How to See the Holy Spirit, Angels, and Demons: Ignatius of Loyola on the Gift of Discerning of Spirits in Church Ethics

By Gordon James Klingenschmitt

Are God, angels, and demons really invisible? Or can the spirits be seen with human eyes, through the lens of Church Ethics? The gift of discerning of spirits is indispensible to the study of church ethics.

Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), wrote two sets of Rules for Discerning of Spirits in his Spiritual Exercises in the early 1500s. He taught how the church can receive from God the gift to see otherwise invisible angels, demons, and the Holy Spirit. Ignatius' views were influenced by John Cassian, Jacobus de Voragine, Ludolph of Saxony, and Thomas a Kempis. Ignatius' Rules are exegeted in dialogue with contemporary scholars Karl Rahner, Hugo Rahner, Piet Penning de Vries, Jules Toner, and Timothy Gallagher, and applied to one study of ecclesial ethics in the narrative theology of Samuel Wells.

A four-step Ignatian "pneumato-ethical method" is developed, which any analyst can follow to see the spirits, by consolation/desolation, consent, manifestation, and pneumato-ethics. This method revolutionizes how we study ecclesiology, soteriology, missiology/world religions, liturgy, worship, Eucharist, hermeneutics, homiletics, pastoral counseling, church history, and politics.

The spirits are not invisible at all. They can be clearly discerned through the lens of ecclesial ethics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Dec 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781630870874

Gordon James Klingenschmitt

Gordon James Klingenschmitt (PhD, Regent University) is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and former Navy Chaplain. He now leads a daily, half-hour TV program, PIJN NEWS, and founded The Pray in Jesus Name Project, which has delivered 4.5 million petitions to Congress defending pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-Jesus, and pro-Israel issues. He may be contacted at prayinjesusname.org.

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How to See the Holy Spirit, Angels, and Demons

Ignatius of Loyola on the Gift of Discerning of Spirits in Church Ethics

Gordon James Klingenschmitt

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How to See the Holy Spirit, Angels, and Demons

Ignatius of Loyola on the Gift of Discerning of Spirits in Church Ethics

Copyright © 2014 Gordon James Klingenschmitt. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Pre-Ignatian Influences Upon Ignatius of Loyola’s Discerning of Spirits

Chapter 2: Ignatius of Loyola on Rules for Discerning of Spirits

Chapter 3: Contemporary Analysis of Discerning of Spirits in Ignatius of Loyola

Chapter 4: Incorporating Discerning of Spirits into Contemporary Ecclesial Ethics

Chapter 5: Applying the Ignatian Pneumato-Ethical Method to Ecclesiology

Conclusion

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my wife of 22 + years, Mary E. Klingenschmitt, for her faithful support and encouragement in my studies, and to my mother Joanne F. Clark and father Carl E. Klingenschmitt for changing my life by adopting me and raising me in the Christian faith, and my sister Julie A. Briggs and many extended family members. Thanks to my professors, especially my primary dissertation advisor and Chair, Dr. Wolfgang Vondey, and committee members Dr. Michael Palmer and Dr. Archie Wright, for helping me to improve this project in its organization and argument, and for requiring of me the highest standards of academic excellence. Thanks to my many spiritual mentors in the faith over the years, including pastors, chaplains, and those who taught me the scriptures and how to discern the spirits. Thanks to the founder, administrators, and librarians at Regent University, for making a difference in the lives of students and the world for Christ. Thanks to my fellow students and countless friends who inspired me to never give up. And thank you foremost to the Spirit of God who has forgiven me of many sins, and given me great consolation through countless trials, with much love, in Jesus’ name.

Introduction

Ignatius of Loyola is one of the most significant figures for the history of Christian spirituality. Particularly influential are the Spiritual Exercises , a set of reflections, meditations, prayers, and mental exercises designed as a model for contemplative prayer, training, and spiritual discernment.

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Karl Rahner, Catholic theologian and admirer of Ignatius, has contended that Ignatius’ relatively brief rules for the discernment of spirits provided a practical and formal systematic method for discovering God’s will for an individual . . . these rules were the first and the only detailed attempt at such a systematic method in the history of Christian spirituality.

