Choose This Day
Whom You Will Serve
The Nature of Human Choice
and the Problem of Universal Salvation
The Rev. Grant H. Odhner
T H I R D O F A T H R E E - PA RT SE R I E S
Is Change Possible after Death?
Like his answer to the question, “Is the choice of hell permanent?” Swedenborg’s
answer to, “Is change possible after death?” is unequivocal. The natural world
is the world of our formation and essential development. “The internal self
is formed in the natural body as a tree in the soil, or as seed in fruit.” (True
Christian Religion 454) Our state can be perfected after death, but not changed.
The reason for this lies in God’s desire to be in reciprocal relationship with us,
so that He can share His life in the fullest way possible.
In order to give us an identity that is eternal and based on our choices,
the Lord creates a natural world which is fixed and relatively lifeless.1 By being
born into this world and having our spirits clothed at every step in these fixed
material substances, the Lord can provide a permanent basis for our spirits.
The natural world is a place where we can participate in our own formation.
Our souls are formed by the Lord in connection with our choices, and in
conjunction with the fixed materials of outermost creation. This is the purpose
for which the natural world was designed! Regarding our role in our formation
we read:
No man, spirit, or angel ever has any life from himself, thus neither can he think
and will from himself…. For there is one only life, that of the Lord, which flows into
1
On the producing of ultimate things of creation, see Divine Love and Wisdom 55, 302-303, 305.
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