The 20th century yielded some astonishing, mind-bending insights into the nature of reality. Einstein stood science on its ear by proposing that matter (physical stuff) is made of energy, and that time and space are fluid things that respond to energy. Neils Bohr and others introduced quantum mechanics, which showed that everything is made of tiny particles which behave in baffling ways, jumping in space, refusing to be measured, and changing their behavior when they are observed. Edwin Hubble and others noted that the universe is expanding, and posited that it must have begun as one point - a point without space and without time but with near-infinite energy, which expanded to launch the universe in what came to be called the Big Bang.
Swedenborg, written in the 18th century, talks about divinity being "in all space non-spatially" and "in all time non-temporally," and posits that love is the ultimate substance, given form to create our world - concepts Einstein would likely recognize. It also talks about an ongoing, ceaseless spiritual creation in which reality springs full-formed from thought, with a sense of distance and time dictated fully by mental states - concepts that quantum scientists would likely recognize. And it says that physical reality can trace its roots back to an infinity without space and without time - concepts that students of the Big Bang would likely recognize.
To be sure, Swedenborg also departs from science, and on the most central point. It says all of this happened because of the Lord's humanity, with the express purpose of creating and supporting humans, who could be loved and could return love. Science does not really address the question why?, though it does attribute properties to nothingness (gravity must exist, essentially) to make the Big Bang work.
Swedenborg also says that because all creation sprang from - and is ultimately made of - the love that is the Lord's essence, it is an image and expression of the Lord from its grand sweep down to its least details. That's a beautiful and purposeful idea that is only weakly echoed in the scientific idea that reality is what it is because its essential forces are in a precise balance that makes it possible.
A couple of things should be clear from this. For one, Swedenborg demonstrates an astonishing level of foresight into science that would not exist until a century and a half later. For two, its idea of creation is a lot closer to science than it is to biblical literalism, which looks at Genesis as natural history instead of spiritual history (as Swedenborg does).
Swedenborg's description of creation is scattered through various passages and is often tangential (perhaps because the concepts and language to express them did not really exist yet?), but the essence is this:
The Lord is love itself, and that love is substance itself. Love is expressed through wisdom itself, and that wisdom is form itself. That is true outside of time and space, infinite and eternal. Love needs conjunction - needs an object, something to love - so love through wisdom expressed itself in specific forms -- ideas of form, akin to thought or imagination, but on a level too exalted for us to conceive. Those ideas were from the Lord and of the Lord, but were not the Lord - they were something separate. Those ideas formed spiritual reality, a reality we might put in the realm of consciousness, a reality that exists in idea rather than in physical matter. As the Lord's love extended, the ideas of spiritual reality expressed themselves in forms that created physical reality. So physical reality is also from the Lord and of the Lord, but its forms are not the Lord, and come from spiritual forms, which are also not the Lord. This creates enough separation for people to exist as sentient beings with consciousness of their own and the ability to exercise free will. Everything else exists as lesser expressions that support our existence.
Why was this important? There's a beautiful passage (Divine Love and Wisdom n. 170) which says that the goal of reality is union between Creator and creation, and this "does not happen unless there are subjects in which his divinity can be at home, so to speak, subjects in which it can dwell and abide." That's a moving thought - our purpose, the whole reason for our existence, is to be homes for the divine. It's rather amazing.
Another interesting aspect of creation is the nature of spiritual reality. Elevated above the limitations of physical reality, it is completely responsive to the thoughts and feelings of angels, with their conceptions of time, space and physical surroundings - and even their interactions with each other - being produced by mental states, freed from physical constraints. This might sound a bit ephemeral, but we know that while our experiences are largely dictated by physical reality, the experiences themselves are actually mental: The proverbial tree falling in the forest does NOT make a sound, because vibrations in the air do not become a sound until there is a mind to interpret them as sound. Spiritual reality is also a mental experience, but one freed from the confines and dictates of the physical world. In a way it's like having a dream that you can control and share, and from which you don't wake up.
Passages from Swedenborg
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 283
283. People who think rationally and clearly see that the universe was not created from nothing because they see that nothing can arise from nothing. Nothing is simply nothing, and to make something out of nothing is self-contradictory. Anything that is self-contradictory is in conflict with the light of truth that comes from divine wisdom, and if something is not from divine wisdom, it is not from divine omnipotence either.
