Emanuel Swedenborg

(né Swedberg) (January 29, 1688 – March 29, 1772) was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, mystic, and theologian. Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. Then at age fifty-six he entered into a spiritual phase of his life, where he experienced visions of the spiritual world and claimed to have talked with angels and spirits and visiting heaven and hell. In this, he was convinced of being directed by God, Jesus Christ to reveal the doctrine of His second coming.

Biography

Early life

Swedenborg's father Jesper Swedberg (1653–1735) had a modest background, but after studying theology and travelling abroad he was eloquent enough to impress the Swedish King Charles XI with his sermons in Stockholm. Through the King's influence he would later become professor of theology at Uppsala University and Bishop of Skara.

Jesper took interest in the beliefs of the dissenting Lutheran Pietist movement, which placed more emphasis on the virtues of love and communion with God than on sheer faith, which was the prevailing view of the Lutheran Church in Sweden. These beliefs were to have a major impact on his son Emanuel's spirituality, though they were unpopular among other Swedish churchmen of the time. Jesper was charged with being a pietist heretic, because his writings emphasized good deeds rather than the virtues of faith. Jesper also held the belief that angels and spirits were among us all the time. Emanuel never doubted this either. It would be his own guide as he became a seer.

Emanuel completed his university course at Uppsala, and in 1710 toured through the Netherlands, France, and Germany, before reaching London, where he would spend the next four years. At this time London was the largest city in the world, and the most liberal place in Europe for philosophical discussion and freedom of speech. It was also a flourishing center of scientific ideas and discoveries. Emanuel studied physics, mechanics, and philosophy, read and wrote poetry, and attended a lecture by Isaac Newton. Later in life Emanuel claimed to have met Newton in the spiritual world, where Newton confessed to him that he had been mistaken in his theory of colors. While in London, Emanuel developed a taste for the scientific life. He wrote to his benefactor and brother-in-law Eric Benzelius that he believed he might be destined to be a great scientist.

Scientific period

In 1715 Swedenborg returned to Sweden, where he was to devote himself to natural science and engineering projects for the next two decades. A first step was his noted meeting in the city of Lund, in 1716, where he met King Charles XII of Sweden who was sojourning between military expeditions. The Swedish inventor Christopher Polhem, who became a close friend of Swedenborg's, was also present. Swedenborg's purpose was to persuade the king to fund an observatory in northern Sweden. However, the warlike king did not consider this project important enough, but did appoint Swedenborg assessor-extraordinary on the Swedish board of mines (Bergskollegium) in Stockholm.

From 1716 to 1718 Swedenborg published a scientific periodical entitled Daedalus Hyperboreus which was a record of mechanical and mathematical inventions and discoveries. His reports on smelting and assaying were remarkable for their detail and for the comparisons drawn between Swedish and other methods. Two years later he distinguished himself at the king's siege of Halden in Norway by the invention of machines for the transport of boats and galleys overland from Strömstad to Iddefjord, a distance of fourteen miles.

In 1716 he fell in love with Christopher Polhem's daughter Emerentia Polhem (by then only 13 years old) and when she refused to engage him, her father produced a contract saying that she was to marry Swedenborg once she was old enough. Swedenborg was very fond of the deal and was devastated when the contract was stolen by Emerentia's brother Gabriel Polhem. Christopher tried to recover the contract, but when Swedenborg saw Emerentia's pain with the arranged marriage, he gave up his claim on her and subsequently broke up his relationship with the Polhem family. She was to be his only love ever. At the end of his life and after Emerentia's death in 1760, Swedenborg claimed to her relatives that he was in constant (spiritual) contact with her.Anteckningar av Svenska Qvinnor (page 309), by Wilhelmina Stålberg, 1864.

Upon the death of Charles XII, Queen Ulrika Eleonora ennobled Swedenborg and his siblings. It was common in Sweden during the 17th and 18th centuries for the children of bishops to receive this honour as a recognition of the services of the father. The family name was changed from Swedberg to Swedenborg.

In the parliamentary House of Knights, Swedenborg's contributions to political discussion were quite influential. He dealt with such subjects as the currency, the decimal system, the balance of trade and the liquor laws. The next few years were devoted to the duties and studies connected with his office. In 1724 he was offered the chair of mathematics at Uppsala University, but declined on the ground that it was a mistake for mathematicians to be limited to theory. He considered practical studies just as important.

Anatomical studies

In the 1730s Swedenborg became increasingly interested in spiritual matters and was determined to find a theory which would explain how matter relates to spirit. In 1734 he published Prodromus Philosophiae Ratiocinantis de Infinito, et Causa Finali Creationis, which attempted to explain how the finite is related to the infinite, and how the soul might be connected to the body.