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Another Ignatian analyst, Harvey D. Egan, has stated of Ignatius’ Rules for Discerning of Spirits, "His schematization, the concise codification, and the internal structure of his rules contribute to the heritage of Christian spirituality in a way in which no author before or after him has done. They are sui generis."

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Ignatius developed an original and thorough set of Rules for Discerning of Spirits, which helped transform Christian spirituality and church history.

Ignatius is an original and substantial thinker concerning spiritual discernment, and his theology and Rules offer a primary theological entry point to connect the realm of spirits and morals, or the two fields of pneumatology and ethics. Nonetheless, despite Ignatius’ widely acknowledged influence, the gift of discerning of spirits has not been substantially defended as foundational to and located in the field of ecclesial ethics. This study attempts to close this gap by incorporating the Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment into the contemporary field of ecclesial ethics, understood as the realm of decision-making influenced by the traditions, structures, and institutions of the church. I argue that ecclesial ethics depends upon discerning of spirits as a foundational element. The following study will show that because non-human spirits influence, inspire, and manifest themselves within human morality, those spirits should be seen and tested before the church can fulfill its task as a place of ethical decision-making. Only when the two concepts of discernment in ethics and discerning of spirits are substantially linked, can a clear picture emerge of the pneumatological dimension of ecclesial ethics, and by extension, to the larger field of ecclesiology. Ignatius helps to provide the solution to our problem.

The following introduction will offer a short biography of Ignatius as the starting point for a discussion of spiritual discernment, and will then build a bridge toward the field of ecclesial ethics. After a review of the literature concerning Ignatian discerning of spirits, a more detailed problem description as it pertains to ecclesial ethics precedes the presentation of methodology, procedure, argument, and anticipated conclusions for the study.

Short Biography: Who Is Ignatius Of Loyola?

Born in the Spanish Basque country, youngest of a noble family of twelve children, Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) joined the military. By his own account, up to his twenty-sixth year he was a man given over to the vanities of the world, and took a special delight in the exercise of arms, with a great and vain desire of winning glory.

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Nearly losing his leg when a cannon ball struck him in battle, Ignatius was disabled and recovering from his wounds and many surgeries when in his self-described boredom, he was given books to read that included the Lives of the Saints [Jacobus de Voragine, 1260, The Golden Legend],

⁵

which inspired him and converted him to faith in Jesus Christ. St. Dominic did this, therefore, I must do it. St. Francis did this, therefore, I must do it, he thought, and one night as he lay awake, [H]e saw clearly the likeness of our Lady with the holy Child Jesus, at the sight of which he received most abundant consolation for a considerable interval of time.

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His family members immediately recognized the ethical change in his soul from his outward change of manners. The spiritual encounter of the consolation transformed first his discernment, then his ethics. When his leg recovered, Ignatius paid homage to Our Lady of Montserrat (or in Spanish, Santa Maria de Montserrat, a Benedictine Monastery), laid his sword upon the altar, gave his rich clothing to the poor and bought a pilgrim’s habit, gave away all his money to choose a life of poverty, prayed in a cave near Manresa for nearly a year (during which he experienced revelations of Christ), and set off on foot to Jerusalem to experience the Holy Land. On his pilgrimage, Ignatius determined to live by faith in God alone for daily sustenance, so even the money he begged he reportedly often gave to those poorer than himself.

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Upon return from Jerusalem, Ignatius studied for fifteen years in Spain, Paris, and Venice, learning Latin, philosophy and theology. He wrote his Spiritual Exercises and began teaching them, surviving a few investigations with the inquisitors who acquitted him of heresy charges after he claimed he was illuminated by the Holy Spirit. In 1537, he moved to Rome, and one year later at age forty five, he celebrated his first mass. Two years after that, he received approval from Pope Paul to found a new monastic society in Rome with an emphasis on missions.

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Members of the new Society of Jesus made vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and a fourth vow to go wherever the Pope might send them for the salvation of souls was added soon afterwards.

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Mysticism and intercessory prayer became hallmarks of the next century in Spain during which John of Avila, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila were significant theological contributors. But the discipline and training of the Society of Jesus made Ignatius’ followers highly instrumental in maintaining the Catholic Reformation. Their influence kept Spain and much of Europe in allegiance to Rome, and the Jesuit missionary influence soon converted most of South and Central America.