Everyone who thinks rationally and clearly also sees that everything has been created out of a substance that is substance in and of itself. This is the essential being from which everything that exists can arise. Since only God is substance in and of itself and is therefore essential being, it follows that there is no other source of the arising of things.
Many people do see this, since reason enables them to. However, they do not dare argue it for fear that they might arrive at the thought that the created universe is God because it is from God--either that, or the thought that nature is self-generated, which would mean that its own core is what we call "God." As a result, even though many people have seen that the only source of the arising of everything is God and God's essential being, they have not dared move beyond the first suggestion of this. If they did, their minds might get ensnared in a so-called Gordian knot with no possibility of escape. The reason they could not disentangle their minds is that they were thinking about God and God's creation of the universe in temporal and spatial terms, terms proper to the physical world, and no one can understand God and the creation of the universe by starting from the physical world. Anyone whose mind enjoys some inner light, though, can understand the physical world and its creation by starting from God, because God is not in time and space.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 285
285. The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah, could not have created the universe and everything in it except as a person. If people have an earthly, physical concept of the Divine-Human One, they are utterly incapable of understanding how a human God could create the universe and everything in it. They think to themselves, "How can a human God wander from place to place through the universe creating things?" or "How can God speak the word from one place, and things be created as soon as the word is spoken?" Things like this come to mind when people say that God is a person if people are thinking about the Divine-Human One the same way they do about earthly people, and when their thought about God is based on nature and its attributes, time and space. On the other hand, if their thought about God is not based on earthly people, not based on nature and its space and time, they grasp clearly that the universe could not have been created unless God were a person.
Focus your thought on the angelic concept of God, of a human God, and as far as you can, eliminate any concept of space, and you will be close to the truth in your thinking.
Some scholars have actually grasped the fact that spirits and angels are not in space because they conceive of spirit as being apart from space. Spirit is like thought. Even though our thought is within us, it enables us to be present somewhere else, no matter how far away. This is the state of spirits and angels, who are people even in respect to their bodies. They seem to be wherever their thought is because in the spiritual world place and distance are apparent only, and are in complete accord with what people are thinking about with interest.
We can tell from this that the God who is visible as a sun far above the spiritual world, who cannot be given any appearance of space, is not to be thought of in spatial terms. In that case, we can understand that the universe was not created out of nothing but out of God, and that God's human body is not to be thought of as large or small or of some particular height because these are matters of space. This means that God is the same from first to last, in the largest and smallest things. It means also that this Person is at the heart of everything created, but nonspatially so.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 303
303. No one who thinks that there are constant intermediate steps between what is first and what is final, and that nothing can come into being except from some antecedent, and ultimately from what is first, can fail to agree that the material substances on earth have been brought forth by the sun by means of its atmospheres. What is first is the spiritual world's sun, and what is first relative to that sun is the Divine-Human One, or the Lord.
Since the atmospheres are those relatively early things by which the sun makes itself present in outermost things, and since those relatively early things are constantly diminishing as they work and extend themselves all the way to their limits, it follows that when their action and expansion come to rest at their limits, they become the kinds of material substance that we find on earth, retaining from the atmospheres that gave rise to them a tendency and effort to produce useful functions.
People who propose a creation of the universe and everything in it with no constant intermediate steps from what is first cannot help but formulate theories that are fragmentary and disconnected from actual causes. When these theories are explored by a mind that probes the matter more deeply, they look not like houses but like a pile of rubble.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 305
305. There is nothing of absolute Divinity in the material substances that make up earth, but they are still derived from absolute Divinity. On the basis of the origin of earth as described in the preceding section, we may conclude that there is no trace of absolute Divinity in the earth's material substances; they are completely devoid of absolute Divinity. There are, as already stated [184, 189], boundaries and limits of the atmospheres, whose warmth lapses into cold, light into darkness, and activity into torpor. Still, by being connected with their source, the substance of the spiritual sun, they retain something that is in that sun from Divinity. As noted above in 291-298 [291-294], this was the aura that envelops the Divine-Human One, the Lord. The material substances of earth arise from this aura by extension from the sun, by means of the atmospheres.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 156
156. We cannot say that the creation of the universe and everything in it happened from one place to another or from one moment in time to another, that is, gradually and sequentially. We must say that it happened from eternity and from infinity, and not from an eternity of time, since there is no such thing, but from a nontemporal eternity that is the same as Divinity, and not from an infinity of space, since there is no such thing, but from a nonspatial infinity that is also the same as Divinity.
