We all know (or think we know) what affection is: It is simply
liking someone or something, taking joy in it. It is not as big and serious a deal as “loving” something, and it doesn’t necessarily have to make a lot of sense -- it’s just something that makes us happy.
But Swedenborg lends some significant weight to the idea of affection, at times stating that angels are nothing other than affections, that we in this world are affections, and that the good things we do are forms of affection. That seems like a lot to hang on a rather casual idea.
So it may not be surprising that Swedenborg has a rather specific (and quite beautiful) definition of “affection,” which illustrates the importance of the role it plays. The book Divine Love says that “by affections are meant the continuations and derivations of love. Love may be compared to a fountain, and affections to the streams issuing from it.”
That’s a neat image: We can imagine love as a large, sort of generalized pool -- we love the Lord, love people, love peace and goodness and joy. And from that pool flow small, specific rivulets that are affections for particular things. Maybe it is an affection for reading stories to children, maybe it is an affection for nurturing seeds into plants, maybe it is even an affection for solving tricky math problems -- each of them one little specific stream flowing from a great pool of love. They could have countless forms, and no one of them is so important on its own that it needs to be thought of as love, but they are all ways that love enters our lives.
And while each affection might seem in some way trivial, collectively they are hugely important. Love comes to us from the Lord, and is our inmost, but to become anything it must flow out into our minds and bodies. It does this through affection, somewhat like stretching out a finger to touch a button that sets the mind in motion. Then that affection becomes the inmost of a thought, and the thought can inspire action in the body, and the body can actually do something that expresses that affection and makes the world a better place.
Our affections, then, are no less than the pathways through which love coming from the Lord can pass into our minds and take form through our actions -- which is a pretty significant thing!
Passages from Swedenborg:
Divine Love (Whitehead) n. 9
By affections are meant the continuations and derivations of love. Love may be compared to a fountain, and affections to the streams issuing from it. Love may also be compared to the heart, and affections to the vessels leading out and continued from it; and it is well known that the vessels that convey blood from the heart resemble their heart in every point, so as to be as it were extensions of it - from this is the circulation of the blood from the heart through the arteries, and from the arteries into the veins, and back to the heart. So with affections; for these are derived and continued from love, and produce uses in forms, and in these proceed from the firsts of the uses to their ultimates, and from these they return to the love from which they started: from all which it is plain that affection is love in its essence; and that use is love in its form.
[2] The conclusion from this is, that the objects, that is, the ends of affections, are uses, therefore also their subjects are uses, and that the very forms in which affections exist are effects which are effigies of the affections; in which they proceed from the first end to the last, and from the last end to the first, and by them they perform their works, offices, and exercises.
From what has now been said, who cannot see that affection alone is not anything, but that it becomes something by being in use; and that affection for use is nothing but an idea, unless it be in form; and that affection for use in form is nothing but a potency, the affection first becoming something when it is in act? This act is the very use that is meant, which in its essence is affection.
Now, since affections are the essence of uses, and uses are the subjects of affections, it follows that there are as many affections as there are uses.
Divine Providence (Rogers) n. 198
198. We showed above that a person has no thought that does not spring from some affection of his life's love, and that thought is nothing but a form of affection. Since, then, a person sees his thought and cannot see the affection, affection being something he feels, it follows that from what he sees, which is caught up in the appearance, he decides that human prudence accomplishes all things, and this not from the affection, which does not come to view but is only felt. For affection displays itself only through some delight consciously felt and the pleasure of reasoning about it, and this pleasure and delight are then bound up with the thinking in people who from a love of self and a love of the world are impelled by a belief in their own prudence. The thought then drifts along in its delight like a boat in the current of a river, to which the boat's captain pays no attention, giving attention only to the sails that he spreads.
Divine Love (Whitehead) n. 16
- XVI.
Every man is an affection, for the reason that his life is love, and the continuations and derivations of love are what are called affections; consequently affections in themselves are loves, but subordinate to the general love as their lord or head. Since, therefore, life itself is love, it follows that each and all things of life are affections, and consequently that man himself is an affection.
Divine Love (Whitehead) n. 17
- XVII.
Since affection is the man himself, and use is its effect and work, and is as a field or theater for its exercise, and since affection is not found apart from its subject, even so the affection of man's life is not found apart from use; and since affection and use make one, so man, who is affection, is known as to his quality from use,-imperfectly and slightly in the natural world, but clearly and fully in the spiritual world. For the spiritual discloses the affection and all its particulars, since in its essence the spiritual is Divine love and Divine wisdom, and in its manifestation is the heat and the light of heaven; and these disclose the affections of uses, as the heat of the sun of the world discloses objects of the earth by odors and flavors, and its light discloses them by its various colors and distinctions of shade. Every man has eternal life according to his affection of use, for the reason that affection is the man himself; consequently such as the affection is, such is the man.
[2] But affection of use in general is of two kinds; there is the spiritual affection of use and there is the natural affection of use. In external form the two are alike, but in internal wholly unlike; for this reason they are not known the one from the other by men in the world, but are readily known by angels in heaven; for they are wholly opposite, since the spiritual affection of use gives heaven to man, while natural affection of use, without the spiritual, gives hell; for the natural affection of use looks only to honors and gains, thus to self and the world as ends, while spiritual affection of use looks to the glory of God and to uses themselves, thus to the Lord and the neighbor as ends.
Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 1904
- Sarai, Abram's wife, took. That this signifies the affection of truth, which in the genuine sense is "Sarai the wife," is evident from the signification of "Sarai," as being truth adjoined to good, and from the signification of a "wife," as being affection (explained above, n. 915, 1468). There are twoaffections distinct from each other,-affection of good, and affection of truth. When a man is being regenerated the affection of truth has the lead, for he is affected with truth for the sake of good; but when he has been regenerated the affection of good has the lead, and from good he is affected with truth. The affection of good is of the will; the affection of truth is of the understanding. Between these two affections the most ancient people instituted as it were a marriage. Good, or the love of good, they called man as a husband; truth, or the love of truth, they called man as a wife. The comparison of good and truth with marriage has its origin in the heavenly marriage.
[2] Regarded in themselves, good and truth have no life, but they derive their life from love oraffection. They are only instrumentalities of life; and such as is the love that affects the good and truth, such is the life; for the whole of life is of love, or affection. Hence it is that "Sarai the wife," in the genuine sense, signifies the affection of truth. And because in the case before us the intellectual desired the rational as an offspring, and because that which she speaks is of this desire or affection, it is therefore expressly said in this verse, "Sarai, Abram's wife, gave to Abram, her man," which there would have been no need of repeating if it did not involve such things in the internal sense, for in themselves these words would be superfluous.
Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 3849
[2] He who pays attention may also know, from the nature of man's understanding, that it is no understanding unless the will is in it; the life of the understanding being from the will. This again shows what truths without good are, namely, that they are no truths at all; and that truths derive their life from good; for truths belong to man's intellectual part, and good to his will part. From all this anyone can judge what faith (which is of truth) is without charity, which is of good; and that the truths of faith without the good of charity are dead; for as before said the amount and the quality of theaffection in truths, determine the amount and the quality of the life in them. But that truths nevertheless appear animated, even when there is no good of charity, is from the affections of the love of self and the love of the world, which have no life, except that which in the spiritual sense is called death, that is, infernal life. It is said affection, and thereby is meant that which is continuous of love.*
[3] From all this we can see that affections are means subservient to the conjunction of truth with good; and that affections are what introduce truths, and also dispose them into order-genuine affections, which are of love to the Lord and love toward the neighbor, into heavenly order; but evil affections, which are of the love of self and the love of the world, into infernal order; that is, into the opposite of heavenly order.
[4] The most external affections are those of the body, and are called appetites and pleasures; the next interior affections are those of the natural mind, and are called natural affections; but the internalaffections are those of the rational mind, and are called spiritual affections. To these last-spiritualaffections of the mind-doctrinal truths are introduced by means of exterior and most external, or natural and bodily affections.
Divine Love (Whitehead) n. 18
- XVIII.
THE WILL OF MAN IS HIS AFFECTION.
The will of man is his affection for the reason that the will of man is the receptacle of his love and the understanding the receptacle of his wisdom; and that which is the receptacle of love is also the receptacle of all affections, because affections are merely continuations and derivations of love, as has been said above. It is called the receptacle of love because love cannot be given with man except in a recipient form which is substantial; without such a form love would have no ability to effect, to reciprocate, and thereby to be permanent.
Divine Providence (Rogers) n. 194
194.�In the aforementioned treatises we demonstrated also that the life's love produces from itself subordinate loves, which we call affections; that these affections are exterior and interior; and that taken together they form as though a single realm or kingdom, in which the life's love is lord or king.
Moreover, we demonstrated, too, that these subordinate loves or affections attach to themselves partners�-�each one its own partner�-�interior affections taking as partners what are called perceptions, and exterior affections taking as partners what are called thoughts; and that each dwells with its own partner and so carries on the functions of its life.
Divine Providence (Rogers) n. 76
76.�Everyone with an unobstructed rationality can see and comprehend that without the appearance that it is his, a person cannot be moved by any affection for knowing, nor by any affection for understanding. For every delight and pleasure, thus everything pertaining to the will, springs from anaffection having to do with love. Who can wish to know something or understand something if he does not feel the pleasure of some affection? And who can have that pleasure of affection unless that whichaffects him appears to be his? If nothing were his, but everything another's, that is to say, if one were to infuse from his own affections something into the mind of another who lacked any affection for knowing or understanding as if of himself, would the other receive it? Indeed, could he receive it? Would he not be as something we term a brute or log?
Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 3080
- And the damsel was exceeding good to look upon. That this signifies the beauty of the affection of truth, is evident from the signification of a "damsel," as being an affection in which is innocence (see n. 3067). That "exceeding good to look upon" signifies beauty (here the beauty of the affection of truth, because it is said of the damsel) comes from the fact that all beauty is from good in which there is innocence. Good itself when it flows in from the internal man into the external, makes beauty; and from this is all human beauty. This may likewise be seen from the fact that no one is affected by the face of another, but by the affection which beams forth from the face; and that they who are in good are affectedby the affection of good which is there, and in the measure in which there is innocence in the good. Thus it is the spiritual in the natural which affects, but not the natural without the spiritual. In like manner they who are in good are affected by little children, who appear to them beautiful in proportion to the innocence of charity in their faces, gestures, and speech. (That goodness and charity are what form and cause beauty, may be seen above, n. 553.) Hence then it is that the "damsel exceeding good to look upon" signifies the beauty of the affection of truth in which there is good.
Who (or What) is Swedenborg?
The ideas on this site are based on the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th-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.”