Editorials
‘influenced by swedenborg’
The list of famous people who have been “influenced by Swedenborg”
is impressive, and New Church people have naturally been interested in
documenting these cases.
The extent of the influence varies from person to person, of course.
William Blake was certainly influenced by Swedenborg, but the influence was
heavily distorted by Blake’s own poetic interpretation.
Emerson paid great tribute to Swedenborg’s genius in his work on
Representative Men, but his view of Swedenborg as a “mystic” was not quite on
the mark, and there were aspects of Swedenborg’s Writings he rejected.
John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) and Helen Keller were very explicit
and emphatic in their praise of Swedenborg’s theology. C.S. Lewis, on the
other hand – some of whose ideas agree so much with certain teachings of the
Writings that New Church readers can’t help but think that he must have been
influenced by them – denied that he was.
But of all the thinkers influenced by Swedenborg, the least influenced
was Swedenborg himself – at least as far as the essential spiritual truths that
constitute the substance of his theological works are concerned.
Of course he drew upon his knowledge of science and philosophy, and his
life experience generally, in illustrating the theological truths which were later
revealed to him; but even that natural groundwork was laid down under the
guidance of Divine providence in order to enable him to relate spiritual truths
to corresponding natural truths later on in his theological period.
Swedenborg is usually ranked as one of the greatest geniuses who ever
lived. While that is not irrelevant, it is not the main point. It was under
the auspices of the Lord that his understanding of the order of nature was
developed to such an extraordinary degree that it could serve as a foundation
upon which spiritual truths could rest, and by which they could be confirmed.
And his phil