Swedish scientist-turned-seer Emanuel Swedenborg developed a deep theology that emphasized personal growth as the path to heaven and the presence of God in all of life. This book brings together key sections from Swedenborg's most popular writings in one place. What happens to us after we die? Why is there evil and suffering in the world? What is our purpose in life? Swedenborg answers all these questions and more.

Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg talks about sexual relationships, both in and out of wedlock, and how they affect the spiritual development of the soul. Included are numerous accounts of his experiences in heaven. This edition is a reprint of a 1915 translation by Samuel M. Warren, revised by Louis H. Tafel.

Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg considered charity -- in the sense of doing good for others with no thought of reward -- one of the foundations of religious practice. This short, practical guide gives the reader a handbook for compassionate living.

In Divine Love and Wisdom, Swedish scientist-turned-seer Emanuel Swedenborg tackles the very nature of the universe, describing a loving God who is equally present with all people on earth—regardless of race or religion—and explores the underlying unity of all living things.

_Divine Providence_ is one of the major works of the Enlightenment scientist and religious seer Emanuel Swedenborg. It provides a coherent and satisfying solution to what has been called “the problem of evil”: How are God’s goodness and power reconcilable with evil’s presences in the larger world and in the human mind and heart? By tackling an array of issues that commonly undermine belief in God, including war, suffering, and inequality—and by revealing the wise and loving laws that lie (...) hidden behind these seemingly senseless phenomena—_Divine Providence _aims to restore our faith in the meaningfulness of the world. Despite its universal focus, _Divine Providence_ is also a highly practical book on the personal level, demonstrating how we can put aside negative attitudes and behaviors and grow into positive thought and action. This volume contains an introduction by Gregory R. Johnson that puts the work in the context of the history of philosophy. The New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg is a modern-language, scholarly translation of Swedenborg’s theological works. The series’ easy-to-read style retains the dignity, variety, clarity, and gender-inclusive language of Swedenborg’s original Latin, bringing his thought to life. Introductions and annotations by eminent, international scholars place Swedenborg’s writings in their historical context and illuminate obscure references within the text, enabling readers to understand and trace Swedenborg’s influence as never before. (shrink)

A new translation of Emanuel Swedenborg's short work The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine. In it, Swedenborg discusses our inner natures, how we can develop as spiritual people, and the true meaning of observances like baptism and the Holy Supper.

Published in 1763; describes God's purpose in creating the natural universe; explains spiritual laws by detailing the means, structure, method, and goal of creation.

This book undertakes the difficult task of bridging the transcendent vision of a perfectly loving God with the sometimes unloving world where we all live. It explores the classic problem of why evil exists, and shows how our inner life connects directly to the conflicts between heaven and hell.

Swedenborg's Principles of Usefulness presents a possibly unsuspected historical undercurrent that further evidences Emanuel Swedenborg's pervasive influence on a whole host of historical figures-from poets and artists to philosophers and statesmen-whose contributions to the evolution of self and society have resonated throughout time and into the present. Besides having an impact on individual thinkers, Swedenborg's ideas worked their way into the various social reform traditions that vitalized the American landscape during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. His concept (...) of usefulness, best demonstrated in the competing worldviews of the nation's liberal and conservative traditions, involved a commitment made by Swedenborgians, New Church members, and others to energize the nation and its people by envisaging the possibility of a much-desired Universal Human. (shrink)

The possible existence of extraterrestrial life led in the eighteenth century to a heated debate on the unique status of the human being and of Christianity. One of those who discussed the new scientific worldview and its implications for theology was the Swedish natural philosopher and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. This article discusses Swedenborg's astrotheological transformation, his use of theological arguments in his early cosmology, and his cosmogony that later on ended up in his use of contemporary natural philosophy (...) in his theology, especially concerning the question of the plurality of worlds. I will first sketch the astrotheology found in his natural philosophical works, and then turn to the astrotheology of his later spiritual teachings. In Swedenborg's works we find teleological arguments and a stress on the universality of the divine creation and Christianity, as well as anthropomorphic descriptions of extraterrestrial life. By reconciling contemporary astronomical ideas, among others the concept of the plurality of worlds, with Christian dogmas, Swedenborg refuted deistic conclusions that Jesus was merely a mortal, while at the same time keeping his belief in the modern astronomical worldview. (shrink)

