Notes to §1 (Author’s Preface)

1. “The Lord” here refers to Jesus. Although Swedenborg’s theology is thoroughly monotheistic, to denote God he uses many names and terms from philosophical and biblical backgrounds (God, the Divine Being, the Divine, the Divine Human, the One, the Infinite, the First, the Creator, the Redeemer, the Savior, Jehovah, God Shaddai, and many more). The most frequently occurring term, however, is “the Lord” (Latin Dominus), a title rather than a name, meaning “the one in charge,” and referring to Jesus Christ as the visible manifestation of the one only God. For Swedenborg’s brief explanation of his reasons for using “the Lord,” see Secrets of Heaven 14. [JSR]

2. Swedenborg often used ecclesia, “church,” to refer to the whole religious belief and practice of a given nation or era. [GFD]

3. Elsewhere Swedenborg explains the Lord’s prediction as four sequential degenerative stages in the church’s attitude toward love and faith: disputing about them, despising them, devastation of them, and profanation of them (see Secrets of Heaven 3754). [JSR]

4. The Latin phrase here translated “the Human-born One,” Filius hominis, has traditionally been translated “Son of man.” [GFD]

5. Swedenborg’s Scripture citations often closely follow the Latin translation of the Bible by Sebastian Schmidt (1617–1696); sometimes—as here—they vary from it in the direction of greater literalism (see Schmidt 1696). Swedenborg also had access to the interlinear version of the Bible of the Spanish theologian and linguist Benedict Arias Montanus (1527–1598), and may agree with it against Schmidt (see Montanus 1657). The actual copy of Schmidt’s translation used by Swedenborg, with his marginal notes, has been preserved in codices 89–90 in the library of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. A photolithograph reproduction, edited by Rudolph Leonard Tafel, is also available (see Swedenborg 1872). [GFD]

6. As in the case of many other biblical concepts, Swedenborg’s interpretation of the Last Judgment is quite different from that of most theological traditions of his time. Opposing suggestions that our earth and our life will be destroyed in a final battle between good and evil, or that history will come to some sort of cosmic conclusion, he presents the Last Judgment as a symbol. In Secrets of Heaven 3353, he writes: “The Last Judgment is nothing else than the end of the church [true religion] in one nation and its beginning in another . . . when there is no longer any acknowledgment of the Lord, . . . no faith, . . . and no thoughtfulness.” For further discussion, see the introduction to this volume, as well as Swedenborg’s 1758 work Last Judgment. [RHK]

7. As examples of some of the “many people” to which Swedenborg refers, two of the dominant figures in New Testament scholarship during Swedenborg’s time might be cited. These were the Germans Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752) and Johann August Ernesti (1707–1781), who can be said to have helped lay the basis for methodical textual criticism of the Bible. Both were passionate advocates of the sensus literalis, or literal sense of the Bible, particularly in regard to the Last Judgment. Ernesti’s review of Swedenborg’s Secrets of Heaven, which appeared in the prestigious Neue Theologische Bibliothek (Ernesti 1760, 1:6 515–527), was vehemently critical of Swedenborg’s assigning multiple meanings to single words of biblical text, which he considered a regression to nonscientific “allegorical and mystical” methods of commentary. Another influential German theologian of the period, the Pietist Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782), who published reviews of Swedenborg that were favorable in other respects, sided with Bengel and Ernesti on the issue of Bible interpretation, complaining in one letter that “he [Swedenborg] places more trust in his analogy of history or his scientiam correspondentiarum [knowledge of correspondences] than in the clear [Bible] that needs no interpretation” (“daß er auf seine Ähnlichkeit der Geschichte, oder auf seine scientiam correspondentiarum mehr Vertrauen setzt, als auf das klare Wort, welches keiner Auslegung bedarf”; Ehman 1859, 750; attributed to Oetinger by Benz [1947, 166–181]). It should be noted, too, that Swedenborg’s statement about “many people in the church” can be accepted as his assessment of contemporary religious opinion—a credible one, since his closest and most influential relatives included a current and a future bishop. (For more on Oetinger, see note 206 below.) [RHK]

8. “The Word” (Latin Verbum) was the preferred Lutheran designation of the Bible as revealed truth, the “Word of God.” In his use of this term, however, Swedenborg meant specifically the books of the Bible that he identifies as having a spiritual meaning throughout, namely the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), the historical books (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings), the Book of Psalms, the major and minor prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi), the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), and the Book of Revelation. See Secrets of Heaven 10325; and two other 1758 works of Swedenborg, New Jerusalem 266, and White Horse 16. It should be noted that in his 1771 work True Christianity he seems to use the term in the full Lutheran sense, including passages from the epistles of the apostles among citations from “the Word.” For his explanation as to why he did not generally include the works of the apostles and Paul, see his letter to Beyer (April 15, 1766), cited in Acton 1955, 612–613. [GFD, JSR]

