Non-fiction: Conjugial Love

Overview
Emanuel Swedenborg's Conjugial Love (1768) offers a systematic spiritual account of marriage and sexual affection, arguing that true conjugal love is a divine, lifelong union that reflects heavenly order. The text treats marriage not as a merely social institution but as an inner, spiritual bond between two souls whose union has moral, metaphysical and eternal significance. Swedenborg locates conjugial love within his wider theology of correspondences and regeneration, showing how earthly marital relations participate in higher spiritual realities.

Central themes
At the center of the treatise is the distinction between fleeting sensual desire and genuine conjugial love. Sensual passion is depicted as a natural impulse that can degrade into selfishness or lust, whereas conjugial love is a mutual, self-giving affection that transforms individual wills and intellects into a harmonious unity. Swedenborg emphasizes fidelity, reciprocal care, and the cultivation of spiritual qualities as the marks of authentic conjugal bonds.
A second major theme is correspondential meaning: bodily marriage corresponds to spiritual marriage, and the uses of marriage, procreation, mutual support, and moral refinement, have inner counterparts in the soul's union with the Divine. Marriage is therefore an arena for moral development and regeneration, a means by which people are trained in charity, humility and spiritual order.

Doctrine of conjugial union
Swedenborg argues that genuine marriage ideally involves one man and one woman joined for life, creating a distinctive spiritual pair that remains central in the afterlife. The union is described as the joining of will and understanding, affection and thought, producing a single conjugial love that surpasses physical attraction. True conjugial love is steadfast, exclusively directed, and grows deeper with mutual spiritual cultivation rather than fading with time.
The treatise also treats sexual morality in precise terms: chastity within marriage, the avoidance of adultery and prostitution, and the rejection of polygamy and ephemeral liaisons are defended both morally and spiritually. Sexual relations bereft of conjugial love are portrayed as corrupting to the soul, while those embedded in genuine mutual affection contribute to the partners' heavenly destiny.

Moral and social implications
Conjugial Love links private marital conduct to public and social consequences. Swedenborg criticizes social practices that commercialize sex or dissolve lifelong commitments, claiming that such arrangements undermine the moral fabric of societies by producing instability, selfishness and spiritual emptiness. He urges that marriages be entered with responsibility and inner reflection, oriented toward mutual use and the care of children as continuations of conjugial life.
At the same time, the work addresses delicate pastoral concerns, acknowledging human frailty while insisting that regeneration, gradual moral transformation, is possible through faith, repentance and the steady cultivation of conjugial virtues. The ideal is demanding but presented as attainable for those who submit personal desire to higher spiritual ends.

Heavenly and eschatological dimensions
Swedenborg's theology extends marriage beyond death: couples who achieve true conjugial love are said to remain together in heaven and to become angels, their union preserved and perfected. Earthly conjugial fidelity becomes a sign of one's receptivity to the Divine, and the marriage relation is mapped onto the larger cosmic relation between God and the Church. Thus conjugial love acquires an eschatological weight as a vehicle of eternal happiness.
Descriptions of angelic marriages and the spiritual correspondences of bodily acts underline the author's conviction that earthly life prepares souls for heavenly states. The permanence and profundity of true conjugial bonds are therefore presented as both a present moral duty and an everlasting blessing.

Style, structure and influence
Written in a dense, discursive theological mode, Conjugial Love weaves scriptural exegesis, metaphysical argument and practical moral counsel. Swedenborg's method relies heavily on correspondence and visionary assertion, which makes the book compelling to readers attracted to spiritual symbolism and controversial to those requiring conventional biblical or philosophical proofs. The treatise became a cornerstone for Swedenborgian thought and influenced later spiritualist and reformist discussions of marriage, sexuality and the sanctity of human relationships.