Wilson van dusen youtube mp3

By James F. Lawrence, Dean, Center for Swedenborgian Studies of the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley)

When Wilson Van Dusen’s 1981 Uses: A Way of Personal and Spiritual Growth was republished as a pamphlet, it rapidly progressed into a runaway favorite in all quarters of Swedenborgiana.

Without doubt, Uses is the most beloved short work in Swedenborgian spirituality of the last half-century. Though the terms “uses” and “doctrine of use” held a discernible position in historical Swedenborgian discourse, “usefulness” staked out new prominence in practical Swedenborgian spirituality.

Analysis of terminology usage in Swedenborgian publishing history via article and book titles dating to the late eighteenth century bears this out.

Swedenborg never features the term “uses” or “usefulness” in book, chapter, or section titles within works.

Potts’s six-volume The Swedenborg Concordance