Years ago I was invited to a Swedenborgian Church to give a talk on Emanuel Swedenborg to honor his birthday. I have made a serious study of his scientific and theological ideas and have built a reputation for being able to convey these ideas in novel and imaginative ways. My address to the church focused on the symbolism of a birthday cake, especially how its ingredients and its baking offer insights to real transformative, spiritual growth. (Rumor has it that my speech was later reprinted in their national publication The Messenger).
This was an easy task because one of Swedenborg’s major gifts to the world was the extraordinary discovery that all material things on earth represent physical analogs of spiritual and heavenly realities (called correspondences). Therefore, a birthday cake’s ingredients could provide symbolic and tangible insights for obtaining spiritual wisdom and a heavenly life.
Swedenborg was born on January 29, 1688. He was both a scientist and theologian. This year I have been invited back—not to give a talk, but to discuss possible plans for promoting my new book Proving God at the church at some future date. My new book shares so many of Swedenborg’s intellectual gifts (both scientific and theological) with the world that it is quite ahead of its time.
This, too, was an easy task because Swedenborg’s science and theology is still very much ahead of its time. I am well aware that many individuals will find it absurd that the ideas of an 18th Century thinker can surpass the New Paradigm science or post-modern transformative religions, but they are all in for a big surprise.
Swedenborg offered amazing insights as to how science and theology are united. God and science are one! His insights included identifying the first causal principles of the universe, solutions to quantum gravity, a comprehensive model of human cognitive architecture and its multi-leveled substrates and functions, creation and evolution from non-local and non-temporal beginnings, and the scientific principles behind God’s eternal activity of salvation.
In a nutshell, my upcoming book explores Swedenborg’s remarkable premise for spiritual causality—that the laws and forces of nature have their origins in non-physical spiritual laws and forces.
A birthday cake with 322 candles puts out a lot of light. So I have simply written a book to help prepare those for a future time when Swedenborg’s birthday cake will throw out even more light.
Happy Birthday, Emanuel Swedenborg!