The relation between Emanuel Swedenborg and Immanuel Kant has been the subject of many discussions. The chief aim of this paper is not to elucidate this question from an historical point of view, but to compare the teachings of the two thinkers, as those teachings have come to us. Kant's "Träme eines Geistersehers" embodies a very unfavourable opinion about Swedenborg. It is a curious circumstance, that this judgement is not based on decisive arguments. On the contrary, Swedenborg's (...) fundamental doctrines about the existence of a spiritual world and the communication between the living and the dead, are accepted by Kant as plausible. Du Prel and others have concluded, that Kant was a Swedenborgian in his heart, and that his negative attitude was due to the fear of losing his scientific reputation. A careful consideration of the two philosophical systems does not tend to bear out this opinion; nevertheless, such a comparative study is very instructive. In the mental development of the two thinkers there are remarkable analogies. Both were occupied with the great problems of God and the human soul; and both were disappointed by the leading philosophical and theological doctrines of their days. To Swedenborg those doctrines seemed to lead straightforwardly to naturalism and atheism. Kant was struck by the diversity of the opinions expressed and by the succession of heterogeneous doctrines without lasting results. But the reactions of the two men in these circumstances were different. In his cosmological and anatomical works Swedenborg aims at acquiring a comprehensive view of the Universe, in which view God and the soul should obtain their proper places. When he had reached the age of about 55 years, a crisis set in, which he described as "the opening of his spiritual senses". From that time he could see the spiritual world and speak with its inhabitants; he could study the workings of God and of the soul with the help of living experience. Kant raised the question, whether there are departments of knowledge in which certainty is attainable, and what is the ground of this certainty. His answer is, that the fundamental propositions of mathematical physics are absolutely certain. The ground lies in the fact, that these propositions are not derived from experience, but that they are "synthetic judgments a priori". They express the workings of the "categories" and "forms of intuition". by means of which the mind constructs, out of a chaos of sense-impressions, the ordered universe of science. Of objects to which these propositions do not apply, e.g. God and the soul, no certain knowledge is possible. This precludes the knowledge of "another world", fundamentally different from our ordinary world. So there seems to be an irreconcilable opposition between the teachings of Kant and of Swedenborg, But further considerations tend to lessen this contrast. Notwithstanding his own teaching, Kant accepted a life after death and he even speculated on it. If we follow this example, we come to remarkable conclusions. It is reasonable to suppose, that the spirits, who have been men, use the same categories as we do. Then out of the impressions which reach them, they will construct a world built on the same pattern as our earthly world. So life before and after death will not be very different. And this is precisely Swedenborg's teaching. This may be confirmed by the experiences of our dream-life. In dreams, our mind out of different impressions builds a world closely resembling our ordinary world. The spiritual world, as described by Swedenborg, presents many analogies with the world of our dreams. Now it is a very remarkable circumstance, that modern physics has been under the necessity of modifying the system of categories as described by Kant. In quantum mechanics the connection between cause and effect is less stringent than in classical mechanics. This adds fresh interest to the study of a system like that of Swedenborg, where quantitative laws are largely replaced by qualitative laws. (shrink)

SummaryThe celebrated Swedish natural philosopher and visionary theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) devoted major efforts to the establishment of a reliable method for the determination of longitude at sea. He first formulated a method, based on the astronomical observation of lunar position, while in London in 1710–12. He issued various versions of the method, both in Latin and in Swedish, throughout his career. In 1766, at the age of 78, he presented his scheme for judgment by the Board of Longitude (...) in London. The rich archive of Swedenborg's career allows an unusually detailed historical analysis of his longitude project, an analysis rather better documented than that available for the host of contemporary projectors who launched longitude schemes, submitted their proposals to the Board of Longitude, and have too often been ignored or dismissed by historians. This analysis uses the longitude work to illuminate key aspects of Swedenborg's wider enterprises, including his scheme to set up an astronomical observatory in southern Sweden to be devoted to lunar and stellar observation, his complex attitude to astronomical and magnetic cosmology, and his attempt to fit the notion of longitude into his visionary world-view. Swedenborg's programme also helps make better sense of the metropolitan and international networks of diplomatic and natural philosophical communication in which the longitude schemes were developed and judged. It emerges that his longitude method owed much to the established principles of earlier Baroque and Jesuit natural philosophy while his mature cosmology sought a rational and enlightened model of the universe. (shrink)

