Did Swedenborg believe in a bodily resurrection?

Short answer

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) taught that only the Lord (Jesus) rose from death with his body—though by that time it was a glorified, divine body. Every created human being, he said, rises from death in the spiritual world, in a spiritual body, leaving the physical body behind forever.

The Lord rose with his entire body, but it was a glorified, divine body

Swedenborg wrote:

Because the Lord’s human nature was glorified—that is, made divine—on the third day after his death he rose again with his whole body, which is not true of any human being, since we rise again with our spirit only and not with our body.

So that we should know this, and so that no one should doubt that the Lord rose again with his whole body, he not only said so through the angels who were in the tomb but also showed himself to the disciples in his human form with his body, saying to them when they thought they were seeing a spirit,

“See my hands and my feet-that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. (Luke 24:39–40; John 20:20)

And again,

Jesus said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at my hands; and reach out your hand and put it into my side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.” Then Thomas said, “My Lord and my God.” (John 20:27–28)

(Teachings for the New Jerusalem on the Lord, #35:9)

The Gospels of Luke and John make it clear that after Jesus' resurrection, there was no body in the tomb:

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. (Luke 24:1–3)

And:

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. (John 20:1–7)

The fact that there was no body in the tomb shows that Jesus rose with his entire body.

However, the body that he rose with was clearly not an ordinary physical body, as evidenced by his ability to appear to the disciples in a locked room (John 20:19), and generally to appear and disappear at will. See, for example, Matthew 28:9–10; Luke 24:30–31; John 20:14–17.

And yet, he was not a mere spirit, as he himself said in Luke 24:39–40. And in Luke 24:41–43 he asked for and ate food, further demonstrating that he was not a mere ghost, but had a solid body.

According to Swedenborg, this body that could appear and disappear at will, but also be touched and even eat food, was not a physical body, nor even a spiritual body, but a divine body. It was not made of physical matter, nor was it made of spiritual substance. It was made of the divine substance of God. This is what he means when he says, in the quote above, "the Lord’s human nature was glorified—that is, made divine."

In short, according to Swedenborg, the Lord rose with his entire body, but it was no longer a physical body—meaning a body made of physical matter. Rather, it was a divine body, made of divine substance (which is love: 1 John 4:8, 16).

This was because during his lifetime on earth, the Lord had glorified his humanity, down to and including his physical body. At the time of his resurrection, he had replaced everything of the physical body that he received from Mary with a glorified divine body that was of the same substance as the Father—meaning his inner divine self, or soul. This is why there was nothing left in the tomb.

As demonstrated in the Gospels, a divine body, made of divine substance, is able to interact with physical matter. According to Swedenborg, a divine body is also able to interact with spiritual substance, such that the Lord can appear in bodily form to angels in heaven.

In short, it is a real, solid body, just as the disciples experienced it after Jesus' resurrection, but it is a divine body, not a physical body.

Therefore, technically even Jesus did not rise with his physical body. And yet, he did rise with his entire body, leaving nothing behind in the tomb but the linen cloths in which his body had been wrapped.

Created humans leave their physical body behind, and rise immediately after death in their spiritual body

The Apostle Paul wrote:

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42–44)

Just so, says Swedenborg, we are not raised in our physical body, but in our spiritual body, never to return to our physical body:

After the death of the body, our spirit has a human form that is visible in the spiritual world, just as it had a human form that was visible in this world. Our spirit enjoys the abilities to see, hear, speak, and have sensations, just as it did in this world, and is endowed with every faculty of thinking, willing, and doing, just as it was in this world. In a word, we are human beings in absolutely every respect, except that we are not clothed with the dense body we wore in this world. That we leave behind when we die, and we never put it back on. (The New Jerusalem #225)

This is why unlike with the Lord, our physical body is left behind in the tomb, and gradually decays over time until there is nothing of it left.

Human beings, Swedenborg says, whether wicked or good, rise immediately after death in their spiritual body. They then remain in the spiritual world forever—in heaven if they are good, and in hell if they are wicked.

Why does the Bible seem to teach physical bodily resurrection?

Why, then, do various passages in the Bible make it sound like we will rise again with our physical body? Why is even Paul's clearest teaching about the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15:35–57 not crystal clear that the physical body and the spiritual body are two entirely distinct bodies, one of which is left behind permanently at death?

This, Swedenborg says, is to prevent physical-minded people from rejecting the afterlife altogether. Here is one such statement, in an older translation:

Most people at the present day who belong to the Church believe that everyone is going to rise again on the last day and to do so at that time with his body. This supposition is so universal that scarcely anyone, because of what he is taught, believes anything different. But that supposition has gained strength because the natural man imagines that the body alone is the possessor of life. Consequently if he were not allowed to believe that this body is going to receive life once again he would refuse to believe in any resurrection at all.

But the truth of the matter is that a person rises again immediately after death, at which point he seems to himself to be in his body just the same as when he was in the world, having a face and members, arms, hands, feet, breast, belly, and loins like the ones he had before. Indeed when he sees himself and touches himself he says he is exactly as he was in the world. However, that which he sees and touches is not his external which he carried round in the world but the internal which constituted the real person. That internal is what had life within it, but it had the external surrounding it, or outside every individual part of it, enabling it to exist in the world where it could act in the right way and carry out its functions. (Arcana Coelestia #5078:3)

In short, even though the Bible is really speaking about the spiritual body when it speaks of the resurrection body, it is worded so that physical-minded people, who can't think of themselves as real without their physical body, can still believe in an afterlife. This gives them an incentive to believe in God and spirit, and to live a good life according to God's commandments, so that after death they can have eternal life in heaven.

Conclusion

Swedenborg taught that Jesus Christ rose with his entire body, but that by the time of his resurrection, his body was no longer the physical body that he received from his human mother Mary, but a divine body that was made of the same substance as God (the Father), and that therefore was God.

He also taught that humans do not rise with their physical bodies in some future Last Judgment, but rise from death in the spiritual world, in their spiritual body, immediately after death, and never return to their physical body in the physical world. As Jesus said to the physical-minded, literalistic Sadducees:

And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is God not of the dead but of the living. (Matthew 22:31–33)

According to Jesus, at the time he spoke these words two thousand years ago, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not dead, but were very much alive. And since they were not then alive in the physical world, in their physical bodies—which were still in their graves—they could only be alive in the spiritual world, in their spiritual bodies.