At the time of Ignatius’ death, the Jesuit order which Ignatius founded comprised twelve provinces and seventy-seven houses, and by the Twentieth century had sent missionaries into every corner of the world, established over five hundred universities and colleges, given instruction to more than two hundred thousand pupils, and ordained nearly thirty thousand priests.

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Modern academia of all other theological traditions, whether Catholic or not, therefore cannot easily avoid interacting with the Jesuit tradition. His most significant literary work, Spiritual Exercises, has provided ethical inspiration to countless seekers. Importantly for this study, they directly incorporate the spiritual gift of discerning of spirits before, during, and after the personal process of ethical growth.

The Spiritual Exercises offer Ignatius’ followers a detailed, four-week devotional plan for students seeking God’s will for their lives, under supervision of a confessor. In the first week, retreat directors guide students via the Ignatian manual to meditate on sin and the law of God, the second week the life of Jesus, the third week the Passion, and the fourth week the Resurrection. Not only are students encouraged to read about Jesus’ life from the Gospels, but also during each of the thirty days of the retreat "five hours daily [the student] must spend in meditation, at midnight, dawn, noon, afternoon, and evening . . . During the second week, and so henceforth, it greatly helps to read occasionally out of [Thomas à Kempis, 1418] Imitation of Christ

¹¹

or the Gospels, or Lives of the Saints.

¹²

"

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Additionally, Ignatius drew from Ludolph of Saxony the Carthusian’s monumental Vita Christi: The Life of Jesus Christ the Redeemer, which contained in 1340 the earliest known use of the word Jesuita, signifying someone who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ.

¹⁴

In the broadest sense of this earliest definition of the term, all Christians may be Jesuits in some way, even if not members of the Catholic Ignatian order because all Christians are redeemed by Jesus Christ. Although Ignatius admits he was most influenced by the aforementioned sources and the Gospels, it would be unwise to neglect how John Cassian’s The Conferences

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—with its monastic rules, ascetic themes, and discerning of spirits—influenced not only the Jesuits but also their predecessors in the Benedictine, Franciscan, and Dominican monasteries. This four-fold influence of Cassian, Jacobus, Ludolph, à Kempis therefore provides a significant spiritual foundation for Ignatius, in his discerning of spirits and ecclesial ethics, and his passion for Jesus.

Ignatius wrote and re-wrote the Spiritual Exercises, which he taught to all his Jesuit followers, and entrusted them to teach the same, as retreat directors still lead students today. The brief but significant section in Spiritual Exercises concerning Rules for Discerning of Spirits transformed and enabled how the church viewed and received the gift of discerning of spirits, and has been personally used by several popes and countless priests, nuns, and laity since Ignatius’ death. In his autobiographical interview with Luis Gonzalez de Càmara, Ignatius explains his many personal encounters with good and evil spirits, and his Rules teach his method of discernment between the two, in terms of consolation (from God) and desolation (from the devil), which Rules he derived not only from his predecessors, but especially from his personal encounters.

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Review of the Literature

The life and work of Ignatius have been widely studied. A substantial amount of literature exists that introduces the major dialogue partners to be engaged within the field of Ignatian discerning of spirits. In general, the occupation with spiritual discernment in the context of the work of Ignatius can be divided into five periods: Pre-Ignatian influences on Ignatius, Ignatius himself, Early-Jesuit, Modern Jesuit, and Contemporary Ignatian views on discerning of spirits.

Pre-Ignatian Discerning of Spirits

Secondary literature presents four main influences on Ignatius’ formulation of discernment: Jacobus, Ludolph, à Kempis, and Cassian. For example, historian, Hugo Rahner, has significantly connected Jacobus de Voragine’s Flos Sanctorum (The Golden Legend: The Lives of the Saints) to Ignatius of Loyola, not only because of Ignatius’ autobiographical admission, but because of how Ignatius attached such great importance to patristic studies in the Society of Jesus.