9. Swedenborg saw the material world as caused by the spiritual world and as therefore reflecting it; that is, physical phenomena and events offer images of—that is, are “responsive to” or “correspond to”—spiritual phenomena and events. As noted by Swedenborg himself in Secrets of Heaven 4, the primary purpose of that work (his largest) was to demonstrate that the Bible contains levels of spiritual meaning that could at least in part be discovered by a knowledge of specific correspondential relationships. [GFD, RHK]

10. Secrets of Heaven (1749–1756) had been published anonymously, as were the works published in 1758 (Heaven and Hell, New Jerusalem, Last Judgment, White Horse, and Other Planets). Swedenborg was not identified as their author until his clairvoyant experience of the Stockholm fire in 1759. On this topic, see Hjern 1990, 8–9. A shorter account of the event, in English, may be found in Dole and Kirven 1992, 50. [GFD, RHK]

11. See White Horse, one of the works published by Swedenborg in 1758 along with Heaven and Hell. [GFD]

12. The Latin phrase here translated “heavenly contents hidden” is arcana coeli, a phrase that evokes the title of Swedenborg’s major published theological work, Arcana Coelestia (Secrets of Heaven), by expressing the same meaning in a slightly different grammatical form. [GFD]

13. “Church people these days” (homo ecclesiae hodie) describes Swedenborg’s primary and consistent concern, distinguishable from “many people in the church” (plerique hodie intra ecclesiam)—the scholars referred to above (see note 7 above). His reported encounters with the spirits of recently deceased church people (see, for example, his 1771 work True Christianity 160:3, 692, 693, 694, 731:2, 738) convinced him that widespread ignorance of biblical teachings (his concern here), and distortions of the church’s theological traditions (see, for example, note 18 below) were threatening people’s ability to live well and to prepare themselves for heaven. Here he cites this circumstance as the explanation for his call and his revelation, and as the motive for his work. [RHK]

14. “The Coming of the Lord,” or “the Lord’s Advent,” refers here to any instance of the Lord’s renewed presence among people—any spiritual analog of the Lord’s Incarnation. In his late works, Swedenborg began to speak explicitly of the “Second Advent,” a term he used to describe the cosmic spiritual events that included the revelation he felt the Lord was accomplishing through Swedenborg’s own spiritual experiences. See, for example, his 1771 work True Christianity 115, 121, 123; and his handwritten inscription on the inside cover of a copy of his 1769 publication Survey: “This work is part of the Coming of the Lord (written by command).” (On this inscription, see Tafel 1877, 757, and Sigstedt 1981, 375.) Swedenborg’s spiritual experiences—which had lasted for thirteen years as of the time he wrote this passage, and comprised a total of twenty-nine years in his lifetime—are the main source on which he drew for his writing. Since he felt these experiences were provided him by the Lord, they also are his primary authority. In Secrets of Heaven 68 he wrote, “Many will claim, I realize, that no one can talk to spirits and angels as long as bodily life continues, or that I am hallucinating, or that I circulate such stories in order to play on people’s credulity, and so on. But none of this worries me; I have seen, I have heard, I have felt.” [GFD, RHK]

Notes to §§2–6

15. Swedenborg here refers to the Christian concept of the Trinity: Father (God), Son (Christ), and Holy Ghost. The unity of these triune essentials of divine nature, together with the theological preeminence of the Lord (Dominus), constitutes one of Swedenborg’s most frequent and prominent emphases. (His teachings on the Word and on the inseparability of faith and works are the only comparably important issues for him.) He saw the trinitarianism of his day as essentially and disastrously tritheistic, leading to the worship of three gods instead of one. He viewed Jesus as having from conception an inner divine nature and an outer human nature. By a process of “temptation combats” analogous to our own struggles against temptation, the divine nature progressively transformed or “glorified” the human nature. The term “the Lord,” as used by Swedenborg, consistently refers either to the inner divine nature (see note 17 below) or to the risen and ascended Christ, as the fullest possible self-disclosure of the infinite Divine, which in itself is utterly beyond our knowing. It is distinct from, and yet one with, the Father/Creator and the Holy Spirit. This definition is presented in Secrets of Heaven 14 and obtains consistently thereafter. His most complete continuous passages on trinitarian theology are in his 1763 work The Lord and the first three chapters of his 1771 work True Christianity (§§5–184). [GFD, RHK]

16. The first edition cites verses 10 and 11 of John chapter 14, but verse 9 is also clearly meant. [JSR]

17. Swedenborg used the substantive adjective “the Divine” (Divinum) to denote the three-in-one deity in all its aspects, almost exclusively in preference to “God” (Deus), and as a consistent alternative to “the Trinity.” “The Divine” also designates that quality in each “person” of the Trinity that unites it to the Trinity, as in §3, “the Lord’s divine nature” (Divinum Domini). [RHK]