In 2010, a scholarly conference on Emanuel Swedenborg’s ideas and influence was held at the Center for the History of Science at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. The conference was a celebration a recently completed digital catalog of the academy’s Swedenborg archive, which in 2006 was designated as part of UNESCO’s World Memory program. This was the first time that an academic conference on Swedenborg was hosted by a non-Swedenborgian institution. The conference attracted presenters (...) from all over the world, including some top scholars. Papers were divided into three categories. “Content” describes Swedenborg’s thought, from his use of spheres in his scientific writings to his views on sexuality and marriage to analyses of his theological writings. “Context” explores his times, putting Swedenborg in the context of eighteenth-century philosophy and looking at the organization of the earliest Swedenborgian church. “Contribution” looks at Swedenborg’s influence on philosophy and the arts, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Czeslaw Milocz to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and William James. These papers present a rare insight into Swedenborg. Although only a limited number of attendees were invited to the conference, now the research is available to all. (shrink)

This article argues that contrary to a received interpretation, Emanuel Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspondences, according to which each empirical reality has a corresponding spiritual reality, is closer to Spinozistic monism than Neoplatonic idealism. According to the former, there is only one substance: God, which we can cognize through its spir­itual and material aspects. According to the latter, the material world consists of substances that receive their form through participation in the ideas of the spiri­tual world. The article will show (...) that although some of Swedenborg’s claims can appear as expressing Neoplatonic idealism, his reading of the Bible as a guide for moral improvement, his rejection of the religious mysteries that cannot be rationally understood, his various examples of correspondences, his view that we can cognize God by studying the correspondences, and his definition of God as the only substance, make evident that he does not consider the spiritual realities ideas in the Neoplatonic sense. The article will interpret Swedenborg to think that the spiritual realities are learned concepts that enable us to describe and experience the world as having spiritual significance and thus acquire a fuller cognition of God. (shrink)

Emanuel Swedenborg, wer kennt ihn heute noch? Wer weiss, dass dieser schwedische Polyhistor tiefe Spuren im europäischen Geistesleben hinterlassen hat? Im Verlauf des Buches soll erklärt werden, wie deutsche Philosophen, Theologen und Literaten den Schweden rezipiert haben. Dabei wird aber auch die Frage gestellt, ob man wirklich Swedenborg als den originellen Theosophen ansehen kann, wenn man seine Lehre im Zusammenhang mit der europäischen Philosophie und Theologie sieht. Denn allein von daher kann und muss die Frage beantwortet werden, ob (...) man im Endeffekt de facto von einer Rezeption sprechen kann. (shrink)

This year is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 - 1772). Although he worked in the eighteenth century, his investigations into the nature of physical, physiological and spiritual processes are still relevant today, although they are not as widely known as they deserve. In this article, I will briefly describe the stages in Swedenborg's life, and outline his mature teachings with particular relevance to what is relevant to the concerns of contemporary science, and to (...) the concerns of those wishing to extend that science. (shrink)

In this meticulous study, Wouter Hanegraaff examines the structure, themes, and development of Emanuel Swedenborg's massive work _Secrets of Heaven_, published between 1749 and 1756. Written as a work of biblical exegesis, Swedenborg also interpolated material on his visionary experiences, which have long fascinated readers. In the second part of the study, Dr. Hanegraaff examines the contemporary reception of the multi-volume work, particularly the critical reactions of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. He finds that Swedenborg's biblical (...) exegesis, so important in his divine calling, was largely ignored in favor of the mystical experiences. (shrink)

Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg wrote volumes upon volumes based on the understanding he gained through visits to the spiritual world and from conversations with its inhabitants. For new readers of Swedenborg, knowing where to start and what to read can present an insurmountable task. This volume is a good starting point and provides samples of some of his most powerful writings, now available in new, contemporary translations. What happens to our souls after we die? What is (...) the afterlife like? What is the nature of God? Of evil? What can we do during our lives to help guide us to heaven? What kinds of answers can we find in the Bible? Selections from some of Swedenborg’s most popular works—_Heaven and Hell_, _Divine Love and Wisdom_, _Divine Providence_, _Secrets of Heaven_, and _True Christianity_—answer these questions and more. Ideal for those new to Swedenborg’s theology, _A Swedenborg Sampler_ offers tastes from a rich smorgasbord of spiritual insight. (shrink)