I know that all this transcends any mental images that arise in physical light, but they do not transcend mental images that arise in spiritual light. There is no trace of space and time in these latter images. Actually, this does not completely transcend images that arise in physical light, since everyone would agree on the basis of reason that there is no such thing as an infinity of space. The same holds for eternity, which is an infinity of time. If you say "to eternity," this can be understood in temporal terms; but if you say "from eternity," that is incomprehensible unless you banish time.
True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 75
75
The Creation of the Universe
Because this first chapter is on God the Creator, there should also be some mention of his creation of the universe, just as the next chapter on the Lord the Redeemer also needs to address redemption. We cannot, however, get a fair idea of the creation of the universe unless some preliminary global concepts first bring our intellect into a state of perception. These global concepts are as follows:
[2] (1) There are two worlds: a spiritual world where there are angels and spirits, and a physical world where there are people.
(2) Both worlds have suns. The sun in the spiritual world is pure love from Jehovah God, who is within that sun. The spiritual sun radiates heat and light. The essence of the heat it radiates is love, and the essence of the light is wisdom. That heat and that light have an effect on people's wills and intellects. The heat affects the will; the light affects the intellect.
The sun in the physical world is pure fire. As a result, the heat and the light from it are dead. Physical heat and light serve as a clothing for spiritual heat and light and as a device through which spiritual heat and light reach people.
[3] (3) In the spiritual world both the heat and the light that radiate from the sun are substantial and are called spiritual. So are all the things in that world that come about from that heat and light.
In the physical world, these two comparable things, the heat and the light, that radiate from this sun are material and are called physical. So are all the things in this world that come about from this heat and light.
[4] (4) In both worlds there are three levels. They are called vertical levels. These result in the three areas where the three angelic heavens are set up. They also result in the three levels of the human mind, which correspond to the three angelic heavens. Everything else both here and there also has three levels.
[5] (5) There is a correspondence between things in the spiritual world and things in the physical world.
[6] (6) There is a design that has been built into each and every thing in each world.
[7] (7) First we need to get an overall idea about the above. Otherwise the human mind, in its utter ignorance of all this, easily slips into the idea that the universe was created by nature; and only out of respect for the authority of the church will it say that nature was created by God. If people do not know how God created nature, when they take a deep look at the subject they slip headfirst into a materialist philosophy that denies God.
Divine Providence (Dole) n. 202
202. The Lord's divine providence is universal by virtue of its attention to the smallest details, specifically through his having created the universe in such a way that an infinite and eternal process of creation by him could occur in it. This creation takes place by the Lord's forming a heaven from humans, a heaven that in his sight is like a single individual that is his own image and likeness. I have explained in 27-45 above that the heaven formed from humanity looks like this in the Lord's sight, and that this was the purpose of creation. I have also explained that Divinity focuses on what is infinite and eternal in everything it does (56-69 [46-69]). The infinite and eternal goal that the Lord focuses on in forming his heaven from humanity is that this heaven should keep growing without limit and forever, so that in this way he might constantly dwell in the purpose of his creation.
It is this infinite and eternal creation that the Lord provided for in creating the universe, and he is constantly present in that creation through his divine providence.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 329
329. We can tell what a useful function is from the goal of the creation of the universe. The goal of the creation of the universe is to bring about an angelic heaven; and since an angelic heaven is the goal, so is humanity or the human race, since that is where heaven comes from. It follows, then, that everything that has been created is an intermediate goal, and that the functions are useful in the sequence, on the level, and in the specific way that they relate to humanity, and through humanity to the Lord.
True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 54
54
Explaining the type of design that was built into the universe at creation would take many volumes. (A little sketch of it will appear under the next subheading, on creation [75-80]).
