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Swedenborg, Emanuel - The True Christian Religion - The Trinity
Identifier
003141
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Emanuel Swedenborg violently opposed the definition of the Trinity that had been adopted by the established Church. …..
In effect, to Swedenborg, Muslims, Jews and people of other religions are mainly opposed to Christianity because its doctrine of the Trinity of Persons makes One God into three Gods. He considered the separation of the Trinity into three separate Persons to have originated with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and the Athanasian Creed, circa 500.
Swedenbourg based some of his supporting evidence on the work of Tertullian, a Latin theologian who wrote in the early third century that the "Trinity” was "one in essence – not one in Person".
In order to emphasise the point Swedenborg uses the phrases Intelligences and beings not ‘person’.
A description of the experience
Swedenborg, True Christian Religion, section 183
From a Trinity of Persons, each one of whom singly is God, according to the Athanasian creed, many discordant and heterogeneous ideas respecting God have arisen, which are phantasies and abortions. [.] All who dwell outside the Christian church, both Mohammedans and Jews, and besides these the Gentiles of every cult, are averse to Christianity solely on account of its belief in three Gods.
Emmanuel Swedenborg –The Infinite and the final cause of creation
The circumstances of all contingencies in the finite sphere conspiring so marvellously to a single end, can proceed from no other ground than a cause involving an infinitely intelligent Being