1. Throughout the history of the Christian church there have been various theologians who identified Jesus as a human "like anyone else," including those known as "Socinians," whose doctrine concerning Jesus was enjoying a considerable vogue in Swedenborg's own time. Their doctrine was named for the Italian theologian Fausto Sozzini (1539-1604), who argued that Jesus Christ was not the human incarnation of a preexisting person in the divine Trinity, but a unique human being who attained an intercessory relationship with God through his exceptional holiness. Beginning in the sixteenth century, radical Reformation churches based on these ideas flourished in Transylvania and in Poland, where they were known as the "Polish Brethren" (Wilbur 1977, 2:406-430). In the latter half of the seventeenth century, copies of their theological corpus spread to England, where Arianism, a related position (but with roots much earlier in Christian history) that also rejects Christ's uncreated and divine status, was already popular among the educated elite: for example, the British scientist Isaac Newton (1642-1727) considered worshiping Christ as God a form of idolatry (Westfall 1994, 124). The Socinian thesis, which came to be known in England as Unitarianism, enjoyed enormous underground popularity. In 1774, the English scientist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), "being now fully persuaded that Christ was a man like ourselves, and consequently that his pre-existence, as well as that of other men, was a notion that had no foundation in reason or in the scriptures," established the first openly Unitarian congregation at the Essex Street Church in London (Priestley 1995, 156). Given the fierce attacks that Swedenborg launches on Arianism and Socinianism in his final work, True Christianity (published in 1771), he was certainly aware of the Arian and Socinian ideas that were circulating in Europe generally and in London especially. For a more detailed treatment of Swedenborg's concept of the Lord, see True Christianity 81-109. [DNG, SS]

2. The idea that the body is an image of the soul becomes relevant in this context because Swedenborg compares the Father and the Son to the soul and its body, respectively (see True Christianity 166-169). Jesus' resurrection in his complete physical body is relevant because it demonstrates a uniquely divine form of humanity: other humans are not so resurrected (see True Christianity 170). His transfiguration, described in Matthew 17:1-2; Mark 9:2-3; Luke 9:28-29, is significant once again as demonstrating his divinity (see, for example, Secrets of Heaven 3212[4], 4692). [SS]

3. For biblical examples of what the Lord said about believing in him, see, for example, the quotations Swedenborg presents in The Lord 32[6] from John 1:12; 3:15, 16, 18, 36; 6:29, 35, 40, 47; 7:38; 8:24; 11:25, 26; 12:36, 46; about the Lord's being one with the Father, see John 10:30; about his glorification, see John 11:4; 12:23; 13:31-32; 17:1, 5; and about his power over heaven and earth, see Matthew 28:18, as well as Matthew 11:27; John 3:35; 17:2. For an expanded argument along these lines, with abundant scriptural references, see the small work The Lord throughout. [JSR]

4. The relevant part of Matthew 28:20 reads: "And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (New Revised Standard Version). [GFD]

5. Here and elsewhere in his theological writings, the Latin translation Swedenborg uses for John 7:39 is based on the Greek in the Textus Receptus ("Accepted Text"), which was almost universally accepted in the Protestant world of Swedenborg's day. Subsequent scholarship came to prefer an alternate but still ancient textual tradition (see Aland and others 1966, John 7:39 note) in which this verse includes the word "given" (Greek: δεδομενόν [dedomenón]) in addition to the simple verb "was" (ἦν [ên]), and may or may not include the word "Holy," resulting in English translations of "No spirit was given yet," or "The Holy Spirit was not yet given. " Some scholars believe the word "given" was added to the original wording in order to avoid any suggestion that the Holy Spirit has not always existed (Brown 1966, 324; Alford 1874, 1:2:781). Swedenborg, however, did in fact hold that the Holy Spirit came into existence in the Christian Trinity at the time of Jesus' glorification. Though he commonly cites John 7:39 as biblical support for this stance, and shows no awareness in his theological writings of any alternate textual tradition of this passage, in True Christianity 154 he does speak of the Holy Spirit being given to or bestowed upon the apostles by the Lord. This suggests that if he was aware of the textual versions of John 7:39 that include the word "given," he did not see them as posing a challenge to his doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit. For more on Swedenborg's view of the Holy Spirit, see Secrets of Heaven 6993, 8127, 9818:14; The Lord 51[3]. For Swedenborg's view on activities attributed to the Holy Spirit that are recorded in the Gospels as taking place before the Lord's glorification, see True Christianity 140, 158. For more on glorification, see note 1 in New Jerusalem 185. For further discussion on John 7:39, see Brown 1966, 324, who cites Hooke 1962-1963, 372-380, and Woodhouse 1964, 310-312. [RS, LSW, SS, JSR]