The Gist of Swedenborg by Emanuel Swedenborg
E >>
Emanuel Swedenborg >> The Gist of Swedenborg
THE GIST OF SWEDENBORG
Compiled by
JULIAN K. SMYTH and WILLIAM F. WUNSCH
This Book Is Published by the Trustees of the Iungerich Publication Fund
Swedenborg Foundation, Inc.
New York
1920
FOREWORD
The reason for a compilation such as is here presented should be
obvious. Swedenborg's theological writings comprise some thirty or
more substantial volumes, the result of the most concentrated labor
extending over a period of twenty-seven years. To study these writings
in their whole extent, to see them in their minute unfoldment out of
the Word of God, is a work of years. It is doubtful if there is a
phase of man's religious experience for which an interpretation is not
here to be found. Notwithstanding this immense sweep of doctrine there
are certain vital, fundamental truths on which it all rests:--the
Christ-God, Man a spiritual being, the warfare of Regeneration,
Marriage, the Sacred Scriptures, the Life of Charity and Faith, the
Divine Providence, Death and the Future Life, the Church. We have
endeavored to press within the small compass of this book passages
which give the gist of Swedenborg's teachings on these subjects.
The compilers would gladly have made room for the interpretative and
philosophical teachings which contribute so much to the content and
form of Swedenborg's theology; but they have confined their effort to
setting forth briefly and clearly the positive spiritual teachings,
where these seemed most packed with religious meaning and moment.
The translation of the passages here brought together has been
carefully revised.
JULIAN K. SMYTH.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Emanuel Swedenborg was born at Stockholm, January 29, 1688.
A devout home (the father was a Lutheran clergyman, and afterwards
Bishop of Skara) stimulated in the boy the nature which was to become
so active in his culminating life-work. A university education at
Upsala, however, and studies for five years in England, France,
Holland and Germany, brought other interests into play first. The
earliest of these were mathematics and astronomy, in the pursuit of
which he met Flamsteed and Halley. His gift for the detection and
practical employment of general laws soon carried him much farther
afield in the sciences. Metallurgy, geology, a varied field of
invention, chemistry, as well as his duties as an Assessor on the
Board of Mines and of a legislator in the Diet, all engaged him, with
an immediate outcome in his work, and often with results in
contributions to human knowledge which are gaining recognition only
now. The _Principia_ and two companion volumes, dedicated to his
patron, the Duke of Brunswick, crowned his versatile productions in
the physical sciences. Academies of science, at home and abroad, were
electing him to membership.
Conspicuous in Swedenborg's thought all along was the premise that
there is a God and the presupposition of that whole element in life
which we call the spiritual. As he pushed his studies into the fields
of physiology and psychology, this premised realm of the spirit became
the express goal of his researches. Some of his most valuable and most
startling discoveries came in these fields. Outstanding are a work on
_The Brain_ and two on the _Animal Kingdom_ (kingdom of the _anima_,
or soul). As his gaze sought the soul, however, in the light in which
he had more and more successfully beheld all his subjects for
fifty-five years, she eluded direct knowledge. He was increasingly
baffled, until a new light broke in on him. Then he was borne along,
in a profound humiliation of his intellectual ambitions, by another
way. For when the new light steadied, he had undergone a personal
religious experience, the rich journals of which he himself never
published. But what was of public concern, his consciousness was
opened into the world of the spirit, so that he could observe its
facts and laws as, for so long, he had observed those of the material
world, and in its own world could receive a revelation of the
doctrines of man's spiritual life.
It was now, for the first time, too, that he gave a deep consideration
to the condition of the Christian Church, revealed in otherworld
judgment to be one of spiritual devastation and impotency. To serve in
the revelation of "doctrine for a New Church" became his Divinely
appointed work. He forwent his reputation as a man of science, gave up
his assessorship, cleared his desk of everything but the Scriptures.
He beheld in the Word of God a spiritual meaning, as he did a
spiritual world in the world of phenomena. In revealing both of these
the Lord, he said, made His Second Coming. For the rest of his long
life Swedenborg gave himself with unremitting labor but with a saving
calm to this commanding cause, publishing his great Latin volumes of
Scripture interpretation and of theological teaching at Amsterdam or
London, at first anonymously, and distributing them to clergy and
universities. The titles of his principal theological works appear in
the following compilation from them. Upon his death-bed this herald of
a new day for Christianity solemnly affirmed the reality of his
experience and the reception by him of his teaching from the Lord.
