Emanuel Swedenborg (born Emanuel Swedberg)
1688-1772 · Esotericism · Known
Swedenborg spent some thirty years as a Swedish mining official and scientist, then said in 1744 that his spiritual sight had opened, and paid to print the theology that followed. Every natural thing answers to a spiritual one and exists for a use, a scheme he called correspondences. He denied the Trinity of Persons and salvation by faith alone, and held that nobody is sentenced to hell.
Signature
The position Swedenborg is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Natural Processes
- strongly leans Purposeful
- Highest Good
- Service
Positions on the 13 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- strongly leans Purposeful (100 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (88 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (16 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (17 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (100 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly between Unity and Multiplicity (45 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (72 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Opposition
- mildly leans Sublation (38 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Ethics
- strongly leans Means (90 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Ignorance
- leans Bliss (75 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Allegiance
- mildly leans Global (62 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
7 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Swedenborg refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism / Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Service
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- No End
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Other
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Other
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Expression
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Death
- Judgement
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?