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It is through the eyes of Jacobus that Ignatius meets the saints and becomes inspired to imitate their lives and models for his followers a Society of those who follow, not only Jesus, but also Francis, Dominic, and scores of saints who discerned the Holy Spirit from the devil. For the purpose of this study, it will be helpful to build upon the initial connection observed by Rahner, and further such inquiry into Jacobus’ view of the gift of discerning of spirits. For example, if Francis or Dominic discerned angels from demons in the context of ethical self-examination, that discernment created the theological environment in which Ignatius did the same. Therefore Jacobus can be seen as one influence in the Ignatian view that discerning of spirits is foundational to ecclesial ethics. This analysis is confirmed by Rahner, who credits both Jacobus and Ludolph as the immediate inspiration in Ignatius’ mind after his conversion to God and a presentiment of the ‘Discernment of Spirits’ which prompted Ignatius to put pen to paper in the Spiritual Exercises which included the Rules for Discerning of Spirits.

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Supporting Rahner’s view, Ludolph of Saxony has been significantly connected to Ignatius, as established by secondary literature.

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For example, one analyst laments how little analysis of Ludolph’s impact on Ignatius is made by modern academics, despite "the extensive literature on the Spiritual Exercises has devoted scant attention to Ludolph; even a work as pivotal as the Exercises has been subjected to relatively little source criticism."

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The dearth of analysis in English theology likely comes from the difficulty accessing Ludolph’s Vita Christi, which has been translated from Latin into German, French, Italian, and Spanish, every major European language except English, in which we have only excerpts. Of the one hundred eighty two chapters in seven hundred seventy seven pages of fine print, another analyst lamented of finding only ten chapters in English, but thankfully she made the effort to summarize each of the chapters with her own English translation of each of Ludolph’s concluding prayers,

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each of which typically refer to the specific incidents covered in the preceding reading.

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Hence this study practically benefits by a much simpler examination of each of the one hundred eighty one English chapter summaries (prayers) to see which, if any, contain specific references to discerning of spirits, and thus connect Ludolph’s discernment to Ignatius’ discernment. My own content analysis will show that thirteen of Ludolph’s chapter summaries have reference to discernment, angelic or demonic spirits, or consolation, each set within some degree of ethical context, which can then be connected to Ignatius of Loyola’s Rules for Discerning of Spirits. Ludolph’s prayers, which Ignatius of Loyola read and recommended to students for use during conduct of Spiritual Exercises, give insight into the spiritual formation of Ignatius—especially concerning his discerning of spirits.

The influence of Thomas à Kempis upon Ignatian spirituality has been briefly examined by analysis of The Imitation of Christ.

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Secondary literature examines how Ignatius borrows some ideas from à Kempis, and recommends all students meditate in his devotional work as a supplement to the Gospels. True imitation of Christ requires following or receiving Jesus’ ability to operate in the gift of discerning of spirits, with a desire to manifest that same gift as if imitating Christ. Investigating à Kempis’ use and understanding of the term consolation when describing how spirits are discerned can strengthen existing analysis of these connections. This study shall show how Ignatius clearly borrowed the concept of consolation from à Kempis, who strongly associated spirits with morals, laying the groundwork for Ignatius’ foundation.

Other secondary literature has clarified how monastic writers such as John Cassian have influenced Ignatian spirituality. Cassian’s Conferences contains themes of discernment and ethics similar to Ignatius’ Rules for Discerning of Spirits. For example, one analyst evaluates Origen and Evagrius Ponticus who likely influenced Cassian, and then compares Ignatius’ discerning of spirits to the way Cassian explained how demons with subtle cunning deceitfully showing evil things as good imitate the Holy Spirit as false angels of light. But more importantly for this study, Ignatius directly copied the Cassian method of appointing spiritual directors for young students, so that discernment is not learned in books but passed down from teacher to student.

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By examining this Cassian method of teaching discerning of spirits, this study can further support the thesis that Ignatius’ discernment is foundational to his ethics.

Besides Jacobus, Ludolph, à Kempis and Cassian, several other pre-Ignatian church fathers have manifest and described the spiritual gift of discerning of spirits. The pre-Ignatian foundations of the gift of discerning of spirits have been traced,

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beginning with Old Testament examples such as Adam and Eve’s encounter with the serpent in Genesis 2–3, Moses and Joshua’s encounters with the voice of God in Exodus 19–24, and David and Saul’s battles with evil spirits in 1 Samuel 12, moving toward the traditional Pauline and Johannine scriptural underpinnings of the gift from 1 Corinthians 12 and 1 John 4. Secondary literature briefly considers the Patristic period with examples of the gift of discerning spirits in the writings of Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas, Origen’s On First Principles (III, 3–4), in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses, in Athanasius’ Life of Anthony, and in Diadochus of Photike, for example, The Heads of the Gnostics. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Cathecheses, and Augustine’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis (XII, 13–14, 28) and City of God (XIV, 28) are also noted, with St. Gregory the Great’s discernment preceding the Middle Ages when St. Thomas Aquinas introduces an important distinction between simple discretio and the charism of discretio spirituum, an extraordinary gift allowing a man who enjoys it to know future contingents or secrets of hearts: (S.T. 1a2ae, 111.4).