One point that needs to be understood is this: Each and every thing in the universe was created with its own design so that it would continue to exist on its own. This happened from the very beginning so that each thing could become part of the overall design of the universe. The purpose is that the individual designs shall continue to exist within the universal design so that all are one.
Now for some examples. The human being was created with a design of its own, and also each individual part of a human being was created with a design of its own. The head has its own design, the body has its. The heart, the lungs, the liver, the pancreas, and the stomach have their own designs. Every organ of motion called a muscle has its own design. Every organ of sensation, such as the eye, the ear, and the tongue, has its own design. In fact, there is not a capillary or a fibril in the human body that lacks its own design. Yet all these countless parts connect with the overall design and join up with it in such a way that together they form one overall design.
The same applies to all other things. A mere list of them is enough for illustration. Every animal on land, every bird in the sky, every fish in the sea, every reptile, in fact, every insect even down to a grub has its own design built in from creation. Likewise every tree, shrub, bush, and vegetable has its own design. Furthermore, every stone and every mineral, even down to every type of dust on the earth has its own design.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 155
155. Creation itself cannot be described intelligibly unless you banish space and time from your thoughts; but it can be understood if you banish them. If you can, or to the extent that you can, banish them and keep your mind on an image that is devoid of space and time. If you do, you will notice that there is no difference between the largest expanse and the smallest, and you will inevitably have the same image of the creation of the universe and of the creation of any particular feature of the universe. You will see that the diversity in created things arises from the fact that there are infinite things in the Divine-Human One and therefore unlimited things in that sun that is the first emanation from him, and those unlimited things emerge in the created universe as their reflections, so to speak. This is why there cannot be one thing identical to another anywhere. This is the cause of that variety of all things that meet our eyes in the context of space in this physical world, and in the appearance of space in the spiritual world. The variety is characteristic of both aggregates and details.
Divine Providence (Dole) n. 323
323. 1. The ultimate purpose of creation is a heaven from the human race. I have explained in Heaven and Hell (published in London in 1758) and earlier in the present work [27] that heaven is made up solely of individuals who have been born as people on earth; and since these are the only inhabitants of heaven, it follows that the ultimate purpose of creation is a heaven from the human race.
I explained in 27-45 above that this is the purpose of creation, but this will become even clearer from the following details. (a) Everyone is created to live forever. (b) Everyone is created to live forever in a blessed state. (c) This means that everyone is created to go to heaven. (d) Divine love cannot do otherwise than intend this and divine wisdom cannot do otherwise than provide for this.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 171
171. Creation is constantly pressing toward this final goal by means of this trio of purpose, means, and result, because these three elements are in God the Creator, as just stated. Further, Divinity is in all space nonspatially (69-72) and is the same in the largest and smallest things (77-82). We can see from this that the entire creation, in its general tending toward its final goal, is the intermediate end, relatively speaking. God the Creator is constantly drawing up out of the earth forms of service in their sequence, a sequence that culminates in us, who are from the earth as far as our bodies are concerned. By accepting love and wisdom from the Lord, we are then raised up and furnished with all the means for the acceptance of love and wisdom. Moreover, we are so created that we can accept them if we are only willing to.
What has now been said enables us to see, if only in a general way so far, that the goal of creation becomes manifest in final things, the goal being the return of all things to their Creator, and union.
True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 67
67
Before creation, God was love itself and wisdom itself. That love and that wisdom had a drive to be useful. Without usefulness, love and wisdom are only fleeting abstract entities, and they do indeed fly away if they do not move in the direction of usefulness. The two prior things without the third [love and wisdom without usefulness] are like birds flying across a great ocean that eventually become worn out, fall into the ocean, and drown.
God created the universe so that usefulness could exist. Therefore the universe could be called a theater of useful functions. Because we, the human race, are the principal reason for creation, it follows that absolutely everything else was created for our sake. All aspects of the divine design have been brought together and concentrated in us so that God can perform the highest forms of useful service through us.
True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 78
[3] "The purpose of showing you these things was for you to be able to see the whole of creation from a particular instance. God is absolute love and absolute wisdom. His love includes an infinite number of feelings. His wisdom includes an infinite number of perceptions. The correspondences of those feelings and perceptions are all the things that appear on earth. This is where the birds and animals come from. This is where the trees and shrubs come from. This is where the grains and crops come from. This is where the plants and grasses come from.