18. In a major restructuring of traditional views of judgment in Christian eschatology and belief about salvation, Swedenborg describes judgment in the spiritual world as an internally directed process of aligning the reality of our character and most fundamental motivations with the objective realities of spiritual life. In §§510 and 511 below he describes the separation of evil spirits from good ones, showing the “spirits themselves diving” into hell. The chapter in §§545–550 below is headed “The Lord Does Not Cast Anyone into Hell: People Cast Themselves In,” and he develops the notion in many contexts. Here in §2, “not allowed” (non licet), and “sent away” (rejiceretur), refer to self-judgment. The same applies to “let down” (demittuntur), and “banished” (relegantur) in §3. Such terms, reflecting the appearance of external judgment, are not common in the work. [RHK]

19. We may suspect here an oblique reference to a statement in the work Swedenborg identified as the Athanasian Creed to the effect that while “we are obliged by Christian verity to acknowledge each Person in his own right as God and Lord, we are forbidden by the Catholic faith from saying that there are three Gods or three Lords.” See, in his later works, The Lord 55, Survey 35, and especially True Christianity 173:2: “Beware, then, that the concept of three gods does not take root in your mind while your mouth—which has no concepts in it—pronounces one god. Would not the part of the mind that is above the memory thinking three gods, and the mind below the memory that makes the mouth say one god, be like a comedian on a stage who can play two parts, switching back and forth, saying one thing in one role and the opposite in the other, and in his argument calling himself wise one moment and demented the next?” [GFD]

20. “Inflow” (Latin influxus) is central to Swedenborg’s concept of human nature. Both truth and the ability to identify truth “flow in” from the Lord through heaven to human understanding from moment to moment continuously. Thus knowledge—like life (and being itself)—is not a static “gift” but an ongoing dynamic relationship between a person and his or her context in spiritual reality. See §228 below, and §340 of Swedenborg’s 1763 work Divine Love and Wisdom. Inflow between the heavens is discussed in §§207–209 below. [RHK]

21. This is a reference to the followers of the Italian theologian Faustus Socinus (1539–1604) and his uncle Laelius Socinus (1525–1562), who denied the divinity of Christ. For references to Swedenborg’s position on Christ’s divinity, see note 19 above. [RHK]

22. In describing locations in the spiritual world Swedenborg often uses phrases relating to three-dimensional space that either lack a clear frame of reference—“a little forward to the right” (§3), “in the front” (§327), “moved away,” and “toward the left” (§249)—or that have reference to some organ of the human body—“these spirits can be seen in the neighborhood of the stomach, some on the left and some on the right, some lower and some higher, nearer or farther away” (§299). In the latter case it is not clear whether the body is that of Swedenborg himself, or of the universal human (see §§59, 65, 66), or even of the Lord (see §81); perhaps it is the result of a perceptual overlap of the three. Swedenborg later points out that directions in the spiritual world are constant regardless of the turning of one’s spirit-body. For angels east is always in front, west behind, south on the right, and north on the left (see §§141–142). “Front” and “back” are presumably then farther east and west respectively, that is, closer to and farther from the Lord as visible in the sun of heaven. “Higher” and “lower” presumably denote different levels, as described in §38 (see also §§22, 197). [JSR]

23. The Latin word here translated “materialists” is naturalistae, used by Swedenborg to mean those who worship the natural world in place of God. In §310 of the 1764 work Divine Providence, Swedenborg writes: “Every appearance that is confirmed as a truth becomes a fallacy. To the extent that people confirm themselves in fallacies they become materialists. And to that extent they believe nothing but what they can at the same time perceive by one of the bodily senses.” [RHK]

24. See §§318–328 below. While Swedenborg was careful to refer back to relevant passages by section number, his references ahead are rarely specific. Where we do find such specific references (in §207 of Secrets of Heaven, for example, he refers to §265) we may assume that he added the number on the basis of his first draft when he wrote out his fair copy. [GFD]

25. The Latin word here translated “insights” is cognitiones. In Secrets of Heaven 24, Swedenborg assigns scientifica, “data” or “information about,” to the outer person (homo externus) and cognitiones to the inner person (homo internus). The term cognitiones seems consistently to refer to direct, experiential awareness. “Insights” is here used in translation more for its compactness than for its precision. [GFD]

26. See §§334–337 below. [GFD]

27. The first edition reads 24–25. [JSR]

Notes to §§7–12

28. Swedenborg regularly equates “highest” with “inmost” or “central,” and “lowest” with “outmost” or “most external.” For further discussion, see note 45 below. [GFD]

