SWEDENBORG (SVENDBERG), EMANUEL. – Protestant theosophist and founder of the sect of the “Swedenborgians” or “Church of the New Jerusalem,” b. in Stockholm on 29 January 1688, d. in London on 29 March 1772. Son of a Lutheran bishop, formerly rector of the University of Uppsala, he was dominated from childhood by faith in the reality of the supernatural, which soon developed into psychic hyperactivity.
He studied philosophy and the sciences in his homeland and pursued further studies in London, Holland, France, and Germany. In London, the naturalistic theosophical aspiration became combined with enthusiasm for mechanics. Having returned to his homeland in 1716, he was appointed assessor at the Royal College of Mines, an office he held for 30 years. In an initial phase, S. displayed predominantly philosophical-naturalistic tendencies and wrote: Principia rerum naturalium (1734); Oeconomia regni animalis (1720–41); Clavis hieroglyphica naturalium et spiritualium (1748), in which he professes an emanationist evolutionism, termed by the author the “doctrine of series and degrees,” under the influence of Renaissance naturalism, especially that of Paracelsus; then an exemplarism in the forms of being between the divine, intellectual, and physical spheres, illustrated by a system of correspondences influenced by Neoplatonism and the cabala, with particular application to the relations between soul and body, in polemic with Cartesian philosophers: Regnum animale (1744–45). In these later writings, however, more properly theological-mystical interests, entirely characteristic of S., also appear. According to the “dream diary” that he began keeping in 1743, S. proceeded from a presumed “vision” of Jesus Christ, experienced in London after Easter 1744; and he revealed his new orientation in the work De cultu et amore Dei (1744), a mystical elaboration of Genesis in which allegorical interpretation predominates: the process of creation, like that of Redemption later on, is presented as the unfolding of psychic tendencies, psychological dualisms, and mediations, and the good angels, evil angels, and Christ are reduced to this quality in symbolic translation. A second “vision” in 1746 initiated a series of increasingly frequent hallucinations, bringing about a radical change in his life: having left his post as assessor of the mines, he withdrew into solitude at Horrigata, where he spent the rest of his life in ascetic discipline, though without renouncing journeys to England and Holland.
He intensified his efforts, including through psychophysical procedures (and internal breathing), to enter into contact with supersensible beings and to obtain from them enlightenment concerning the hidden meaning of the Sacred Scriptures, to which he devoted himself with ever greater intensity. His biblical exegesis is in fact under the influence of Philo and Origen: he sought the twofold meaning, “spiritual” (that is, psycho-cosmological) and “celestial” (that is, psycho-theological). His theosophical system is founded on this exegesis (in reality, on his visions of the future life), elaborated in close connection with the idea of a new ecclesiastical community of the pietist type; it is set forth in the works Arcana coelestia (London 1747–48), an allegorical interpretation of Books I and II of the Pentateuch on the basis of the Neoplatonic theory of correspondences; in De coelo et inferno (there, 1748); and in more systematic form in Vera christiana religio (Amsterdam 1771), regarded as the official text of the church he founded. S. denies the Trinitarian dogma and, in a Sabellian manner, considers Christ to be the one God who came to earth in an apparent body. He likewise rejects the dogma of Redemption, the Lutheran doctrine of justification, and predestination in the traditional sense, as incompatible with the principle that man must achieve moral good through his own personal effort. He retains the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the former as an initiation into rebirth, the latter (which he interprets in the Calvinist manner) as a means of entering heaven. Alongside the state of glory in heaven and that of eternal punishment in hell, S. admits an intermediate condition of purification; he nevertheless denies the resurrection of the flesh.
The official Swedish Lutheran Church condemned his principles both for their content and for their claim to base their assertions on the Bible, interpreted arbitrarily and with reference to personal illuminations. Despite this condemnation and the ironic criticism directed against them by the most authoritative philosophers of the time (for example, Kant wrote the work Sogni di un visionario [1766] against S.), S.’s writings spread rapidly because of their esoteric appeal and because, toward the end of the eighteenth century, they nourished the romantic inclination toward the supersensible permeating the visible world; they were also in line with the Nordic-German naturalistic mysticism of a Böhme, which was always evocative. This explains the influence they also exerted on Goethe and Herder; it likewise explains how, wherever spiritualism, occultism, or theosophy appeared, the personal combination of naturalistic doctrines with Christian motifs offered by S. found a response. The Church of S., which claims to constitute the millennial kingdom of the saints mentioned in the Apocalypse (chap. 21), calling itself “the new Jerusalem,” still numbers hundreds of communities and is active in Adventist and millenarian propaganda in Switzerland, Germany (Württemberg), England, Sweden, and the United States of America, even though it has only 20,000 adherents.