Swedenborg died in London, March 29, 1772. In 1908 his remains were
removed from the Swedish Church in that city to the cathedral at
Upsala, where they lie in a monument erected to his memory by the
Swedish Parliament.
WILLIAM F. WUNSCH.
_Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Swedenborg_
(3 vols.) 1875-1877, R.L. Tafel, is the main collection of
biographical material; _The Life and Mission of Emanuel
Swedenborg_, 1883, Benjamin Worcester, and _Emanuel
Swedenborg, His Life, Teachings and Influence_, 1907, George
Trobridge, are two of the better known biographies.
THE GIST OF SWEDENBORG
"At this day nothing but the self-evidenced reason of love
will re-establish the Church."--_Canons_, Prologue.
GOD THE LORD
"Believe in God: believe also in Me."
_John_, XIV, 1
"My Lord, and my God!"
_John_, XX, 28
ONE AND INFINITE
God is One, and Infinite. The true quality of the Infinite does not
appear; for the human mind, however highly analytical and exalted, is
itself finite, and the finiteness in it cannot be laid aside. It is
not fitted, therefore, to see the Infinity of God, and thus God, as He
is in Himself, but can see God from behind in shadow; as it is said of
Moses, when he asked to see God, that he was placed in a cleft of the
rock, and saw His hinder side. It is enough to acknowledge God from
things finite, that is, created, in which He is infinitely.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 28
"INTO HIS MARVELLOUS LIGHT"
We read in the Word that Jehovah God dwells in light inaccessible.
Who, then, could approach Him, unless He had come to dwell in
accessible light, that is, unless He had descended and assumed a
Humanity and in it had become the Light of the world? Who cannot see
that to approach Jehovah the Father in His light is as impossible as
to take the wings of the morning and to fly with them to the sun?
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 176
THE CHRIST-GOD
We ought to have faith in God the Saviour, Jesus Christ, because that
is faith in the visible God in Whom is the Invisible; and faith in the
visible God, Who is at once Man and God, enters into man. For while
faith is spiritual in essence it is natural in form, for everything
spiritual, in order to be anything with a man, is received by him in
what is natural.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 339
Man's conjunction with the Lord is not with His supreme Divine Being
itself, but with His Divine Humanity, and by this with the supreme
Divine Being; for man can have no idea whatever of the supreme Divine
Being of the Lord, utterly transcending his thought as it does; but of
His Divine Human Being he can have an idea. Hence the Gospel according
to John says that no one has at any time seen God except the
only-begotten Son, and that there is no approach to the Father save by
Him. For the same reason He is called a Mediator.
--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 4211
GOD-MAN
In the Lord, God and Man are not two but one Person, yea, altogether
one, as soul and body are. This is plain in many of the Lord's own
utterances; as that the Father and He are one; that all things of the
Father are His, and all His the Father's; that He is in the Father,
and the Father in Him; that all things are given into His hand; that
He has all power; that whosoever believes in Him has eternal life;
that He is God of heaven and earth.
--_Doctrine Concerning the Lord, n._ 60
There is one God, and the Lord is He, His Divinity and Humanity being
one Person.
--_Divine Providence, n._ 122
They who think of the Lord's Humanity, and not at the same time of His
Divinity, by no means allow the expression "Divine Humanity"; for they
think of the Humanity by itself and of the Divinity by itself, which
is like thinking of man apart from his soul or life, which, however,
is no conception of man, still less of the Lord.
--_Apocalypse Explained, n._ 26
WHY HE CAME
The Lord from eternity, Who is Jehovah, came into the world to subdue
the hells and to glorify His Humanity. Without Him no mortal could
have been saved; and they are saved who believe in Him.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 2
The Lord came into the world to save the human race which would
otherwise have perished in eternal death. This salvation the Lord
effected by subjugating the hells, which infested every man coming
into the world and going out of the world, and by glorifying His
Humanity; for so He can hold the hells subdued to eternity. The
subjugation of the hells, and the glorification at the same time of
His Humanity, were effected by temptations let into the Humanity He
had from the mother, and by unbroken victories. His passion on the
cross was the last temptation and complete victory.