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Yet, some Thomist interpreters

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have softened the dynamic charismatic element of Aquinas’ discerning of spirits, claiming he saw the gift is simply the supernatural equivalent of prudence. It is the capacity to discover the concrete divine will in a given situation in which reason (principles) does not make that divine will clear.

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While these Christian Fathers all preceded Ignatius, his Autobiography

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credits few of them as directly influential. Ignatius says he received the most profound consolations with the gift of discerning of spirits from the Holy Spirit by revelation, during his year of ascetic fasting in the cave at Manresa.

Ignatius’ Own Views of Discerning of Spirits

Besides the section on Rules for Discerning of Spirits in the Spiritual Exercises,

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Ignatius penned hundreds of letters and three other major works: his Autobiography as dictated to Luis Gonzalez de Càmara,

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his Spiritual Diary

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of which only a few weeks remain extant (Ignatius destroyed most of it as an offering to God and to avoid vanity), and his Constitutions which govern the management of the Jesuits. Ignatius’ most important contribution to the focus of this study is his Rules for Discerning of Spirits, divided into Rules 1–14 for the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises, and Rules 1–8 for the Second Week, with only brief reference to his Autobiography and Spiritual Diary. Significant analysis of Ignatius’s words, meanings, and purpose concerning the gift of discerning of spirits has already been penned in two commentaries by Timothy M. Gallagher,

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whose work could be strengthened by analysis of the moral and ethical impulse throughout Ignatius’ Rules. Ignatius himself seems to most obviously connect spirits to morals in Rule 14 of the First Week, in which he identifies the agenda of divine or demonic spirits as supremely ethical, or moral:

The enemy of human nature, roaming about, looks in turn at all our virtues, theological, cardinal and moral; and where he finds us weakest and most in need for our eternal salvation, there he attacks us and aims at taking us.

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This strong connection between spirits and all ethical virtue, whether theological, cardinal, or moral, is the classic element of Ignatian discernment at the heart of this study.

Ignatius’ Rules repeatedly explains the concepts of consolation and desolation, in ethical terms of grace and temptation, and the spiritual discernment that comes with distinguishing the demonic from the angelic or the Holy Spirit. This study shall offer significant line-by-line analysis of the Rules with the intention of bringing out the moral and ethical construct behind his discernment and the spiritual construct behind his ethics to support the thesis that each is mutually foundational to the Ignatian understanding of the other. Besides the Rules, the other most obvious Ignatian source concerning discerning of spirits is his Letter to Sister Teresa Rejadella, which clarifies some finer points of the Rules. Content analysis of both spiritual and moral themes of the Rejadella letter shall likewise support the observations and conclusions of this study, that for Ignatius, spirits and morals were inseparably foundational to and mutually dependent upon each other.

Early Jesuit Views of Ignatian Discernment

Ignatius’ early follower, Juan de Polanco, wrote Directorium Autographum explaining the mentoring roles of director and student during the Ignatian process of learning the gift of discerning of spirits:

Let [the retreat director] exhort [the student] to place himself in his meditations and colloquies in the presence of God and [observe . . . ] whether he senses in his soul the movements of consolation or desolation as regards this way . . . in the desire to feel the will of God in himself . . . oneself should then be confident that one will feel (si sentirà) in oneself certain movements of consolation or desolation in regard to the choice to be made.

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Polanco properly explains how this idea of sensing or feeling (sentirà) is critical to the Ignatian concept of spiritual illumination, but brings with it the inherent dangers of emotionally discerning something as divinely revealed or beyond human reason, or confusing evil with good, or receiving good but not God’s best. He also confirms how, although reliance upon such direct revelation brought early suspicions of heresy during a time of inquisition, Ignatius and his followers carefully distinguished themselves from the Alumbrados, by pledging obedience to the church magisterium.

