Swedenborg

Brief Exposition, by Emanuel Swedenborg: 1-50

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This is a theological tract by the Swedish mystic and visionary Emanuel Swedenborg (1769), serving as a preliminary sketch of the doctrine of what he calls the "New Church" — the spiritual institution he believed the Lord was about to establish, identified with the New Jerusalem of Revelation. Swedenborg frames the work explicitly as a contrast piece: before presenting his own new doctrine, he reproduces in detail the Roman Catholic teaching on justification drawn from the Council of Trent, covering original sin, the meritorious work of Christ, faith and charity, good works, and free will. The Tridentine doctrine he summarizes holds that Adam's sin corrupted and alienated all humanity, that Christ's atoning sacrifice merited justification which is graciously imputed to believers, and that justification involves both remission of sins and interior renewal through infused grace — with free will preserved but dependent on prevenient grace. Swedenborg's own theological project, only gestured at here, will set a rival doctrine against this Catholic framework, implying he finds current church teaching on these points fundamentally deficient. The text is of interest primarily to readers of Swedenborg's broader theological corpus or historians of eighteenth-century heterodox Christianity, as it provides the polemical baseline against which his New Church doctrine is defined.

Brief Exposition, by Emanuel Swedenborg: 1-50

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