--_Heavenly Doctrine, n._ 293
HOW HE CAME
Because, from His essence, God burned with the love of uniting Himself
to man, it was necessary that He should cover Himself around with a
body adapted to reception and conjunction. He therefore descended and
assumed a human nature in pursuance of the order established by Him
from the creation of the world. That is, He was to be conceived by a
power produced from Himself; He was to be carried in the womb; He was
to be born, and then to grow in wisdom and in love, and so was to
approach to union with His Divine origin. Thus God became Man, and Man
God.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 838
THE LIFE ON EARTH
The Lord had at first a human nature from the mother, of which He
gradually divested Himself while He was in the world. Accordingly He
kept experiencing two states: a state of humiliation or privation, as
long and as far as He was conscious in the human nature from the
mother; and a state of glorification or union with the Divine, as long
and as far as He was conscious in the Humanity received from the
Father. In the state of humiliation He prayed to the Father as to One
other than Himself; but in the state of glorification He spoke with
the Father as with Himself. In this state He said that the Father was
in Him, and He in the Father, and that the Father and He were one.
The Lord consecutively put off the human nature assumed from the
mother, and put on a Humanity from the Divine in Himself, which is the
Divine Humanity and the Son of God.
--_Doctrine Concerning the Lord, nn._ 29, 35
THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE
When the Lord was in the world, His life was altogether the life of a
love for the whole human race, which He burned to save forever. That
life was of the intensest love by which He united Himself to the
Divine and the Divine to Himself. For being itself, or Jehovah, is
pure mercy from love for the whole human race; and that life was one
of sheer love, as it can never be with any man.
--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 2253
"COME UNTO ME"
Do you, my friend, flee evil, and do good, and believe in the Lord
with your whole heart and with your whole soul, and the Lord will love
you, and give you love for doing, and faith for believing. Then will
you do good from love, and from a faith which is confidence will you
believe. If you persevere in this, a reciprocal conjunction will take
place, and one that is perpetual, indeed is salvation itself, and
everlasting life.
--_True, Christian Religion, n._ 484
THE TRINITY; THE FULNESS OF HIS BEING
They who are truly men of the Church, that is, who are in love to the
Lord and in charity toward the neighbor, know and acknowledge a Trine.
Still, they humble themselves before the Lord, and adore Him alone,
inasmuch as they know that there is no approach to the Divine Itself,
called the Father, but by the Son; and that all that is holy, and of
the Holy Spirit, proceeds from Him. When they are in this idea, they
adore no other than Him, by Whom and from Whom are all things;
consequently they adore One.
--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 2329
God is one in essence and in person. This God is the Lord. The
Divinity itself, which is called Jehovah "the Father," is the Lord
from eternity. The Divine Humanity is "the Son" begotten from His
Divine from eternity, and born in the world. The proceeding Divinity
is "the Holy Spirit."
--_Divine Providence, n._ 157
MAN
"Lord, what is man that Thou art mindful of him;
And the son of man that Thou visitest him?"
_Psalm_, VIII, 4
GOD'S UNRELAXED EFFORT
The object of creation was an angelic heaven from the human race; in
other words, mankind, in whom God might be able to dwell as in His
residence. For this reason man was created a form of Divine order. God
is in him, and as far as he lives according to Divine order, fully so;
but if he does not live according to Divine order, still God is in
him, but in his highest parts, endowing him with the ability to
understand truth and to will what is good. But as far as man lives
contrary to order, so far he shuts up the lower parts of his mind or
spirit, and prevents God from descending and filling them with His
presence. Then God is in him, but he is not in God.
--_True Christian Religion, nn._ 66, 70
AN INSTRUMENT OF LIFE
Man is an instrument of life, and God alone is life. God pours His
life into His instrument and every part of him, as the sun pours its
heat into a tree and every part of it. God also gives man to feel this
life in himself as his own. God wills that he should do so, that man
may live as of himself according to the laws of order, which are as
many as there are precepts in the Word, and may dispose himself to
receive the love of God. But still God perpetually holds with His
finger the perpendicular above the scales, and regulates, but never
violates by compulsion, man's free decision. Man's free will is from
this: that he feels life in himself as his, and God leaves him so to
feel, that reciprocal conjunction may take place between Him and man.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 504
"ABIDE IN ME"
Man is so created that he can be more and more closely united to the
Lord. He is so united not by knowledge alone, nor by intelligence
alone, nor even by wisdom alone, but by a life in accordance with
these. The more closely he is united to the Lord, the wiser and
happier he becomes, the more distinctly he seems to himself to be his
own, and the more clearly he perceives that he is the Lord's.
