Protestant critiques of Swedenborgianism first appeared shortly after the publications of his spiritual writings in the middle of the 18th century. Protestant theologians focused most closely on his teachings and those of his followers through the 19th century, and since then have afforded Swedenborgianism relatively little attention.¹

The primary Protestant critiques of Swedenborgianism can be grouped into several categories:

• The source and nature of Swedenborg's visions
• Inspiration and interpretation of the Bible
• The doctrines of the nature of God, salvation, and the afterlife

Swedenborg's visions

Source of the visions

The source of Swedenborg's visions is a matter of some debate within Protestantism, though they are universally scorned. Some, beginning with Swedenborg's contemporary, John Wesley, attributed the visions to insanity: Wesley wrote in his journal that Swedenborg was "one of the most ingenious, lively, and entertaining madmen that ever set pen to paper" and that his dreams were "remote both from Scripture and common sense."²

More modern treatments, however, often attribute the visions to the occult. Walter Martin and Ravi Zacharias admit that "no one can reasonably say that Swedenborg was insane," but instead call him a "medium" and "thoroughgoing spiritist," and provide several examples of "communication with the spirit world in direct violation of the express commands of Scripture."³ John Ankerberg and John Weldon say that he "fell prey to deceiving spirits" and ignored scriptural warnings against spirit contact because he "believed 'good' spirits had taught him the truth."⁴

Nature of the visions

It naturally follows from the preceding that Protestants view the alleged supernatural revelation of Swedenborg as novel and false. A. H. Strong argues that "all new communications which would contradict or supersede" Scripture, including Swedenborg's, must be tested against God's Word according to 1 John 4:1.⁵ He also suggests the test of miraculous signs, and finds that "all so-called new prophecy, from Montanus to Swedenborg, proves its own falsity by its lack of attesting miracles."⁶

A. A. Hodge likewise finds that Swedenborgianism lacks the "'signs' of a supernatural revelation." Instead, it and other similar "pretended revelations of the Spirit," like Mormonism, "are inconsistent with Scripture truth, directly oppose the authority of Scripture and teach bad morals."⁷ Charles Hodge finds a striking similarity between revelation in Islam and Swedenborgianism: "as to the evidence, on which they ask us to receive their professed revelation, there is very little difference in principle."⁸

Bible

Canon

Swedenborg's Protestant critics attack him and his followers for what they regard as a failure to properly regard the traditional Bible. Strong and others strenuously object to his "rejection of nearly one half the Bible (Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and the whole of the N. T. except the Gospels and the Apocalypse)."⁹ After examining the concept of "internal sense" promoted by Swedenborg as the basis for selection, Hodge instead argues that:

The authority of Swedenborg, capriciously exercised, is the true cause of rejecting these books. [...] The truth is, this rejection of thirty-two books is an open and arbitrary act of infidelity; and no reason can be given why we may not upon like grounds renounce the whole word of God.¹⁰

Furthermore, Hodge finds that Swedenborg's followers, for practical purposes, put Swedenborg's "writings before those of the prophets" of the Old Testament.¹¹ Martin and Zacharias claim that "Swedenborg is consistently and energetically refuted by the epistles of Paul, particularly, the book of Romans, chapters 5 through 8, which Swedenborg detested with abject horror," and that this is the real basis for rejecting the epistles: "He began with the basic assumption that he was right, and that the apostle Paul was wrong!"¹²

Interpretation

Martin and Zacharias call Swedenborg's method of exegesis "a spiritual mode of interpreting Scripture."¹³ Church historian Philip Schaff calls his allegorizing "arbitrary and fanciful, often ingenious, often absurd," going "further than Philo and Origen in their allegorical method."¹⁴ Analyzing some examples of Swedenborg's "Science of Correspondence," Hodge finds that "every thing in scripture is figurative" and through it "the scriptures are made to mean any thing that the fancy of man can invent."¹⁵

Schaff notes that Swedenborg's "new revelation and theory of Scripture interpretation [...] exerted no influence on the regular course of historical development," and mercilessly states why:

The exegesis of Swedenborg is original, but critically and theologically worthless, and hence ignored in commentaries.¹⁴

