A steward – or manager in many modern translations – is someone who handles and oversees someone else’s possessions. They’re responsible for them and their use, but they don’t own them, don’t value them intrinsically the way their employers do.
It makes sense, then, that (according to Swedenborg) a “steward” in the Bible represents the “external Church” – the part of a church that oversees and enforces ritual and outward behavior, but has no concern for the desire for good and understanding or truth that are meant to lie within those external forms of worship.
Passages from Swedenborg
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 1795
- ‘And the steward of my house’ means the external Church. This is clear from the meaning in the internal sense of ‘steward of the house’, that is, in reference to the Church. The external Church is called ‘the steward of the house’ when the internal Church itself is ‘the house’ and the head of the household is the Lord. The position which the external Church occupies is nothing other than this, for all stewardship belongs to the external side of the Church, such as the performance of rituals and many other duties connected with the Temple and the Church itself, that is, Jehovah’s or the Lord’s House.
[2] The external things of the Church when they are without the internal things are of no value. It is to those internal things that they owe their existence, and in character they are the same as those internal things. The situation with them is as it is with man: with him what is external or bodily is in itself something valueless unless that which is internal exists to give it soul and life. As is the character therefore of that which is internal, so is the character of that which is external; or, as is the character of the disposition and mind (animus et mens), so is the worth of all the things which come forth through that which is external or bodily. The things of the heart make man, not those of the lips and gestures. It is the same with the internal things of the Church. Nevertheless the external things of the Church are as the external things with man, in that they serve as stewards or overseers; or what amounts to the same, the external or bodily man may be called the steward or overseer of the house when ‘the house’ is that which belongs to interior things. From this it is evident what ‘childless’ means, namely a time when no internal dimension of the Church exists, only an external, as it was at the time regarding which the Lord made complaint.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 1796
- ‘This Damascene, Eliezer’ is the external Church. This is clear from what has just been stated, and also from the meaning of ‘Damascene’. Damascus was the chief city of Syria where remnants of the worship of the Ancient Church existed, and from where Heber, or the Hebrew nation, came with whom none but the external dimension of the Church existed, as stated already in 1238, 1241. Thus no more then ‘the stewardship of the house’ existed with the nation. That within these words there is something of despair, and consequently of the Lord’s temptation, is evident from the words themselves, and also from the comfort which follows concerning the internal Church.