Emanuel Swedenborg

ما المطلق؟ هل الله موجود؟

God is one, is a Man, and is the Lord Jesus Christ

إله شخصييقوله صراحةً

Swedenborg affirms a personal God to the utmost: in Angelic Wisdom concerning Divine Love he declares that in all the heavens there is no other idea of God than that of a Man, and in Heaven and Hell, that heaven as a whole reflects a single man because it proceeds from the Divine Human. God is in himself divine love and divine wisdom, life itself, from which all things receive life. But he rejects a Trinity of three Persons: in True Christian Religion he teaches that the Trinity —Father, Son and Spirit— is in one Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, as soul, body and activity are in one man. The Absolute is, for him, a single God, human in form and infinite in essence.

من أنا؟ هل توجد ذات حقيقية؟

Man is his love: his will is his life

روح مخلوقة خالدةيقوله صراحةً

Emanuel Swedenborg, who before his visionary turn sought the soul in the anatomy of the brain, afterwards defines it by love. For him, the human being has no life of its own: it is a receptacle of the life that proceeds from the Lord, and what makes it who it is is its ruling love, which forms its will and understanding. Heaven and Hell sums it up: man after death is his own love or his own will. The soul is immortal and, at death, awakens in the spiritual world with its spiritual body, its memory and its character. The true self is what one truly loves, which death reveals without changing it.

لماذا نتألّم؟

Evil springs from love of self and the world, and hell is chosen

الانفصال عن اللهيقوله صراحةً

For Emanuel Swedenborg, moral suffering stems from two loves he calls infernal: love of self and love of the world, opposed to love of the Lord and of the neighbour. Heaven and Hell maintains that the Lord casts no one into hell: it is the spirit who, through its ruling love, is drawn toward those who share its evil, and there finds the torment that evil produces. In Angelic Wisdom concerning Divine Providence he explains that providence permits evils so as not to violate human freedom, without which no one could be regenerated. Pain arises from turning away from divine order, and regeneration is the way back.

ماذا يحدث بعد الموت؟

Man rises at death and remains who he was

الحياة الأبدية والقيامةيقوله صراحةً

Emanuel Swedenborg describes what he claims to have seen in the spiritual world. In Heaven and Hell, death is merely the passage from one world to another: the human being rises immediately, not in earthly flesh but in a spiritual body, keeps his memory and senses, and at first hardly knows he has died. He passes through an intermediate world of spirits, where he sheds what is external until his ruling love appears; according to it, he goes freely to heaven or hell, where he remains for ever. That is why he rejects the expectation of a bodily resurrection at the end of time.

كيف يُبلَغ التحرّر أو الخلاص؟

It is not so hard to live the life that leads to heaven

بالفضيلة والانسجاميقوله صراحةً

Emanuel Swedenborg explicitly rejects salvation by faith alone, which he regards as the great error of the Reformation. For him, salvation is regeneration and consists in living according to the commandments: Doctrine of Life teaches that all religion is life and that this life consists in shunning evils as sins against God, whereupon the Lord can bring in good. It does not require withdrawal from the world: Heaven and Hell maintains that it is not so hard as people think to live the life that leads to heaven, and that it is lived in work, trade and civil life, acting with justice and sincerity. Faith without charity does not save; charity is doing good to others.

هل نحتاج إلى معلّم؟

He ignores the human teacher and points to the Word, read through the Lord

لم يُبدِ رأيًا

Emanuel Swedenborg does not deal with the figure of the spiritual teacher or the direction of souls. His approach is different: he claims that the Lord opened his spiritual sight to reveal the inner sense of the Word, and presents his works as the doctrine of the New Jerusalem, not as personal teaching. He insists that each person should read the Word and understand it rationally: in True Christian Religion he proclaims that it is now permitted to enter with the understanding into the mysteries of faith. He founded no Church and gathered no disciples; the New Church was organised after his death. His silence on the human guide is consistent with that trust in the Word and in enlightened reason.

