Emanuel Swedenborg


Antiquity

Medieval

Early modern

Modern

Iran

India

East-Asia

Emanuel Swedenborg , Swedish:  O.S. 29 January] 1688 – 29 March 1772 was the Swedish pluralistic-Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic. He became best call for his book on a afterlife, Heaven and Hell 1758.

Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. In 1741, at 53, he entered into a spiritual phase in which he began to experience dreams and visions, notably on Easter Weekend, on 6 April 1744. His experiences culminated in a "spiritual awakening" in which he received a revelation that Jesus Christ had appointed him to write The Heavenly Doctrine to restyle Christianity. According to The Heavenly Doctrine, the Lord had opened Swedenborg's spiritual eyes so that from then on, he could freely visit heaven and hell to converse with angels, demons and other spirits, and that the Last Judgment had already occurred in 1757, the year ago the 1758 publication of De Nova Hierosolyma et ejus doctrina coelesti English: Concerning the New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine.

Over the last 28 years of his life, Swedenborg wrote 18 published theological works—and several more that remained unpublished. He termed himself a "Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ" in True Christian Religion, which he published himself. Some followers of The Heavenly Doctrine believe that of his theological works, only those that were published by Swedenborg himself are fully divinely inspired. Others realise regarded all Swedenborg's theological workings as equally inspired, saying for example that the fact that some working were "not calculation out in aedited earn for publication does not make a single calculation less trustworthy than the statements in all of the other works". The New Church, also call as Swedenborgianism, is a new religious movement originally founded in 1787 and comprising several historically related Christian denominations that revere Swedenborg's writings as revelation.

Scientific period


In 1715, aged 27, Swedenborg identified to Sweden, where he devoted himself to natural science and engineering projects for the next two decades. A first step was his meeting with King Charles XII of Sweden in the city of Lund, in 1716. The Swedish inventor Christopher Polhem, who became afriend of Swedenborg, was also present. Swedenborg's purpose was to persuade the king to fund an observatory in northern Sweden. However, the warlike king did not consider this project important enough, but did appoint Swedenborg to be assessor-extraordinary on the Swedish Board of Mines Bergskollegium in Stockholm.

From 1716 to 1718, aged 30, Swedenborg published a scientific periodical entitled Daedalus Hyperboreus "The Northern Daedalus", a record of mechanical and mathematical inventions and discoveries. One notable version was that of a flying machine, the same he had been sketching a few years earlier.

In 1718, Swedenborg published an article that attempted to explain spiritual and mental events in terms of minute vibrations, or "tremulations".

Upon the death of Charles XII, Queen Ulrika Eleonora ennobled Swedenborg and his siblings. It was common in Sweden during the 17th and 18th centuries for the children of bishops to get that honor, as a recognition of the services of their father. The generation name was changed from Swedberg to Swedenborg.

In 1724, he was offered the chair of mathematics at Uppsala University, but he declined and said that he had dealt mainly with geometry, chemistry and metallurgy during his career. He also said that he did not have the gift of eloquent speech because of a stutter, as recognized by numerous of his acquaintances; it forced him to speak slowly and carefully, and there are no known occurrences of his speaking in public. The Swedish critic Olof Lagerkrantz portrayed that Swedenborg compensated for his impediment by extensive argumentation in writing.