Regeneration and Spiritual Formation

Swedenborg describes two fundamental orientations of love: love of self (amor sui) and love of the world (amor mundi), which are the root of all evil; and love of God (amor Dei) and love of the neighbour (amor proximi), which are the root of all good. The unregenerate person is dominated by the first two; the regenerate person by the second. Regeneration is the process by which this order is inverted — not through the destruction of self-love, which would destroy the person, but through its subordination to a higher love.

This reordering is accomplished through a specific sequence: the person is first confronted with spiritual truths; these produce a new kind of desire (the beginning of charity); the new desire gradually reshapes habitual thought and feeling; over time, what was once effortful becomes natural — the new loves become the person's own. Swedenborg insists on the gradualness: genuine transformation cannot be instant because it requires the reformation of deeply established habits of willing.

Swedenborg assigns an important positive role to spiritual temptation — not the temptation to sin but the interior experience of conflict between the old loves and the new. In these conflicts, the person is forced to choose repeatedly between their accustomed desires and their developing love of good. Each victory strengthens the new character; each defeat reveals where the old loves are still entrenched. Providence permits these temptations precisely because they are necessary for the kind of character formation that produces genuine, freely chosen goodness.

Regeneration is treated at length in True Christian Religion and extensively in Arcana Caelestia, where it is traced through the allegorical narrative of the Israelites' journey. Divine Providence frames it as the goal toward which all providential ordering aims.