--_Divine Providence, nn._ 32 _et al._
TWO MINDS: TWO WORLDS
Man is so created as to live simultaneously in the natural world and
in the spiritual world. Thus he has an internal and an external nature
or mind; by the former living in the spiritual world, by the latter in
the natural world.
--_Heavenly Doctrine_, n. 36
INALIENABLE POWERS
There are in man from the Lord two capacities by which the human being
is distinguished from the beasts. One capacity is the ability to
understand what is true and what is good. It is called rationality,
and is a capacity of his understanding. The other capacity is the
ability to do the true and the good. It is called freedom, and is a
power of the will. By virtue of his rationality, man can think what he
pleases, as well against God as with Him, and with his neighbor or
against his neighbor. He can also will and do what he thinks; and when
he sees evil and fears punishment, by virtue of freedom he can refrain
from doing. By these two capacities man is man and is distinguished
from the beasts. Man has these twin powers from the Lord, and they are
from Him every moment; nor are they ever taken away, for if they were,
man's humanity would perish. The Lord is in these two powers with
every man, with the evil as well as the good. They are His
abiding-place in the race. Thence it is that every human being, evil
as well as good, lives to eternity.
--_Divine Love and Wisdom, n._ 240
THE DRAG OF HEREDITY
Man inclines to the nature he derives hereditarily, and lapses into
it. Thus he strengthens any evil in it, and also adds others of
himself. These evils are quite opposed to the spiritual life. They
destroy it. Unless, therefore, a man receives new life from the Lord,
which is spiritual life, he is condemned; for he wills nothing else
and thinks nothing else than concerns him and the world.
--_Heavenly Doctrine, n._ 176
LOVES OF SELF AND THE WORLD
The reason why the love of self and the love of the world are infernal
loves, and yet man has been able to come into them, and thus to ruin
will and understanding in him, is as follows: By creation the love of
self and the love of the world are heavenly loves; for they are loves
of the natural man serving his spiritual loves, as a foundation does a
house. From the love of self and the world, a man wishes well by his
body, desires food, clothing and habitation, takes thought for his
household, seeks occupation to be useful, wishes also for obedience's
sake to be honored according to the dignity of the thing he does, and
to be delighted and recreated by the pleasures of the world;--yet all
this for the sake of the end, which must be use. By this a man is in
position to serve the Lord and to serve the neighbor. But when there
is no love of serving the Lord and the neighbor, but only a love of
serving oneself at the world's hands, then from being heavenly that
love becomes infernal, for it causes a man to sink mind and character
in his _proprium_, or what is his own, which in itself is the whole of
evil.
--_Divine Love and Wisdom, n._ 396
THE NEED FOR SELF-ACTION
No one can cleanse himself of evils by his own power and abilities;
but neither can this be done without the power and abilities of the
man, used as his own. If this strength were not to all appearance his
own, no one would be able to fight against the flesh and its lusts,
which, nevertheless, is enjoined upon all men. He would not think of
combat. Because man is a rational being, he must resist evils from the
power and the abilities given him by the Lord, which appear to him as
his own; an appearance that is granted for the sake of regeneration,
imputation, conjunction, and salvation.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 438
THE WARFARE OF REGENERATION
"Blessed be the Lord my strength,
Who teacheth my hands to war,
And my fingers to fight:
My goodness, and my fortress;
My high tower and my deliverer;
My shield, and He in whom I trust;
Who subdueth my people under me."
--_Psalm,_ CXLIV, 1, 2
"TO HIM THAT OVERCOMETH"
Because man is reformed by conflicts with the evils of his flesh and
by victories over them, the Son of Man says to each of the seven
Churches, that He will give gifts "to him that overcometh."
