![]() ![]() Remarkably, Swedenborg’s Eve is not born of a rib bone. This examination will explore three aspects of her character’s development: the requirement of her consent for the first marriage and for the unfolding of the history of the universe the revealing of inner worlds through the facial expressions that she sees in her own reflection and her remarkable abilities to interpret the symbols of the cosmos, abilities that match and even surpass those of her partner. The present study, however, will limit itself to examining the character of Swedenborg’s Eve, demonstrating that she possesses degrees of wisdom and beneficent agency that are rare in the history of biblical reception. It would pause over the intimate relationship that Adam has with his inner spirit, his woman-soul, who is alternatively described as queen, mother, sister, and goddess ( diva) and it would examine her countless daughters, or intelligences and wisdoms, who occupy the chambers of Adam’s mind. Such a study would explore the countless ovaries, wombs, and nursing breasts that bring life at every level of creation, beginning with the pregnant sun and ending with the milk-giving branches of the Tree of Life. Rather, she is described as a model of wisdom, beauty, and integrity, a move that is surely worth our notice and consideration against the backdrop of traditional interpretations.Ī larger study of the ways in which The Worship and Love of God celebrates all things female would have much to contribute. Here, Eve is neither the first sinner nor the great temptress we have been warned about in pulpit and in fresco. Swedenborg discards the millennia-old commentarial tradition that focuses on Eve’s part in the fall of humanity and on her consequent suffering and hardship. In what few studies we have of The Worship and Love of God, Swedenborg’s Adam has received thorough attention, but Swedenborg’s Eve character is in fact the far more compelling one. We recognize these two to be the Adam and Eve of Genesis, even though they are unnamed in the text and even though the story strays considerably from the biblical account, wandering playfully in its own garden. At its heart, however, The Worship and Love of God is a wild and mystical retelling of the biblical story of the first humans, created male and female in the image of their creator. It employs a poetic imagination in ways that anticipate William Blake, but it also celebrates the mechanisms of the universe using the power of every optical lens, from the cellular level of brain science to the cosmic level of planetary physics. Embracing both fantasy and certainty, it tells the story of the creation of the world in both romantic and scientific terms. The Worship and Love of God takes its reader on a literary journey that defies genre classification. This theological confusion has resulted in an ambivalence to the work that has contributed to its obscurity-so much so that many readers of Swedenborg do not even know of its existence. ![]() However, the book also presents aspects of Swedenborg’s theology that are at odds with those found in his later works, such as those concerning the Trinity and the roles of Christ and Satan in the unfolding of a fall and salvation narrative that is in line with the Lutheran view of atonement. The Worship and Love of God contains many of the foundational concepts that would occupy the pages of his subsequent theological publications, such as the duality of the spiritual and natural suns the appearance of autonomy given to humankind for the sake of union with the Divine the influx or flow of essential divinity from God through celestial, spiritual, and natural levels and the return of this flow through the nexus of uses inherent in every created thing. Since this work contains so much material drawn from his previous publications, Swedish scholar Inge Jonsson argues that it is Swedenborg’s attempt to synthesize and summarize his philosophy, astronomy, and psychology up to that point. The Worship and Love of God ( De cultu et amore Dei) is often described as a transitional work, as it was written during the year of his most intense spiritual crisis and awakening and published precisely in the time between his early scientific and later theological periods. In the fall of 1744, six months after his first Christophany, Swedenborg was told in a dream that he would write a “divine book on the worship and love of God.” Thereafter, he embarked on an ambitious project, expounding on the themes of love and devotion through a detailed narration of the creation of the world.
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