Swedenborgian hymnody

Swedenborgian hymnody Swedenborgians are the followers of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), a distinguished Swedish mathematician and scientist, whose life was changed in 1745 by the ‘opening of his spiritual sight’, after which he taught a series of doctrines drawn from the Word of God coupled with his ability to see heaven and hell and converse with angels and spirits. He rejected the orthodox doctrine of the Atonement, preferring the idea that the end of creation is that human beings can become the image of their creator, the human form divine. He taught the doctrine of the unity of God rather than a Tripersonal belief, and held out the idea of ‘the New Church’: By the Old Church is meant...