away from the Lord to himself and from heaven to the world. The Devil symbolizes people caught up in the evils attending lusts, and Satan people caught up for that reason in falsities (nos. 97, 153 fin., 856, 857*).

Of such a character also was the serpent that seduced Eve and Adam, as is apparent from its description and the curse on it (Genesis 3:1-5, 14, 15).

The dragon here is called the Devil and Satan as though the two were one individual, but it is called these because people in hell are all devils or satanic spirits, and consequently hell in its entirety is so labeled.

The ideas on this site are based on the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18^th-century Swedish scientist and theologian. Swedenborg claimed that his religious writings, the sole focus of the last three decades of his life, were done at the behest of the Lord himself, and constituted a revelation for a successor to the Christian Church.

In keeping with Swedenborg’s own statements, modern believers downplay his role as author, attributing the ideas to the Lord instead. For this reason they generally refer to Swedenborg’s theological works as “the Writings,” and some resist the label “Swedenborgian” as placing emphasis on the man rather than the message.

Since “the Writings” would be an unfamiliar term to new readers, we have elected to use the name “Swedenborg” as a label for those theological works, much as we might use “Isaiah” or “Matthew” to refer to books of the Bible. The intent, however, is not to attribute the ideas to Swedenborg, any more than we would attribute the divinity of the Bible to Isaiah the man or Matthew the man.

So when you read “according to Swedenborg” on this site, it’s really shorthand for “according to the theological works from the Lord through Swedenborg.” When you read “Swedenborg says,” it’s really shorthand for “the theological works of Swedenborg say.”