The Divine Inspiration of
Emanuel Swedenborg
The Rev. Geoffrey S. Childs
Note: This article was published in the January 1973 issue of New Church Life.
Reprinted by request.
W
hen the Lord was on earth He said: “I have yet many things to say unto
you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of
Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.” (John 16:12,13)
Of this coming it is said:
The Lord will now appear in the Word. The reason why He will not appear in
person is that since His ascension into heaven He is in His glorified Human; and
in this He cannot appear to any man unless the eyes of the spirit are first opened.
[Rather] He will appear in the Word, which is from Him and is thus Himself. (True
Christian Religion 777)
This second coming of the Lord is effected by means of a man [Swedenborg], to
whom the Lord has manifested Himself in person, and whom He has filled with His
spirit, that he may teach the doctrines of the New Church from the Lord by means
of the Word. (Ibid. 779)
This is our faith: that the Lord has made His second coming through
Swedenborg, who was His scribe; and that the Writings are therefore the Lord’s
alone, and not at all Swedenborg’s. This belief is the rock upon which our
church is built. Yet there are those who would reject this rock as the head of
the corner; for there are those who have read the Writings and do not consider
them a Divine revelation.
Most of these describe Swedenborg as an amazing genius and as
astonishingly prolific in his ideas. But they readily and easily ascribe these
ideas, these truths, to Swedenborg, and not to the Lord. They ignore what
Swedenborg himself testifies about the authorship of the Writings.
Those who doubt the Divine authority of the Writings have a probing
question to ask: How can a man, who is finite, write what is Divine? This is
a valid question, for Swedenborg was only a finite man. To see how the Lord
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