SWE'DENBORG, Sw. pron. svā'den-bōry', (1688-1772 ). A Swedish scientist and theologian. He was born in Stockholm and died in London. His father was Jesper Svedberg, subsequently Bishop of Skara. He was educated at Upsala, and traveled for four years in England, Holland, France, and Germany. On his return to Sweden he was appointed by Charles XII. to an assessorship of mines. Swedenborg was ennobled in 1719, and the family name changed from Svedberg to Swedenborg. Swedenborg published short treatises on various topics in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, physics, and chemistry. He devoted himself for eleven years to the duties of his assessorship and to a systematic description of mining and smelting, and the construction of a theory of the origin of creation. The result appeared at Leipzig in 1734, in three massive folios, entitled Opera Philosophica et Mineralia. This was followed in the same year by a treatise on The Infinite, and the Final Cause of Creation; and the Mechanism of the Operation of the Soul and the Body, carrying the doctrine of the Principia into higher regions. Dissatisfied with his conclusions, he determined to track the soul to its inmost recesses in the body. His studies in human anatomy and physiology, with this end in view, appeared as Œconomia Regni Animalis, in two volumes, 1741, and as Regnum Animale, in three volumes, unfinished, 1744-45.
At this point his course as scientist was
arrested, and he entered on his career as seer, by
which he is known in history. After 1745 he
professed to have had his spiritual senses opened. His recorded experience was unique in this respect, that it did not consist in having communication with spirits, as is the claim in modern spritualism; nor did it consist in having visions merely, and receiving communications, as was the case with the prophets; but it consisted in being himself consciously an inhabitant of the spiritual world as if he had died, and thence in associating with the people of that world as one of them. In 1749 he made his first public appearance in his new character in the issue in London of the Arcana Cœlestia, completed in 1756 in eight quartos. It is a revelation of the internal, or spiritual, sense of Genesis and Exodus. Adam signifies the Most Ancient Church, and the flood its dissolution; Noah, the Ancient Church, which, falling into idolatry, was superseded by the Jewish. The spiritual sense pervades the Scriptures, with the exception of Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles. By reason of its symbolism of the inward sense, the letter of Scripture is holy in every jot and tittle,
and has been preserved in immaculate perfection
since the hour of its divine dictation. The Jewish
dispensation having reached its period, God
appeared in Jesus Christ. He assumed human
nature in its lowest condition in the Virgin, wrought it into conformity with himself, “glorified and made it divine.” There is a Trinity, not of Persons, but of Divine Essentials, consisting of the Father, or God as He is in himself, and thus incomprehensible to man; the Son, or God as revealed to man in Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit, or divine operation thence. It is imaged in man by his soul, his body, and their operation. Swedenborg acknowledged God in Jesus Christ, and regarded Him as the sole object of Christian worship. The Church which Christ established at His advent in the flesh came to an end in 1757, and Swedenborg witnessed the last General Judgment at that time effected in the world of spirits. Then commenced a new dispensation, and a New Church, signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revelation, of which the writings of Swedenborg contained the doctrines.