هل العالم حقيقي؟

The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world

مستويات من الوجوديقوله صراحةً

Emanuel Swedenborg describes a tiered reality. There is a natural world, the one known to the senses and to science —which he himself cultivated for decades—, and a spiritual world, with the world of spirits, the heavens and the hells, in which every human being lives after death. Between them governs the law of correspondences: in Heaven and Hell he states that the whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world, not only as a whole but in each of its parts. The heavens themselves are ordered in three degrees, celestial, spiritual and natural, through which the Lord's life descends. The visible world is real, but it is the last of the planes and an effect of the higher ones.

ما الحب؟

Love is man's very life, and God is Love itself

محبة الله والقريبيقوله صراحةً

Angelic Wisdom concerning Divine Love opens with an observation: man knows that love exists, but does not know what it is. Swedenborg answers that love is the human being's very life, the warmth that animates him, and that its source is God, who is Love itself and Wisdom itself. He distinguishes four loves: two heavenly, love of the Lord and love of the neighbour or charity, and two infernal, love of self and love of the world. Charity consists in doing good to the neighbour for the love of good, above all by faithfully fulfilling one's own office. In Conjugial Love he sees in the union of spouses the image of the union of love and wisdom.

هل نحن أحرار أم أن كل شيء مقدَّر؟

Providence wills that man act freely according to reason

إرادة حرة حقيقيةيقوله صراحةً

Angelic Wisdom concerning Divine Providence lays down as a law that the human being must act from freedom according to reason. Swedenborg calls those two faculties liberty and rationality, and regards them as gifts of the Lord that are never withdrawn, not even in hell. Providence governs everything, even the smallest things, but in hidden fashion, so as to force no one: were the human being to see providence, or be compelled by miracles, he would cease to be free and could not be regenerated. That is why evils are permitted. Swedenborg rejects predestination to hell: all are born for heaven, and each chooses according to his love.

لماذا نتأمّل أو نصلّي؟

True worship is a life of use and charity

الطقس وتهذيب الذاتيُستنتج من تعاليمه

Emanuel Swedenborg develops no meditation techniques. For him, outward worship —prayer, sermon, sacraments— is good and necessary, but it has value only if it proceeds from inward worship, which is love and charity. Religion is life, he repeats in the Doctrine of Life, and true worship consists in doing good, faithfully fulfilling one's office and shunning evils as sins. Heaven and Hell describes angels who hold services in temples and hear sermons, but their essential worship is the life of use. Prayer, properly speaking, is conversation with the Lord, who grants what is asked when it coincides with the good.

هل يستطيع العقل أن يعرف الحقيقة القصوى؟

Now it is permitted to enter the mysteries of faith with the understanding

النصّ المقدّس والاستدلاليقوله صراحةً

Emanuel Swedenborg was a first-rate scientist before his visionary turn, and never renounced reason. His principal source is the Word, Scripture, which according to him has an inner spiritual sense, decipherable through the science of correspondences; the Arcana Coelestia thus comment on Genesis and Exodus verse by verse. Against the blind faith of the Churches, which commanded belief without understanding, True Christian Religion proclaims that now it is permitted to enter with the understanding into the mysteries of faith. Reason enlightened by the Lord interprets Scripture; what is not understood cannot truly be believed.

الانسحاب من العالم أم تغييره؟

Heaven is won by a useful life in the world, not by fleeing it

الانخراط في العالميقوله صراحةً

Emanuel Swedenborg was an assessor of Sweden's Board of Mines, a member of the Diet and author of memoranda on economics and currency, and his doctrine reflects that public life. In Heaven and Hell he states that the life leading to heaven is not a life withdrawn from the world, but a life in the world: whoever carries out his office, trade or post with justice and sincerity, for the love of good, prepares himself for heaven. He relates that those who renounced the world to live in piety alone, secluded and sorrowful, do not reach heaven as easily as they thought, because angelic life consists of uses, that is, useful services to others. Charity is the active life of the good.