In 1743, at the age of 55, Swedenborg requested a leave of absence to go abroad. His purpose was to gather source material for Regnum Animale (The Animal Kingdom or Kingdom of Life), a subject for which books were not readily available in Sweden. The aim of the book was to explain the soul from an anatomical point of view. During The Age of Enlightenment the tenets of materialism were increasingly accepted by scientists. According to this theory, mental and physical processes are rooted entirely in the physical world, thus denying the existence of a soul or an afterlife. Swedenborg sought to disprove materialism and all his anatomical research during the 1730s–1740s was dedicated to this end.

Discoveries

Swedenborg proposed, 150 years before any other scientist, that the activity of the brain was synchronous with respiration and not with the action of the heart or the blood circulation. He had arrived at the modern conception of the activity of the brain as the joint activity of its individual cells. The cerebral cortex and more specifically, the cortical elements (nerve cells), formed the seat of the activity of the soul. They were organized into subdivisions according to their various functions.

His views as to the physiological functions of the spinal cord are also in agreement with later research, and he discovered the purpose of the ductless glands.

It should be noted that most of his discoveries were speculations, or at least regarded as such. Swedenborg made little efforts to make practical use of his inventions and discoveries, but the concept of discovering was what appealed most to him.

Until middle age Swedenborg's career included positions as a scholar, scientist, practical administrator, legislator, and a man of affairs. But a profound change was coming over him, which led him to leave the domain of physical research for that of psychological and spiritual inquiry. Neither by geometrical, nor physical, nor metaphysical principles had he succeeded in fully understanding the soul, the brain or their functions, but he had nonetheless learned much which would now guide him into the new phase he was about to enter.

Crisis

By 1744, in the Netherlands, Swedenborg had completed publication of his scientific works. Shortly thereafter he travelled once again to London. Around this time he began having strange dreams. It appears in hindsight as though his mind was being assaulted by the diametrically opposed powers of belief and disbelief. He was dreaming about angelic states and about demonic states, about spiritual things and material, and was often very frightened. All these dreams he analyzed and wrote down in a notebook, found a century later and published as Journal of Dreams.

His manner of life was simple in the extreme. His diet consisted chiefly of bread and milk and large quantities of coffee. He often paid little attention to the distinction of day and night, and is known to have lain for days at a time in a trance. His servants were sometimes disturbed at night by hearing what he called his conflicts with evil spirits. He himself also attests to frequent visions and communication with spirits in broad daylight, in a full state of wakefulness. Whether these visions and communications were the result of hallucinations, mental illness, or actual access to a spiritual world has been long debated, without clear consensus. But by all first hand accounts, including Swedenborg's own, his normal associates and social contacts noticed little if any outward change.

Visions and spiritual insights

In October 1744 he was instructed in his dreams to abandon his old career as a scientist and pursue a new one in which he would write about spiritual things. He soon began working on The Worship and Love of God which was published in 1745.

According to Swedenborg's own account, the Lord filled him with His spirit to teach the doctrines of the New Church. God commissioned him to do this work and opened his sight to the spiritual world, permitting him to see the heavens and the hells, and to converse with angels and spirits for many years. Late in life he wrote to Oetinger that "he was introduced by the Lord first into the natural sciences, and thus prepared indeed, from the years 1710 to 1745, when heaven was opened to him." This latter great event is described by him in a letter to Thomas Hartley, rector of Winwick, as "the opening of his spiritual sight", "the manifestation of the Lord to him in person", and "his introduction into the spiritual world".

Elsewhere he speaks of his calling as primarily an opening of the spiritual sense of the Word. His friend Robsahm reported Swedenborg's testimony that the Lord Jesus Christ revealed Himself to him and said, "I am the Lord your God, Creator and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen you to unfold the spiritual sense of Holy Scripture. I will Myself dictate to you what you shall write." From that moment, Swedenborg gave up all scientific learning and only worked towards spiritual knowledge.

Veracity

Swedenborg's transition from scientist to mystic has fascinated people ever since it occurred—people such as Immanuel Kant, William Blake, Goethe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Balzac, Jorge Luis Borges, and Carl Jung, just to mention some.