Doctrine

In commenting generally on Swedenborg's doctrine, John Wesley calls it "quite unproved, quite precarious from beginning to end" and "in many instances [...] contradictory to Scripture, to reason, and to itself."¹⁶ Hodge calls the writings of Swedenborgianism a "labyrinth":

To the sober-minded who wish evidence before faith, who exercise their judgments, and are governed by any laws of reasoning, or rules of interpretation, we can conceive of nothing more unpleasant than an attempt to read, digest or understand the doctrine. We have called it above "a system," but we used the term for want of a better. It is a maze, a howling wilderness, a dreary waste of confusion and impiety.¹⁷

The most commonly cited examples of doctrinal discrepancy are in regards to the nature of God, particularly the Trinity and God's method of creation; atonement and justification; and the afterlife.

Nature of God

Louis Berkhof and John Frame, two recent systematic theologians, spare Swedenborg little notice in their summaries of the doctrine of the Trinity. Frame dismisses him as a thinker "whose thought was governed more by speculation than by Scripture,"¹⁸ and like Frame, Berkhof calls Swedenborg a Modalist:

Others followed the way pointed out by Sabellius by teaching a species of Modalism, as, for instance, Emanuel Swedenborg, who held that the eternal God-man became flesh in the Son, and operated through the Holy Spirit.¹⁹

Hodge likewise sees similarity in the views of Sabellius and Swedenborg: "There is indeed considerable variation in the language used, but the substance seems to us to be the same."²⁰ A. H. Strong summarizes Swedenborg's view as "that God exists in the shape of a man—an anthropomorphism of which the making of idols is only a grosser and more barbarous form."²¹

Regarding the creation of the world, Berkhof and Strong liken Swedenborg's view to that of the Syrian Gnostics: "that the universe is of the same substance of God"²² and that "[creation] originated by emanation out of the divine substance."²³ Hodge cites Swedenborg's rejection of traditional creation and finds that he instead "gathered up" the "essential principles of pantheism."²⁴

Atonement and salvation

Charles Hodge summarizes Swedenborg's view of atonement as follows:

Christ’s redemptive work does not consist in his bearing our sins upon the tree, or in making satisfaction to the justice of God for our offences. All idea of such satisfaction Swedenborg rejects. The work of salvation is entirely subjective. Justification is pardon granted on repentance.²⁵

Elsewhere, he writes on the same topic that "doctrines more contrary to those taught by the Apostles we may safely say have never been propagated."²⁶ Hodge also notes that Swedenborgians do not accept the justification by faith, and argues that they "greatly misrepresented" it. Attempting to clarify, he writes:

The Christian world does not hold that the faith, which justifies, is separate from charity, or that it alone exists in the heart [...]. Faith is not meritorious but only instrumental in justification. If Swedenborg had half the information or discernment attributed to him by his followers, he must have known that he was misrepresenting the doctrine of the Christian world.²⁷

Strong, Wesley, and Hodge also criticize the claim that Swedenborgianism is essential to salvation. Strong notes that in Swedenborg's visions, members of the sects that Swedenborg disliked "were in the hells, condemned to everlasting punishment."²⁸ Wesley writes, "and the worst is, he flatly affirms, 'None can go to heaven, who believes three persons in the Godhead.'"²⁹

Heaven, hell, and resurrection

Swedenborg's revelation regarding heaven and hell remind many Protestants of Islam, both in its marked contrast to the revelation of the Bible and in the description itself. On the first point, Archibald Alexander writes:

It is worthy of remark, that although the Scriptures express the joys of heaven, and the miseries of hell, by the strongest figures, they do not enter much into detail, respecting the condition of men, in the future world. There is true wisdom in this silence; because it is a subject, of which we are, at present, incapable, of forming any distinct conceptions. Paul, after being caught up “to paradise, and to the third heaven,” gave no account of what he saw and heard, when he returned. How different is this from the ridiculous description of the seven heavens, by Mohammed; and from the reveries of Emmanuel Swedenborg!³⁰

John Wesley critiqued Swedenborg's view of heaven as "low, grovelling, just suiting a Mahometan paradise" and prone "to sink our conceptions, both of the glory of heaven, and of the inhabitants of it."³¹ Wesley's criticism of the doctrine of hell followed similar lines:

And his account of hell leaves nothing terrible in it; for, first, he quenches the unquenchable fire. He assures us there is no fire there [...]. And, secondly, he informs you, that all the damned enjoy their favourite pleasures. He that delights in filth is to have his filth; yea, and his harlot too!³¹

Regarding Swedenborg's doctrine of resurrection, Hodge writes that "it is not a resurrection at all";³² instead, "At death the outer body is laid aside, and the soul thereafter acts through the ethereal or spiritual vestment. This is the only resurrection which Swedenborg admitted. There is no rising again of the bodies laid in the grave."²⁵ Martin and Zacharias note that this precludes the future "resurrection of both the just and the unjust [...] in conjunction with the 'appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ'"³³ that they see clearly taught in the book of Revelation.

Summary

Martin and Zacharias summarize Swedenborgianism by calling it "outside the pale of Christian theology [...] not only concerning the Canon, but concerning such doctrines as the nature of God, the holy Trinity, the atonement of Jesus Christ, and the doctrines of salvation and resurrection."³⁴ In closing, they write:

The great tragedy of Emanuel Swedenborg is that he would not submit himself and his great mind to the discipline of the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures. Because of this, and because of his deliberated preoccupation with spiritism and the occult, in direct disobedience to the express teachings of God, he was despoiled, even as Paul had warned [Colossians 2:8–9]. He was deceived by dreams and visions and the machinations of him whom the Scriptures describe as the "spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:2b).³⁵

References:

• Alexander, Evidences of the Christian Religion (1832)
• Ankerberg and Weldon, Cult Watch (1991)
• Berkhof, Systematic Theology (1938)
• Frame, Systematic Theology (2013)
• Hodge, A. A., Commentary on the Confession of Faith (1869)
• Hodge, C., ed., Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 1848, No. III, Art. II. (1848). This 22-page article is the most complete Protestant critique of the doctrine of Swedenborg and his followers that I've found.
• Hodge, C., ed., Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 1870, No. II, Art. II. (1870)
• Hodge, C., Systematic Theology (1873)
• Martin and Zacharias, Kingdom of the Cults (2003)
• Schaff, Theological Propaedeutic (1892)
• Strong, Systematic Theology (1886)
• Wesley, Journals
• Wesley, Works (v. 4)

Notes:

1. A. A. Hodge, Charles Hodge, Archibald Alexander, and A. H. Strong all wrote in the late 19th century or earlier. My searches indicate that Swedenborg is notably absent from treatments like Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology (1994), H. Orton Wiley's Christian Theology (1940), J. Rodman William's Renewal Theology (1996), and Gregg R. Allison's Historical Theology (2011). He merits extremely brief mention in John Frame's Systematic Theology (2013) and, rather surprisingly, William Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine (1863).
2. Wesley, Journals
3. Martin and Zacharias, 634
4. Ankerberg and Weldon, 171–72
5. Strong, I: 32
6. Strong, II: 712
7. Hodge, A. A., 60–61
8. Hodge, C., ed., 1848: 349–50
9. Strong, I: 207
10. Hodge, C., ed., 1848: 335–36
11. Hodge, C., ed., 1848: 338
12. Martin and Zacharias, 638
13. Martin and Zacharias, 633
14. Schaff, 226–27
15. Hodge, C., ed., 1848: 346–48
16. Wesley, Works, IV: 149
17. Hodge, C., ed., 1848: 350–51
18. Frame, 476
19. Berkhof, 1.1.8.A
20. Hodge, C., ed. 1848: 340
21. Strong, I: 251
22. Strong, II: 383
23. Berkhof, 1.2.3.C.4
24. Hodge, C., ed., 1870: 214
25. Hodge, C. 3.3.8
26. Hodge, C., ed., 1848: 341
27. Hodge, C., ed., 1848: 342
28. Strong, II: 386
29. Wesley, Works, IV: 149. He appears to be quoting Swedenborg's Doctrine of the Lord. Hodge remarks similarly in 1848: 352.
30. Alexander, 191
31. Wesley, Works, IV: 149–50
32. Hodge, C., ed., 1848: 345
33. Martin and Zacharias, 640
34. Martin and Zacharias, 632
35. Martin and Zacharias, 641