"God is not extended but he is everywhere in what is extended. He is in the universe from beginning to end. Because he is omnipresent, correspondences of the qualities of his love and wisdom are found everywhere in the physical world. In our world, called the spiritual world, there are similar correspondences surrounding those who receive feelings and perceptions from God. The difference is that in our world God creates things of this kind in a moment to match the feelings of angels, while in your world things like this were originally created in a similar way but there was a provision for their perennial renewal from generation to generation; and so creation goes on.
True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 46
46
6. These essentials of divine love were the reason the universe was created, and they are the reason it is maintained. By examining and scrutinizing the three essentials of divine love, one can come to see that they were the reason for creation. The first essential, loving others outside of himself, was a reason for creation in that the universe is outside God (just as the world is outside the sun). The universe is something to which God could extend his love and in which he could put his love into action and so find rest. We read that after God had created heaven and earth he rested; and that he made the Sabbath day for that reason (Genesis 2:23).
You can see that the second essential, God's wanting to be one with others, was also a reason for creation from the fact that people were created in the image and likeness of God. The "image" and the "likeness" mean that we were made as forms that are receptive to love and wisdom from God - forms that God could be one with, and on whose account he could be one with all the other things in the universe, which are all nothing but means. A connection with the final cause is also a connection with the intermediate causes. Genesis, the Book of Creation, makes it clear that all things were created for the sake of humankind (Genesis 1:28-30).
That the third essential, God's blessing others from himself, is a reason for creation you can see from the fact that the angelic heaven was provided for everyone who has let God's love in, a place where the blessings of all come from God alone.
The three essentials of God's love are the reason the universe is maintained as well, because maintaining is an ongoing creation, just as continuing to exist is the same as perpetually coming into being. Divine love is the same from eternity to eternity. The nature God's love has now and will have in the future is the same nature it had when creating the world.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 170
170. The grand purpose, or the purpose of all elements of creation, is an eternal union of the Creator with the created universe. This does not happen unless there are subjects in which his divinity can be at home, so to speak, subjects in which it can dwell and abide. For these subjects to be his dwellings and homes they must be receptive of his love and wisdom apparently of their own accord, subjects who will with apparent autonomy raise themselves toward the Creator and unite themselves with him. In the absence of this reciprocity, there is no union.
We are those subjects, people who can raise themselves and unite with apparent autonomy. I have already explained several times [4-6, 57, 68, 116] that we are subjects of this sort and that we are receptive of Divinity with apparent autonomy.
Through this union, the Lord is present in every work he has created, since in the last analysis everything has been created for our sake. As a result, the functions of all created things rise level by level from the lowest things to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source, as explained in 65-68 above.
Divine Love and Wisdom (Dole) n. 157
157. The physical world's sun is nothing but fire and is therefore dead; and since nature has its origin in that sun, nature is dead. In no respect whatever can creation itself be attributed to the physical world's sun: it is due entirely to the spiritual world's sun. This is because the physical world's sun is totally lifeless, while the spiritual world's sun is alive, being the first emanation of divine love and wisdom. Anything that is lifeless does not effect anything on its own, but is activated; so to attribute any aspect of creation to a lifeless sun would be to attribute the work of an artisan to the tool in the artisan's hand.
The physical world's sun is nothing but fire, with all its life removed. The spiritual world's sun is a fire that has divine life within it.
True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 53
53
God is the divine design because he is substance itself and form itself. He is substance because from him come all things that subsist, that came into existence in the past, and that are coming into existence now. He is form because every quality of [these] substances arose and arises from him. Quality comes from no other source than form.
Now, because God is the absolute, the first, and the only substance and form and is also the absolute and only love and the absolute and only wisdom, and because wisdom produces form on the basis of love, and the state and quality of the form depend on its design, it follows that God is the design itself. It also follows that from himself God imposed a design on the universe and on every single thing in it, and the design imposed was absolutely perfect because all that he created was good, as we read in Genesis, the Book of Creation.
(In its own place we will show that evil of every kind and hell itself came into existence after creation.)
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.”