Heaven and Hell (also Heaven and its Wonders and Hell From Things Heard and Seen or, in Latin: De Caelo et Eius Mirabilibus et de inferno, ex Auditis et Visis) is a book written by Emanuel Swedenborg in Latin, published in 1758. It gives a detailed description of the afterlife; how people live after the death of the physical body. The work proved to be influential. It has been translated into a number of languages, including Danish, French, English, Hindi, Russian, Spanish, Icelandic, Swedish, Serbian and Zulu. A variety of important cultural figures, both writers and artists, were influenced by Swedenborg, including Johnny Appleseed, Jorge Luis Borges, Daniel Burnham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Flaxman, George Inness, Henry James, Sr., Carl Jung, Immanuel Kant, Honoré de Balzac, Helen Keller, Czesław Miłosz, August Strindberg, D. T. Suzuki, and W. B. Yeats. William Blake came from a family of Swedenborgians and annotated his copy of this text, as well as referred to and criticized Heaven and Hell and Swedenborg by name several times in his poetical/theological essay The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Edgar Allan Poe mentions this book in his work The Fall of the House of Usher. It also plays an important role in Honoré de Balzac's novel Louis Lambert. Swedenborg wrote about Heaven and Hell based on what he said was revelation from God. According to Swedenborg, God is love itself and intends everyone to go to heaven. That was His purpose for creation. Thus, God is never angry, Swedenborg says, and does not cast anyone into Hell. The appearance of Him being angry at evil-doers was permitted due to the primitive level of understanding of people in Biblical times. Specifically, holy fear was needed to keep the people of those times from sinking irretrievably into the consequences of their evils. The holy fear idea was in keeping with the fundamental truth that even they could understand, that everything comes from Jehovah. In the internal, spiritual sense of the Word, however, revealed in Swedenborg’s works, God can be clearly seen for the loving Person He actually is.
Basic teachings
God is One Heaven and Hell opens with an affirmation of the many statements in the Old and New Testaments (e.g., Deuteronomy 6:4, Isaiah 44:6, 45: 14, 21, Mark 12: 29,32, John 1:18, Revelation 11:17) and Swedenborg’s revelation (e.g.,) that there is a God and He is one. If God is all-powerful, He must be one. It is self-contradictory to say that there is more than one being who is all-powerful.
Angels Swedenborg details a life after death that consists of real experiences in a world in many basic ways quite similar to the natural world. According to Swedenborg, angels in heaven do not have an ethereal or ephemeral existence but enjoy an active life of service to others. They sleep and wake, love, breathe, eat, talk, read, work, play, and worship. They live a genuine life in a real spiritual body and world. According to Swedenborg, we in the natural world can only see angels here when our spiritual eyes are opened. This corresponds to many instances in the Old Testament and New Testament (Matthew 18, Luke 2:14, Matthew 17, Luke 24, Revelation 1:10). Swedenborg received his revelation by the same process of his spiritual eyes being opened by God. An angel’s whole environment – clothes, houses, towns, plants, etc. – are what Swedenborg terms correspondences. In other words, their environment spiritually reflects, and thus "corresponds" to, the mental state of the angel and changes as the angel's state changes. Swedenborg writes that angels have no power of their own. God's power works through the angels to restrain evil spirits, one angel being able to restrain a thousand such spirits all at once. Angels exercise God's power chiefly in defending people against hell. Swedenborg is explicitly clear that angels have no power whatsoever of their own, they neither take nor like to receive thanks or accept any credit. In the Christian world it is believed that in the beginning angels and devils were created in heaven, also that the devil or Satan was an angel of light, but having rebelled he was cast down with his crew, and thus hell was formed. Swedenborg states that, on the contrary, every angel or devil began life as an inhabitant of the human race. In other words, there are no angels or demons who were not people on Earth first. Children who die go directly to heaven, where they are raised by angel mothers.
Men and women Angels are men and women in every detail just as they were here on earth, only they are spiritual and thus more perfect. See Chapter on “Marriage in Heaven” in Heaven and Hell and Swedenborg’s book on the topic, Marriage Love (Conjugal Love in older translations).
The spiritual conjunction of husband and wife that is the basis of true marriage in this world and the next is explained in Heaven and Hell # 366ff. and Marriage Love #156ff. The states of [true marriage love] are innocence, peace, tranquility, intimate friendship, full trust and a desire shared by the disposition and heart of each to do the other all the good they can. All these things give rise to blessedness, bliss, joy and pleasure, and by their everlasting heavenly happiness. Swedenborg says that this true married love was known in antiquity but largely lost since then, mainly due to loss in belief that this love is eternal and that there is life after death.
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