This article provides the first extensive study of Emanuel Swedenborg’s (1688–1772) views on Africans and slavery. Although significant scholarship has been devoted to Swedenborg’s influence on the British abolitionist movement in the 1780s-1790s, comparably little has been written on the ideas and context which inspired this influence in the first place. This article explores Swedenborg’s ties to networks and debates about African evangelization, colonization, and slavery during the neglected period of the Swedish Age of Liberty (1719–1772). It (...) shows that Swedenborg was the first Swede to condemn slavery, as early as 1741, explains why he regarded slavery as a divine punishment in the afterlife for European missionaries, and why he presented sub-Saharan Africans as superior, in contrast to the dominant dismissive views of Linnaeus, Bäck, Kant, or Buffon. Like most Lutherans of his time, Swedenborg did not advocate the abolition of slavery, yet within a generation his provocative views about African superiority and spiritual emancipation were used by his followers to articulate their abolitionist agenda. Swedenborg’s millenarian doctrines more broadly re-harnessed biblical traditions about Africa and tropes about the bon sauvage, in a counter-example to narratives about the trope’s decline in the second half of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

German philosopher Immanuel Kant had a complicated view of the writings of Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. Although Kant wrote a book that was harshly satiric of Swedenborg's ideas, later in life he appeared to reverse this opinion. Florschutz discusses this tension in Kant's thought in this short monograph.

The relation between Emanuel Swedenborg and Immanuel Kant has been the subject of many discussions. The chief aim of this paper is not to elucidate this question from an historical point of view, but to compare the teachings of the two thinkers, as those teachings have come to us. Kant's "Träme eines Geistersehers" embodies a very unfavourable opinion about Swedenborg. It is a curious circumstance, that this judgement is not based on decisive arguments. On the contrary, Swedenborg's (...) fundamental doctrines about the existence of a spiritual world and the communication between the living and the dead, are accepted by Kant as plausible. Du Prel and others have concluded, that Kant was a Swedenborgian in his heart, and that his negative attitude was due to the fear of losing his scientific reputation. A careful consideration of the two philosophical systems does not tend to bear out this opinion; nevertheless, such a comparative study is very instructive. In the mental development of the two thinkers there are remarkable analogies. Both were occupied with the great problems of God and the human soul; and both were disappointed by the leading philosophical and theological doctrines of their days. To Swedenborg those doctrines seemed to lead straightforwardly to naturalism and atheism. Kant was struck by the diversity of the opinions expressed and by the succession of heterogeneous doctrines without lasting results. But the reactions of the two men in these circumstances were different. In his cosmological and anatomical works Swedenborg aims at acquiring a comprehensive view of the Universe, in which view God and the soul should obtain their proper places. When he had reached the age of about 55 years, a crisis set in, which he described as "the opening of his spiritual senses". From that time he could see the spiritual world and speak with its inhabitants; he could study the workings of God and of the soul with the help of living experience. Kant raised the question, whether there are departments of knowledge in which certainty is attainable, and what is the ground of this certainty. His answer is, that the fundamental propositions of mathematical physics are absolutely certain. The ground lies in the fact, that these propositions are not derived from experience, but that they are "synthetic judgments a priori". They express the workings of the "categories" and "forms of intuition". by means of which the mind constructs, out of a chaos of sense-impressions, the ordered universe of science. Of objects to which these propositions do not apply, e.g. God and the soul, no certain knowledge is possible. This precludes the knowledge of "another world", fundamentally different from our ordinary world. So there seems to be an irreconcilable opposition between the teachings of Kant and of Swedenborg, But further considerations tend to lessen this contrast. Notwithstanding his own teaching, Kant accepted a life after death and he even speculated on it. If we follow this example, we come to remarkable conclusions. It is reasonable to suppose, that the spirits, who have been men, use the same categories as we do. Then out of the impressions which reach them, they will construct a world built on the same pattern as our earthly world. So life before and after death will not be very different. And this is precisely Swedenborg's teaching. This may be confirmed by the experiences of our dream-life. In dreams, our mind out of different impressions builds a world closely resembling our ordinary world. The spiritual world, as described by Swedenborg, presents many analogies with the world of our dreams. Now it is a very remarkable circumstance, that modern physics has been under the necessity of modifying the system of categories as described by Kant. In quantum mechanics the connection between cause and effect is less stringent than in classical mechanics. This adds fresh interest to the study of a system like that of Swedenborg, where quantitative laws are largely replaced by qualitative laws. (shrink)

Ibn Arabi y Swedenborg son dos pensadores ideales del movimiento que llamamos ''filosofía figurativa'', es decir. un pensamiento que se caracteriza por una sistematización de la realidad utilizando figuras, imágenes e ilustraciones, en lugar de utilizar conceptos. Eso significa implícitamente una experiencia del mundo y de Dios determinada por las observaciones personales y el pluralismo ontológico. Por lo tanto, Ibn Arabi y Swedenborg son vistos como representantes de una espiritualidad alejada del principio de incertidumbre y del absoluto único.