The Collaborative International Dictionary
Swedenborgian \Swe`den*bor"gi*an\, n. One who holds the doctrines of the New Jerusalem church, as taught by Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish philosopher and religious writer, who was born a. d. 1688 and died 1772. Swedenborg claimed to have intercourse with the spiritual world, through the opening of his spiritual senses in 1745. He taught that the Lord Jesus Christ, as comprehending in himself all the fullness of the Godhead, is the one only God, and that there is a spiritual sense to the Scriptures, which he (Swedenborg) was able to reveal, because he saw the correspondence between natural and spiritual things.
Swedenborgian \Swe`den*bor"gi*an\, a. Of or pertaining to Swedenborg or his views.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1791, from name of Emanuel Svedberg, Swedish mystic and religious philosopher (1668-1772). His followers organized 1788 as The New Church.
Usage examples of "swedenborgian".
Sects and Professions in Religion are numerous and successive - General effect of false Zeal - Deists - Fanatical Idea of Church Reformers - The Church of Rome - Baptists - Swedenborgians - Univerbalists - Jews - Methodists of two Kinds: Calvinistic and Arminian - The Preaching of a Calvinistic Enthusiast - His contempt of Learning - Dislike to sound Morality: why - His Ideas of Conversion - His Success and Pretensions to Humility.
The Swedenborgian doctrine concerning Christ and his mission is that he was the infinite God incarnate, not incarnate for the purpose of expiating human sin and purchasing a ransom for the lost by vicarious sufferings, but for the sake of suppressing the rampant power of the hells, weakening the influx of the infernal spirits, setting an example to men, and revealing many important truths.
We cannot but regret that the Swedenborgian view of the future life should be burdened and darkened with the terrible error of the dogma of eternal damnation, spreading over the state of all the subjects of the hells the pall of immitigable hopelessness, denying that they can ever make the slightest ameliorating progress.
He may be a Swedenborgian, a Quaker, a Muggletonian,--anything will do, But it is expected of him that he shall place himself under some flag, and do his share in supporting the flag to which he belongs.
To mention only a few: The Atheist, The Shakers, The Infidel, The Millerites, The Agnostic, The Mormons, The Baptist, The Laurence Oliphant The Methodist, Harrisites, The Catholic, and the other The Grand Lama's people, 115 Christian sects, the The Monarchists, Presbyterian excepted, The Imperialists, The 72 Mohammedan sects, The Democrats, The Buddhist, The Republicans (but not The Blavatsky-Buddhist, the Mugwumps), The Nationalist, The Mind-Curists, The Confucian, The Faith-Curists, The Spiritualist, The Mental Scientists, The 2,000 East Indian The Allopaths, sects, The Homeopaths, The Peculiar People, The Electropaths, The Swedenborgians, The--but there's no end to the list.