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Ignatius was himself twice investigated and exonerated of such heresy, but historian Hugo Rahner recounts how Ignatius’ first generation followers including Juan de Polanco, Jerónimo Nadal, and Gil Gonzàlez Dàvila were also forced to successfully defend the early Jesuit movement against accusations of Alumbrados heresy. They did so by connecting Ignatius’ Rules for Discerning of Spirits to the teachings of the early church fathers.

Gonzàlez Dàvila, appealing to the Directory of Father Ignatius, brought out the total dissimilarity between this Ignatian sentir [feeling] of the divine will and the emotionalism of the Alumbrados in the following words: ‘And this it is clear that we do not expect revelations and illuminations here and that this ‘feeling’ does not imply certainty of evidence.’

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These sensual feelings may influence the five human senses, but should also be tested against the Word of God, the teachings of the church, the magisterial rulers of the church, and human reason. Testing the spirits, as encouraged by the epistles of both Paul (1 Cor 12:10) and John (1 John 4:1), was done in tandem between both director and student, as Gonzàlez Dàvila said:

This control and examination must take place by the light. For anything that becomes visible is light (Eph

5

:

13

), and St. Paul is referring here to the Gnostics, who were, so to speak, the Alumbrados of the ancient world. This light, however, is the Word of God, the Church and the public magisterium which God exercises through her, and human reason. All these things are of God, and they cannot contradict one another.

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In addition to the Scriptures, Ignatian discernment was defended by Nadal as compatible with the honorable traditions of the early church fathers, including Dionysius, Origen, Thomas, Bonaventure, Ailly, and Gerson. Another early Jesuit apologist, Francisco Suàrez, defended Ignatian Discerning of Spirits against accusations of Illuminism with appeals to Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Athanasius’ Life of St. Anthony. Further appeals have been made to Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle of Barnabas, upon which Origen relied for his discretion of spirits in the third book of On First Principles.

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Modern Views of Ignatian Discernment

Secondary literature has outlined the treatment of Ignatian discerning of spirits by Catholic theologians in the modern period in the two centuries following Ignatius, to include the Cistercian Cardinal Bona’s Discretione Spirituum (1671), which criticized Ignatian discernment, before supportive works including Redemptorist Sarnelli’s Discrezione degli spiriti (1741) and Jesuit Scaramelli’s more famous work Discernimento (1753). Apart from these two works, there exists scarcely anything requiring attention, says one analyst.

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He first confirms the importance of Sentir as the Spanish term often loosely translated feeling in English, and how Ignatius uses that term to describe the gift of discerning, not as special enlightened extra-canonical teaching of the Alumbrados, but as an interior experience, a divine action which was felt and accepted, not as mere human emotion.

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He then criticizes Louis de la Palma (d. 1641) and Denis the Carthusian for reducing Ignatian discernment to mere association with the virtue of prudence (as Sheeran claims Aquinas did), and ignoring its role in the process of election. It is certain that this is not the original thought of St. Ignatius, he says.

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He also praises the Commentarii by A. Gagliardi (d. 1607) who associates Ignatius’ Rules for Discerning of Spirits with a method for examining conscience: The different spirits that may move us are, then, reduced to three: one from God, one from the devil, and one from myself.

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And from this Cardinal Bona makes a significant contribution to the entire line of Ignatian spirituality, by finding at least twelve lexical meanings of the word spiritus in the Vulgate, including interior inspiration, stimulus, instinct, movement—all meaning that one feels himself inclined to do or not to do something.

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This last spirit creates a problem: it must be qualified as good or bad, not (and this point is to be stressed) by simple reference to the moral law, but by relating it to its origin, namely, the spirit of God, the spirit of the devil, the spirit of man.

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This problem confirms an important conclusion anticipated by this study, that we cannot define good and bad ethics by merely deferring to the moral law, or even God’s law or the scriptures, unless we can discern how these traditions are first ethically grounded in the Spirit of God Himself.

Modern views of Ignatian discernment associate moral qualities with the three kinds of spirits, i.e.: the ‘spirits’ with which discernment is concerned (that is to say the ‘movements’ toward a complex action, the moral quality of which does not yet appear) are reduced to three: from God or the angels, always good; from the devil, always bad; from man, always ambiguous or ‘indifferent’ because it is indiscriminately capable of adhering to and giving in as much to a good spirit as to a bad one.