While fascinating, this transition also creates difficulties in accounting for Swedenborg's life. Some assert that he lost his mind, suffering some sort of mental illness or nervous breakdown. Others disagree with this diagnosis and point to the coherent nature of his historical, philosophical, and theological writings and the issues they raise. Proponents of Swedenborgianism believe Swedenborg was able to see into the spiritual world as he claimed. Books accounting for Swedenborg's life usually favor one of these three stances depending on the author's viewpoint, and it is difficult to cover these differing points of view in a brief article.

Scriptural commentary and writings

In the year 1747, Swedenborg resigned his post of assessor of the board of mines and devoted himself to his higher quest. He requested that he might receive half his salary as a pension. He took up afresh his study of Hebrew and began to work on the spiritual interpretation of the Bible. His plan was to interpret the spiritual meaning of every verse, starting with Genesis.

Even though he worked very hard and wrote eight dense quarto volumes (he wrote in New Latin, the scholarly language of the day), after two years he only managed to complete Genesis and parts of Exodus, and abandoned the project. These interpretations were published under the title Arcana Cælestia. It is said that there were only three people who purchased this expensive work during Swedenborg's life, one of whom was the young Immanuel Kant.

His life from 1747 until his death in 1772 was spent in Stockholm, Holland and London. During these 25 years he wrote another 14 works of a spiritual nature of which most were published during his lifetime. Throughout this period he was befriended by many people who regarded him as a kind and warm-hearted man. Many people disbelieved in his visions; based on what they had heard, they drew the conclusions that he had lost his mind or had a vivid imagination. But they refrained from ridiculing him in his presence. Those who talked with him understood that he was devoted to his beliefs. He never argued matters of religion, and if obliged to defend himself he usually did it with gentleness and in a few words.

At the age of 84, he died in his home in London, where he had travelled from Amsterdam. He was active until three weeks prior to his death, when he suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed, and had to remain in bed. Several reports exist from this his last year, as he had attained some reputation around Europe, and people wanted to meet him and talk to him just out of curiosity. As a person, he was described as kind and gentle, living on sandwiches and coffee, sometimes a little fish but rarely meat, and two glasses of wine at lunch that he filled with sugar.

His last work, The True Christian Religion, was arguably the best appreciated among those he wrote during these 25 years because of its clarity and practical approach.

He was buried in a church in London. At the 140th anniversary of his birth, in 1912/1913, his earthly remains were transferred to Uppsala Cathedral in Sweden, where they now rest in close proximity to the grave of the botanist Carolus Linnaeus.

Accomplishments

Scientific contributions

As early as 1721, Swedenborg was seeking to lay the foundation of a scientific explanation of the universe. That year saw the publication of his Prodromus Principiorum Rerum Naturalium, and he had already written his Principia in its first form. In 1734, his Opera Philosophica et Mineralia appeared in three volumes, the first volume of which (the Principia) comprised his view of the first principles of the universe, a mechanical and geometrical theory of the origin of things. The other volumes contained various metallurgical studies, probably connected to his work on the board of mines.

Swedenborg is believed to have anticipated many modern scientific discoveries. It was not until the end of the 19th century that his voluminous writings began to be examined by scientists, and he was shown to have been ahead of his time in many sciences. What should be kept in mind, however, is that his early, scientific researches are fundamentally different from the mystical discoveries of his later life. His paradigm shift from the objective experimentalist to the subjective mystic, beyond falsifiability, was complete indeed. If one combines the two periods, Swedenborg can be said to have made contributions to palaeontology, geology, physics, biology, chemistry, psychology, neuroscience, and astronomy. Some of them are:

He made several practical and important inventions concerning the mining industry in Sweden while he was appointed there. The mining industry had a great importance for the Swedish economy.

He worked on a method for determining longitude at sea by observations of the moon's path among the stars, in an attempt to win the so called longitude prize offered by the British government starting 1714.

He investigated patterns on rocks along the coast lines, and was one of the first to notice rocks at a high elevation showing erosion from water. His theory ascribing this to Noah's flood was disproved when the actual cause was discovered to be glacial action from the ice age.

He invented an ear-trumpet for the deaf, improved the common house stove of his native land, cured smoky chimneys, and even sketched a flying machine. These mechanical gadgets were created in the spirit of the Enlightenment Age, to fascinate the mind if nothing else. Few of them were made into practical use and were soon forgotten, and only much later discovered to be in accordance with later research. A good example is a sketch of a Swedenborg Flying Machine, drawn in one of his notebooks.

He believed in a holistic anatomical system where mental or spiritual conditions are manifested in the body ^*. Anxiety, for example, may cause stomach problems. This was prescient of modern theories of psychosomatic illness. He also proclaimed that life forms exist on every planet in the universe. The speculative nature of this kind of assertion is one reason why Swedenborg's importance has been overlooked when not weighed against his many other accomplishments.