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 610
Without moral struggle no one is regenerated, and many spiritual
wrestlings succeed one after another. For, inasmuch as regeneration
has for its end that the life of the old man may die and the new and
heavenly life be implanted, there will unfailingly be combat. The life
of the old man resists and is unwilling to be extinguished, and the
life of the new man cannot enter, except where the life of the old has
been extinguished. From this it is plain that there is combat, and
ardent combat, because for life.
--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 8403
REPENTANCE AND THE REMISSION OF SINS
He who would be saved, must confess his sins, and do repentance. _To
confess sins_ is to know evils, to see them in oneself, to acknowledge
them, to make oneself guilty and condemn oneself on account of them.
Done before God, this is to confess sins. _To do repentance_ is to
desist from sins after one has thus confessed them and from a humble
heart has besought forgiveness, and then to live a new life according
to the precepts of charity and faith.
He who merely acknowledges generally that he is a sinner, making
himself guilty of all evils, without examining himself,--that is,
without seeing his sins,--makes a confession but not the confession of
repentance. Inasmuch as he does not know his evils, he lives as
before.
One who lives the life of charity and faith does repentance daily. He
reflects upon the evils in him, acknowledges them, guards against
them, and beseeches the Lord for help. For of oneself one continually
lapses toward evil; but he is continually raised up by the Lord and
led to good.
Repentance of the mouth and not of the life is not repentance. Nor are
sins pardoned on repentance of the mouth, but on repentance of the
life. Sins are constantly pardoned man by the Lord, for He is mercy
itself; but still they adhere to man, however he supposes they have
been remitted. Nor are they removed from him save by a life according
to the precepts of true faith. So far as he lives according to these
precepts, sins are removed; and so far as they are removed, so far
they are remitted.
--_Heavenly Doctrine, nn._ 159-165
TEMPTATION AND PRAYER
When a man shuns evils as sins, he flees them because they are
contrary to the Lord and to His Divine laws; and then he prays to the
Lord for help and for power to resist them--a power which is never
denied when it is asked. By these two means a man is cleansed of
evils. He cannot be cleansed of evils if he only looks to the Lord and
prays; for then, after he has prayed, he believes that he is quite
without sins, or that they have been forgiven, by which he understands
that they are taken away. But then he still remains in them; and to
remain in them is to increase them. Nor are evils removed only by
shunning them; for then the man looks to himself, and thereby
strengthens the origin of evil, which was that he turned himself back
from the Lord and turned to himself.
--_The Doctrine Concerning Charity, n._ 146
THE GREAT ARENA
In temptations the hells fight against man, and the Lord for him. To
every falsity which the hells inject, there is an answer from the
Divine. The falsities inflow into the outward man, the answer into the
inward man, coming to perception scarcely otherwise than as hope, and
the resulting consolation, in which, however, there is a multitude of
things of which the man is unaware.
--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 8159
In temptations a man is left, to all appearance, to himself alone; yet
he has not been left alone, for God is then most present in his inmost
being, and upholds him. When anyone overcomes in temptation,
therefore, he enters into closer union with God.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 126
"BY LITTLE AND LITTLE"
When man is being regenerated, he is not regenerated speedily but
slowly. The reason is that all things which he has thought, purposed
and done since infancy, have added themselves to his life and have
come to constitute it. They have also formed such a connection among
themselves that no one thing can be removed unless all are at the same
time. Regeneration, or the implantation of the life of heaven in man,
begins in his infancy, and continues to the last of his life in the
world, and is perfected to eternity.
--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 9334
A NEW MAN
When a man is regenerated, he becomes altogether another, and a new,
man. While his appearance and his speech are the same, yet his mind is
not; for his mind is then open toward heaven, and there dwell in it
love for the Lord, and charity toward the neighbor, together with
faith. It is the mind which makes another and a new man. The change of
state cannot be perceived in man's body, but in his spirit. When it
[the body] is put off then his spirit appears, and in altogether
another form, too, when he has been regenerated; for it has then a
form of love and charity with inexpressible beauty, in the place of
the earlier form, which was one of hatred and cruelty with a deformity
also inexpressible.
--_Arcana Coelestia, n._ 3212
CHILDHOOD
"It is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one
of these little ones should perish."
--_Matthew_, XVIII, 14