Emanuel Swedenborg

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews and discusses the life, history and work of Emanuel Swedenborg. The paper begins by reviewing his book 'The Heavenly Doctrines of the Second Coming' and follows with a discussion regarding Swedenborg's life and theories of religion.

Contents:
His Religious Experience
An Encounter with the "Sacred"?
II. His Understanding
III. His Following
IV. His Evil Concept
V. His Solution
VI. His "Message"

From the Paper:

"He viewed God at the center of a person's being; as infinitely loving. He perceived life to be an individual's spiritual birth while each person partakes in their own creation. Scripture, he contended, is ". . . a story of inner-life stages" as people we learn and grow. (The Swedenbogian Church) Jesus Christ manifested God, Swendenborg stressed . . . the Divine became flesh to empower humans to be comprehend a distinctive relationship with God. Prior to Christ's coming, God had been beyond human comprehension. Jesus gave humans an overt expression of God's reality. Christ reflects the trinity. Swendenborg denied that Christ came to redeem people from original sin, but argues Christ mission was to reveal the spiritual life's reality and nature. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Carlson, Maria. "Chapter Five Fashionable Occultism." The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture. Ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. 135-151.
• Emanuel Swedenborg. 2006. http://www.swedenborg.org/index.cfm. [13 October 2006]
• Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882). Bartlett, John, comp. Familiar Quotations, 10th ed, rev. and enl. by Nathan Haskell Dole. Boston: Little, Brown, 1919; Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/100/. [13 October 2006].
• Toksvig, Signe. Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948.
• "STAINED-GLASS ANGELS OF SWEDENBORG.(Living)", The Cincinnati Post (Cincinnati, OH), June 22, 2006.

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