Emanuel Swedenborg believed that conventional Christian theology sets an impossible challenge for believers. Though Christians are traditionally called upon by church doctrine to acknowledge the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as three persons, their religion forbids them to refer to these persons as “three gods.”
Continue ReadingNew Century Edition Blog
Our New Century Edition blog collects articles from our translation team on interesting finds that come up during translation and editing. These articles were originally featured in our print newsletters, and are dated from when they were originally published. Because of this, some of the older articles may contain out-of-date references, but all of the information is worth sharing and enjoying!
FAQs on the NCE
Over the years that the New Century Edition (NCE) project has been underway, the translators and editors have been asked several questions that may hold interest for the NCE audience in general. Here are answers to a few of these NCE “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQs).
Continue Reading“Read These First”
As people become interested in Swedenborg and what he wrote, a natural question is, “Where do I start?” Should you just begin at the beginning and read sequentially, or is there an alternative?
Continue ReadingCurrent Status of the New Century Edition Project
The New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (NCE ) extends to twenty-eight volumes. To date, six of those volumes have been published—Heaven and Hell, Divine Love and Wisdom, Divine Providence, True Christianity volume 1, and Secrets of Heaven volume 1, along with the essay volume that accompanies the set (also known as Scribe of Heaven). Our readers naturally wonder—where are the rest of the volumes? So here is a status update. But to explain that status, first we offer a refresher on some history that every American schoolchild learns.
Continue ReadingFleeing Imperfection
They say that perfection is, like happiness, something that can be pursued but never permanently attained. Or as Swedenborg says, even throughout all eternity we can never be so completely regenerated as to be called perfect (Secrets of Heaven 5122:3). And if we ourselves are not perfect, neither are the products of our hands and minds.
Continue ReadingGender in Translation of Swedenborg
One of the principles of the New Century Edition is to make the English translation of Swedenborg’s Latin as gender-inclusive as the original. For the most part, this is not too difficult. The simplest solution is usually to use plurals; “they” has no gender, and “we” is often even more satisfactory.
Continue ReadingThe Language of Inner Meaning
All parts of the Word contain an orderly sequence of thoughts, but the actual sequence cannot expose itself in its true nature when each word is explained by itself. Such an explanation makes the words seem disconnected and breaks up the continuity of meaning.
Continue ReadingTo begin with . . . Thoughts on the Place of New Jerusalem in Swedenborg’s Works
Swedenborg published two theological overviews, one early in his revelatory career and one at its close. The two works are strikingly consistent in substance and strikingly different in form, but Swedenborgians seem to have paid more attention to the similarity than to the difference.
Continue ReadingFound in Translation: Little and Not-so-little Discoveries in Swedenborg
We are accustomed to think of meaning being “lost in translation,” but sometimes it is found instead. One of the felicities of being a translator of Swedenborg’s works is discovering some nuance in the meaning of a passage that, for one reason or another, no one has discovered before—or at least, a nuance that none of the previous translators has captured. Usually these discoveries are trivial, but occasionally they completely change the way we understand an important passage.
Continue ReadingThe Gift of Struggle
Swedenborg had to struggle in order to find the best way to convey his discoveries about the Bible and the spiritual world; his rough drafts, with their crossed-out lines and blotted paragraphs, prove that Swedenborg wrestled to put his thoughts into language, as indeed any good writer must. The same is true of translators of Swedenborg’s works. They are, after all, writers, and they have the same God-given freedom Swedenborg had to turn from or to follow the work at hand. But they also must remain true to the same charge given to Swedenborg by the Lord: to make the inner sense of the Word known to others.
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