As an astronomer he was the first to write about the nebular hypothesis, a theory later attributed to Kant. It is possible, although not confirmed, that Kant—one of the few to have purchased and read Arcana Caelestia—had derived the idea from Swedenborg. Swedenborg himself claimed it had been revealed to him by angels. Some creationists argue that this provenance disproves today's scientific view, which is in support of Swedenborg.

Swedenborg also developed theories about atoms and light. He wrote a lucid account of the phenomenon of phosphorescence, and proposed a molecular magnetic theory which anticipated some of the chief features of early 20th-century hypotheses. In chemistry, the French chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas gives him credit for the first attempt to establish a system of crystallography.

Psychic abilities

Three instances of psychic or prophetic ability were reported of Swedenborg. The first was when, ^†during a dinner in Gothenburg, he excitedly told the party at six o' clock that there was a fire in Stockholm (405 km away), that it consumed his neighbour's home and was threatening his own. Two hours later, he exclaimed with relief that the fire stopped three doors from his home. Two days later, reports confirmed every statement to the precise hour that Swedenborg first received his impression.

The second was when he visited Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden, who asked him to tell her something about her deceased brother Augustus William. The next day, Swedenborg whispered something in her ear that turned the Queen pale and she explained that this was something only she and her brother could know about. The third was a woman who had lost something important, and came to Swedenborg asking if a recently deceased person could tell him where it was, which he also did the following night. Immanuel Kant, then at the beginning of his career, was struck by these in 1763, and made inquiries to find out if they were true. At first he could find no flaws in the reports, but in 1765 he concluded that two of them had "no other foundation than common legend" (gemeine Sage). See Kant's Träume eines Geistersehers.

Theology

Some of his beliefs were:

Life after death When a human being dies, he passes over to the spiritual world. The spiritual world consists of two main divisions: heaven and hell. Good people choose to be in heaven, bad people choose to be in hell. People associate with one or the other during this life, but neither is visible to us because of the limitations of the physical body.
All good comes from the Lord, God, Jesus Christ The light of heaven is the same as the truth from God, the warmth of heaven is the same as love towards God. When a person lets the Lord Jesus Christ lead his life and opens his heart towards Him, he will enter the light and warmth of heaven, and his speech and actions will be governed by the Lord.
Evils are from the Self When a person is occupied with preservation of his body, he concerns himself primarily with material things to the exclusion of spirit. The human body is for Swedenborg the external, while the Spirit is called internal.
People possess free will A person can only love something they believe in. Therefore God lets human beings think and act according to what they believe is best. They can only love God by their own choice.

(from Swedenborg's The New Jerusalem, and its Heavenly Doctrines.)

Swedenborg was influenced not only by Biblical figures such as Paul, Jesus, Moses and Abraham, but also by non-Christians, primarily Plato, and Cicero. He also had a fondness for the writings of Saint Augustine. All of these he claimed to have met and spoken to in the spiritual world. Many people assumed these assertions to be creations of his vivid imagination but Swedenborg himself claimed to have reported only what the Lord told him to, and would write in letters how he had "travelled with angels for the last 20 years" as if it was completely natural.

Swedenborg was sharply opposed to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which is the concept of God consisting of three entities: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Instead he claimed that the three were different aspects of the one God and that divinity is impossible if divided into three entities. For this reason he also expressed his support of the Muslims— whom he considered almost equal to the best Christians— and were, according to him, mainly opposed to Christianity because of the doctrine of the Trinity. He considered this doctrine to have originated with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, and that it signified a deviation from true Christianity. (True Christian Religion, section Trinity)

He also spoke sharply against the teaching that grace alone through faith alone (Sola fide) is enough to justify a person, i.e., declare a person righteous before God. This was a belief held firmly by Luther and Melanchthon. Swedenborg instead held that love is the core of Christianity and reported many conversations with spirits discussing the matter.

He wrote in his True Christian Religion that everything in the universe is connected to love. He distinguished three kinds of love: love of oneself, love of worldly matters and love of spiritual matters, and claimed everyone's love is directed to one of the three. When people die, they continue their life in pursuit of their desires, doing the things they love most, through all eternity.

He wrote that selfishness and worldliness creates the evils of the world, and that there is no inherent good in man, but that all love comes from God, depending on the human free will to choose to accept it. Choosing to be Christian, he further argues, leads to a kind of rebirth whereby a human learns to talk and speak anew, reshaping his internal, or spiritual side.

