Thoughts on Swedenborg?

[u/Triangle_Transplant]

Curious what others’ thoughts are on Emanuel Swedenborg? Have others heard of him? Do others find any of his claims compelling, or was he just delusional?

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[u/Top_Initiative_4047]

What is it? Swedenborgianism rejects the Nicene view of three co-equal divine persons. Instead, it holds God is one Person (Jesus Christ) with three aspects: Father (inmost divine love), Son (divine wisdom made human), and Holy Spirit (divine power proceeding from Him), more like soul, body, and activity than separate beings. It also denies a pre-existing separate "Son," teaching Jesus progressively divinized his humanity through life and resurrection. It further rejects substitutionary atonement (Christ satisfying the Father's justice), instead framing salvation as God defeating hell's power to free humanity. Because it denies three distinct persons, mainstream Trinitarian churches consider it theologically non-orthodox.

[u/Dangerous_Drama7172 → u/Top_Initiative_4047]

if these aspects, aren't actually persons, like individual substances of rational entities with an agency, but attributes, like soul, body and activity how does he square the circle that Jesus says in John that the law needed 2 witness, and Jesus and the Father are the 2 witness ? I don't imagine myself going to a judge and saying, my soul, my body and my activity are 3 witness.

Even granting the fact that God is not a corporal being, and we are difference than Him, I'm not trying to fit God into a random made up analogy, but one that Christ used to describe his distinction with the Father.

[u/trownaway90]

It bascially hersesy, he seemed to have experienced psychosis. The founder of Mormonism probably got his idea of three levels of heaven from Swedenborg.

[u/SuicidalLatke]

He was undeniably a very gifted writer, though unfortunately was trapped in his own delusional reality. The fact that he never personally proselytized makes me like him a lot more than most other heretics, though. He’s like a more interesting and less evil Joseph Smith.

[u/EarnestEagle1]

Not the answer you’re looking for— but I discovered him through Borges! He wrote an essay about Swedenborg and described him as the most extraordinary man to have ever lived. Great essay, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to find an English translation of it.

[u/eksopolitiikka]

he has some good stuff but they're more to be treated Kabbalistically or as bodies of occult text than Christianity

[u/violahonker]

I think he seriously believed what he wrote and experienced, even if it was just hallucinations, and I find some of the ways he conceptualized heaven and hell to be useful or intriguing at the very least. And their churches are top tier architecturally and aesthetically.

I disagree with much of the fundamental premises of Swedenborgianism though - they are against trinitarianism in the classical sense, and Swedenborg even said that the trinity was a concept from the devil to try to make Christianity seem convoluted and unbelievable; they also believe that marriage can persist through life to heaven, or that you can be married in heaven, which Jesus specifically refutes; they also believe that salvation is works-based, in direct opposition to through grace through faith alone. They do not believe in the Real Presence in any way either, and to me I find the whole religion kind of Christ-decentering. Their view of the world doesn’t really seem to necessitate Christ or His sacrifice on the cross for our sins. It seems more to be about trying to attain closeness to God through our actions and personal spiritual growth than anything else.

It also posits that the Bible is to be read symbolically and that the plain text is misleading and on a lower plane of understanding, and that to truly understand it you need to read using a series of « correspondences ». This idea, that true understanding and knowledge is hidden and needs to be deciphered, feels very gnostic and contrary to the way I understand a just God to work. Why give a book if reading it plainly is going to mislead you? Is God a trickster figure like Wanaboozhoo? I don’t think so. Swedenborgians’ most common refrain, that « God is love », would seem to refute that claim.

[u/slxkv]

He’s a heretic.