Love Quote by Emanuel Swedenborg

Swedenborg builds heaven out of intake, not inheritance. Angels, in his schema, are less a species than a condition: you are what you can receive. Coming from a man trained in the hard-edged habits of 18th-century science, the line reads like an early systems theory smuggled into theology. “Divine… goes forth” suggests a constant output from the source; the variable is the receiver. Heaven isn’t a gated community of the elect, it’s a continuum of permeability.

The phrasing also does quiet ideological work. By defining “the Divine” as both “good of love” and “truth of faith,” Swedenborg refuses to let belief become mere assent or love become mere sentiment. Truth without love turns sterile; love without truth turns impulsive. He’s engineering a spiritual feedback loop where moral orientation and intellectual clarity stabilize each other. The subtext is disciplinary: if you’re not “in heaven,” the problem isn’t God’s scarcity but your clogged channels.

Context matters. Swedenborg’s mystical writings arrive after a career in metallurgy, anatomy, and engineering, during an era obsessed with measurement and order. He imports that sensibility into the afterlife: angels are “angels” only “in the measure” they participate. That little phrase is the tell. It demotes status and elevates process. The intended effect is bracing: holiness isn’t a badge, it’s a capacity you cultivate, and the cosmos is calibrated to make that fact unavoidable.