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Cardinal Bona would have found this tripartite division in the majority of his predecessors, and expounded the signs of each spirit in a set of moral virtues and vices to which prayerful persons seem to be accustomed.

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His predecessor Alvarez de Paz had already established that whether interior or exterior, the [non-human] spirit is recognized by the fruits it develops in the [human] soul.

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Scaramelli relies heavily on Bona and de Paz in his Discernimento Degli Spiriti (1753), although expressing it with greater clarity and dash, perhaps explaining why his work became more popular. Scaramelli places the essence of the spirits in the actual interior motions we are accustomed to experience and has all the varieties of spirits consist in the diverse [psychological] movements they cause, with five chapters devoted to the signs of good and evil spirits. Scaramelli’s list of spiritual fruit by which spirits are known includes intelligence, veracity, utility, light, docility, judgment, discretion, and humility (from the Holy Spirit), versus error, futility, false light in the imagination, obstinacy of judgment, exaggeration, pride, and vanity (from the devil).

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The aforementioned analysis of post-Ignatian and modern Ignatian thought confirms how early Jesuits found and relied upon a rich Christian tradition of discerning of spirits while defending and extending Ignatian thought. But more could be said about how their tradition tied together the two key concepts of this study, the discerning of spirits and ecclesial ethics. Unanswered questions remain such as, how does discerning of spirits rely upon and inform the Jesuit view of ethics? Can an Ignatian view of ecclesial ethics exist apart from discerning of spirits? Do the Rules teach spiritual discernment for the sake of empowering ethical discernment, or merely for discerning the will of God apart from its ethical impulse? By comparing the lists of spiritual fruit as pneumatological manifestations, in the sense they help discern both spirits and ecclesial ethics simultaneously, this study shows how discerning of spirits helps define right from wrong. Since we can find in the early Jesuit thinkers a necessary association between good and evil ethics and good and evil spirits, we can better explain that critical element of Ignatian spirituality which supports this study’s connections and interdependence between discernment of spirits and ecclesial ethics.

Contemporary Works on Ignatian Discernment

Four major contemporary dialogue partners have penned significant books on Ignatian discernment and cannot be overlooked because they are the largest collections of thought on the subject, most often quoted by others, and provide fertile starting points for dialogue. Sequentially by date of publication, brothers Hugo Rahner (the historian and philosopher, 1964) and Karl Rahner (the theologian, 1965) each published books about Ignatius as a Theologian. Piet Penning de Vries (1973) and Jules J. Toner (1982) have also written significant treatments on Ignatius’ Rules for Discerning of Spirits. These four offer unrivaled depth of analysis on the Rules, and raise issues already the subject of some dialogue in supporting secondary literature.

Hugo Rahner’s Ignatius The Theologian

While theologians could overlook Hugo Rahner’s biographical sketch as merely a history of Ignatius’ life, it is replete with theological significance and insight into how the pilgrim thought. In fact, Hugo Rahner entitled his biography Ignatius the Theologian,

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with the intent to reveal Ignatius’ theological mind, not just his life story. While this dissertation does not investigate Ignatius’ life story, I would be remiss to neglect Hugo Rahner’s profoundly theological categorizations of the ethical classifications of consolation and desolation. For example, his list below represents the authoritative and summarized ethical thought of Ignatius of Loyola, as it pertains to recognizing ethical fruit when discerning spirits:

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Table 1: Hugo Rahner’s First Binary Pairs of Ignatian Discernment

Hugo Rahner compares these two-fold ethical classifications of the spirits discerned by Ignatius to similar classifications by Shepherd of Hermas

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and Athanasius.

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If we consider how these lists represent patently ethical and moral categorizations, then Hugo Rahner connects spirits and morals, showing how one may be discerned by the presence of the other, and vice versa, a matter of critical importance to this study.

Karl Rahner’s The Dynamic Element in the Church

The influential Twentieth century Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, followed St. Ignatius as a leading member of the Jesuits, having personally taught his Spiritual Exercises on countless retreats, and Rahner’s devotional lectures on them where recorded and published by his students.

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His often-cited book, The Dynamic Element in the Church,

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concerns spiritual gifts. Karl Rahner’s primary argument concerning a theology of Ignatian discernment in