Swedenborg spent considerable time and effort not only grounding his theological beliefs in the Bible, but also relating and/or contrasting them with various seminal church creeds and historical events such as the First Council of Nicaea.

Theological writings

Swedenborg's theological writings roughly fall into four groups:

Books of spiritual philosophy, including The Divine Love and Wisdom, The Divine Providence, The Intercourse between the Soul and the Body, Conjugial Love;
Expository, including Arcana Celestia (giving the spiritual sense of Genesis and Exodus), The Apocalypse Revealed, The Apocalypse Explained;
Doctrinal, including The New Jerusalem, and its Heavenly Doctrines, The Four Chief Doctrines, The Doctrine of Charity, The True Christian Religion, Canons of the New Church;
Eschatological, including Heaven and Hell, and The Last Judgment.

About forty volumes are available in English, and they are continuously being translated into languages from all continents, such as Arabic, Hindi, and Japanese.

Philosophical and religious influence

Notable persons influenced by Swedenborg include Johnny Appleseed, Honoré de Balzac, Henry Ward Beecher, William Blake, Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, S. T. Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Inness, Henry James Sr., Carl Jung, Allan Kardec, Helen Keller, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Joseph Smith Jr., Coventry Patmore, August Strindberg and Jorge Luis Borges.

References

Lars Bergquist, Swedenborg's Secret, (London, The Swedenborg Society, 2005) ISBN 0854481435, a translation of the Swedish language biography of Swedenborg, Swedenborgs Hemlighet, published in Stockholm in 1999. ISBN 9127069818
Martin Lamm Swedenborg: En studie (1987; first ed. 1915). A popular biography that is still read and quoted. It is also available in English: Emanuel Swedenborg: The Development of His Thought, Martin Lamm (Swedenborg Studies, No. 9, 2001), ISBN 0877851948
Olof Lagercrantz Dikten om livet på den andra sidan (Wahlström & Widstrand 1996), ISBN 9146169326. In Swedish.
James Leon Overcoming Objections to Swedenborg's Writings Through the Development of Scientific Dualism An examination of Swedenborg's discoveries. The author is a professor of psychology and an avid reader of Swedenborg.
C. Sigstedt,The Swedenborg Epic. The Life and Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (New York: Bookman Associates, 1952). The whole book is available online at Swedenborg Digital Library
Signe Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic, Yale University Press, (1948), and Swedenborg Foundation, (1983), ISBN 0-87785-171-9
^&dag;page 7 , Many Mansions by Gina Cerminara

External links

The Swedenborgian Church is the original Swedenborgian denominational body in North America.
The New Church, or Church of the New Jerusalem, is another North American Swedenborgian denomination that split from The Swedenborgian Church in the 19th century.
The Heavenly Doctrines, a searchable library of Swedenborg's "revelatory phase" theological writings.
Small Canon Search – searchable text of the Second Advent Christianity canon , which includes a subset of Bible books, and many of Swedenborg's theological works. These works are abstracted in The Second Advent Christian Bible (2006) ISBN 1599520036
Extract from The Holographic Universe, a book which includes a comparison of Swedenborg's observations with later theories by David Bohm and Karl Pribram.
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The Swedenborg Society UK publisher of Swedenborg's works. Bookshop in Bloomsbury Way, London.
Information Swedenborg Inc The mission of Information Swedenborg Inc. is to raise awareness of the life and work of Emanuel Swedenborg. Sells books by, about and related to Swedenborg, world wide but especially within Canada.
Spiritual Wisdom There is a universal spirituality which can be expressed in many ways, but this site uses the insights of Emanuel Swedenborg to help explain the meaning of our lives.
The Swedenborg Foundation is a non-profit publisher, book seller, and educational organization which publishes the theological works of Swedenborg, contemporary books and videos on spiritual growth, offers lectures and workshops, and maintains a library of Swedenborgian literature.
New Church issues A database provided by the Swedenborg Project. Lists New Church organizational differences, statements of doctrine and social issues.

Biography

Early life

Scientific period

Anatomical studies

Discoveries

Crisis

Visions and spiritual insights

Veracity

Scriptural commentary and writings

Accomplishments

Scientific contributions

Psychic abilities

Theology

Theological writings

Philosophical and religious influence

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Emanuel Swedenborg

Biography

Early life

Scientific period

Anatomical studies

Discoveries

Crisis

Visions and spiritual insights

Veracity

Scriptural commentary and writings

Accomplishments

Scientific contributions

Psychic abilities

Theology

Theological writings

Philosophical and religious influence

See also

References

Further reading

External links