the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Dictionaries
Swedenborgians
Charles Buck Theological Dictionary
or The followers of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish nobleman, born at Stockholm in 1689. He apears to have had a good education; for his learning was extensive in almost every branch. He professed himself to be the founder of the New Jerusalem Church, alluding to the New Jerusalem spoken of in the book of the Revelation. Sh asserts that, in the year 1743, the Lord manifested himself to him by a personal apearance, and at the same time opened his spiritual eyes, so that he was enabled constantly to see and converse with spirits and angels. From that time he began to print and publish various wonderful things, which, he says, were revealed to him, relating to heaven and hell, the state of men after death, the worship of God, the spiritual sense of the Scriptures, the various earths in the universe, and their inhabitants; with many other strange particulars. Swedenborg lived and died in the Lutheran communion, but always professed the highest respect for the church of England. He carried his respect for the person and divinity of Jesus Christ to the highest point of veneration, considering him altogether as "Godmanifested in the flesh, and as the fulness of the Godhead united to the man Christ Jesus."
With respect, therefore, to the sacred Trinity, though he rejected the idea of three distinct persons as destructive of the unity of the Godhead, he admitted three distinct essences, principles, or characters, as existing in it; namely, the divine essence or character, in virtue of which he is called the Father or Creator; the human essence, principle, or character, united to the divine in the person of Jesus Christ, in virtue of which he is called the Son and Redeemer; and, lastly, the proceeding essence or principle, in virtue of which he is called the Holy Ghost. He farther maintains, that the sacred Scripture contains three distinct senses, called celestial, spiritual, and natural, which are united by correspondences; and that in each sense it is divine truth accommodated respectively to the angels of the three heavens, and also to men on earth. This science of correspondence (it is said) has been lost for some thousands of years, viz. ever since the time of Job, but is now revived by Emanuel Swedenborg, who uses it as a key to the spiritual or internal sense of the sacred Scripture; every page of which, he says, is written by correspondence, that is, by such things in the natural world as correspondent unto and signify things in the spiritual world.
He denies the doctrine of atonement, or vicarious sacrifice; together with the doctrines of predestination, unconditional election, justification by faith alone, the resurrection of the material body, &c. and, in opposition thereto, maintains that man is possessed of free will in spiritual things; that salvation is not attainable without repentance, that is, abstaining from evils, because they are sins against God, and living a life of charity and faith, according to the commandments; that man, immediately on his decease, rises again in a spiritual body, which was enclosed in his material body; and that in this spiritual body he lives as a man to eternity, either in heaven or in hell, according to the quality of his past life. That all those passages in the Scripture generally supposed to signify the destruction of the world by fire, and commonly called the last judgment, must be understood according to the above-mentioned science of correspondences, which teaches, that by the end of the world, or consummation of the age, is not signified the destruction of the world, but the destruction or end of the present Christian church, both among Roman Catholics and Protestants, of every description or denomination; and that this last judgment actually took place in the spiritual world in the year 1757; from which aera is dated the second advent of the Lord, and the commencement of a new Christian church, which, they say, is meant by the new heaven and new earth in the Revelation, and the New Jerusalem thence descending. They use a liturgy, and instrumental as well as vocal music, in their public worship. Summary View of Swedenborg's Doctrines; Swedenborg's Works; Dialogues on Swedenborg's Theological Writings.
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Buck, Charles. Entry for 'Swedenborgians'. Charles Buck Theological Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/cbd/s/swedenborgians.html. 1802.