29. See §§139–140 below. [GFD]

30. The Latin phrase here translated “enduring is a constant coming into being” (subsistere est perpetuo existere) was a philosophical maxim in Swedenborg’s day (see Secrets of Heaven 3483, 5084:3; Soul-Body Interaction 4) on which Swedenborg frequently built (see Secrets of Heaven 775, 3648, 4322, 4523:3, 5116:3, 5377:1, 6040:1, 6482, 9502, 9847, 10076:5, 10152:3, 10252:3, 10266; Heaven and Hell 107, 303; Divine Love and Wisdom 152; Divine Providence 3:2; Marriage Love 380:8; Soul-Body Interaction 9; True Christianity 46, 224:1). The point of the maxim is this: although a given animal may have descended from its ancestors, and a given rock may have stood where it stands for millennia, in another way of looking at it the animal and the rock are created anew by God each moment. Their enduring can also be seen as a perpetual arising or coming into existence. [JSR]

31. By “the First” here Swedenborg means God as the origin of all things; see also §§37, 303. [JSR]

Notes to §§13–19

32. The Latin word here translated “thoughtfulness” is charitas, traditionally translated “charity.” At this point and in the following chapter the term denotes the practice of learning, wanting, and doing what one’s neighbor wants. In other contexts—for example, the discussion below of the rich and the poor (see especially §364)—it refers to the concept of desiring what is good for one’s neighbor. One of Swedenborg’s most urgent concerns was the contemporary debate over the relative primacy of faith and charity (which can be considered thoughtfulness toward others, or “works,” what one does for others) in practice and concept, which he felt had brought the religious life of the age into peril. For him, faith and charity were inseparable except in concept, and their relationship was that of thought and intent (see §364 below). [RHK]

33. The phrase “single being” here introduces Swedenborg’s idea—developed at greater length in §§94–101 below—that the entire heaven has the form of a single human spirit patterned after the form of the Lord, and can be called the “universal human.” This is a far-reaching concept informing his ontology, Christology, anthropology, and eschatology. Its complete formulation appears in a series of twenty essays interspersed among certain passages of Secrets of Heaven (specifically, following Swedenborg’s exegesis of Genesis chapters 23 through 43). For these essays, excerpted and translated, see Swedenborg 1984. [RHK]

34. The idea of love that is offered here is most fully defined in Swedenborg’s 1763 work Divine Love and Wisdom 1–46. [RHK]

35. For an overview of the three heavens see §§29–40. [JSR]

36. The Latin here translated “for the image he projects” is quoad personam. It is probable that Swedenborg uses persona here in its classical sense of “mask.” Note his citation of Secrets of Heaven 3820, with its contrast between the persona and the inner source of the persona. In Divine Providence 217:3 persona is also associated with functio et honor, “role and status,” a meaning which is often applicable elsewhere and may be intended here. [GFD, RHK]

37. The present translation follows Swedenborg’s practice of not indicating ellipses. [GFD]

38. John 15:12, here referred to but not cited, reads, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” [GFD]

39. The Latin word here translated “auras” is sphaerae, a word Swedenborg often uses to refer to regions or extents of influence. [GFD]

40. In Swedenborg’s note at this point, it seems likely that the first list of references was intended to be 10130, 10420, and 10702, and the second to be 10130, 10189, and 10420, but that due to the substantial similarity the lists were conflated. [GFD]

41. See §§141–153 below. [GFD]

42. This general theme is explored in some detail in the references to Secrets of Heaven at the end of §356 below. [GFD]

Notes to §§20–28

43. For a mapping of the two kingdoms onto the human body see §95; for a mapping of the three heavens onto the human body, see §§29, 65. [JSR]

44. The Latin term here translated “heavenly kingdom” is regnum coeleste. Some translations render this “celestial kingdom.” However, such a translation obscures a clearly intentional symmetry: coelestis/heavenly is to coelum/heaven as spiritualis/spiritual is to spiritus/spirit and naturalis/natural is to natura/nature. [GFD, RHK]

45. Throughout his theological works, Swedenborg relates “high” to inwardness and “low” to externality; that is, the higher something is said to be, the more inward it is; the lower something is said to be, the more outward or external it is. (The relationship is so close in each case that the terms involved seem interchangeable.) See the introduction to this volume; and for further development of the relational concept, see Swedenborg’s 1763 work Divine Love and Wisdom 184–263, especially 205. [GFD, RHK]

46. Following the general Christian practice of his times, Swedenborg often renders the tetragrammaton of Hebrew Scriptures as “Jehovah.” [JSR]

47. Since faith is an intellectual faculty, and thoughtfulness is a particular form of volition, Swedenborg’s statement here constitutes a more generalized affirmation of the unity of faith and charity, or thoughtfulness toward one’s neighbor (see note 32 above). [RHK]