Another Look at the Crown of All Churches

Thane examines the phrase 'crown of all churches,' looking for its true meaning through an exploration of its context. He cites instances when Swedenborg uses the phrase himself, the appearance of crowns in scripture, and several interpretations of this abiding concept in essays published within the church, dating back to the late 1800s. Academic and thorough, he offers an unresolved perspective that satisfies in its complexity. -Editor

Introduction: Crown

What is the New Church? The vision of a New Jerusalem descending at the end of the Bible depicts some great promise for the earth, a promise which Emanuel Swedenborg calls a New Church. But what is this promise? What is the New Church?

One of the most striking answers to this question comes at the end of The True Christian Religion, the last book of theology describing this New Church published by Swedenborg. Here, in the final section of the final chapter of this work, we read, “This new church is the crown of all the churches which have up to now existed upon earth, because it will worship one visible God, in whom is the invisible God, as the soul is in the body” (§787). The crown of all churches. This is a dramatic, exultant statement about the New Church. It is a statement that has been much cited in Swedenborgian literature ¹, but only a handful of people have explicitly explored the inherent meaning of the phrase.

What might it mean to say that the New Church is the crown of all churches? A crown in what sense?

Click to read more ...