How to See the Holy Spirit, Angels, and Demons

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

Klingenschmitt

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781630870874
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

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 à 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.

1

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

This study attempts to make connections between the field of ecclesial ethics and the spiritual gift of discerning of spirits by arguing that the two are interdependent and foundational to each other, as correlated through the theology of Ignatius of Loyola. Specifically, Ignatius’ Rules for Discerning of Spirits presents a clear locus for comparison in which ethics and discernment are mutually interdependent concepts. By incorporating the Ignatian tradition of discernment into the contemporary field of ecclesial ethics, I shall argue that non-human spirits influence, inspire, and manifest themselves within human morality; therefore, those spirits should be seen and tested before the church can discern right from wrong and make ethical judgments. Conversely, proper discernment in the field of ecclesial ethics should help us to discern and reveal the non-human spirits working behind those human ethical impulses, whether good or evil. In order to clearly understand Ignatius’ view of these topics, however, his antecedents must be identified and analyzed. Only by examining (in this chapter) those who influenced his conception of discerning of spirits can we fully examine (in chapter 2) how Ignatius learned of, and formulated his understanding of the gift in ethical context. This chapter shall therefore introduce and analyze the contributions of four theologians who provoked Ignatius toward deep thought concerning the gift of spiritual discernment.

Ignatius of Loyola testifies of being personally converted to faith in Jesus Christ on his sick bed while recovering from a war injury after reading the Gospels with two supplemental books by Jacobus de Voragine83 and Ludolph of Saxony.84 Ignatius told his biographer that he credited these same two books for helping him receive or discover the gift of discerning of spirits:

They gave him a Life of Christ [The Vita Christi by Ludolph] and a book of the Lives of the Saints [The Golden Legend by Jacobus] in Spanish . . . in reading the Life of our Lord and the Lives of the Saints, he paused to think and reason with himself. “Suppose that I should do what St. Francis did, what St. Dominic did?” . . . he was consoled . . . one day his eyes were opened a little and he began to wonder at the difference [in his emotions] and to reflect on it, learning from experience that one kind of thoughts left him sad and the other cheerful. Thus, step-by-step, he came to recognize the difference between the two spirits that moved him, the one being from the evil spirit, the other from God.85

Hence, for Ignatius, the opening of his spiritual eyes, with the new ability to recognize the difference between good and evil spirits, which are otherwise invisible to those without the gift, begins by self-examination of the internal movements of one’s own soul. Ignatius would later describe these movements in terms of consolation (grace from angelic spirits or the Holy Spirit) and desolation (temptation from demonic or evil spirits). Ignatius would soon contend that by discerning internal ethical movements, one can discern the non-human spirits influencing human moral thoughts.

Besides Ludolph and Jacobus, Ignatius personally recommended that his students attend Spiritual Exercises retreats that they should spend hours daily in prayerful meditation and that “it greatly helps to read occasionally out of [Thomas à Kempis, 1418] Imitation of Christ86 or the Gospels, or [Jacobus’] Lives of the Saints.”87 Besides these three sources, a fourth source has been shown to influence Ignatius—namely, John Cassian’s The Conferences,88 with its monastic rules, ascetic themes, and discerning of spirits—which helped to inform not only the Ignatian Jesuit Order but also their predecessors in the Benedictine, Franciscan, and Dominican monasteries. This four-fold influence of Cassian, Jacobus, Ludolph, and à Kempis therefore provides a significant spiritual foundation for Ignatius, in both his discerning of spirits and ecclesial ethics.

1.1 John Cassian

John Cassian (c.360–430 AD) was likely born in present-day Romania, trained in the classics and lived on a large family property, until leaving in his twenties or thirties with a slightly older friend, Germanus, to join a monastery in Bethlehem. He visited Egypt twice, learning from the ascetics there for ten years, reading the works of Origen89 at the hand of his primary teacher Evagrius Ponticus and later traveled to Constantinople where he was ordained a deacon by John Chrysostom. Upon traveling to Rome, Cassian was ordained a priest, and founded two monasteries in Marseilles, where he wrote three books, including The Conferences, which informed later thinkers such as Gregory the Great and Thomas Aquinas, “who cites him more than a dozen times in the section on moral theology of his Summa Theologiae. [Cassian was] one of the great, albeit less well known, preceptors of the West.”90

Although Ignatius of Loyola does not cite John Cassian among the early works as causing his conversion, the influence of Cassian, Evagrius, and Origen upon Ignatius’ Rules for Discerning of Spirits is well documented by Heinrich Bacht.91 Concerning the spiritual gift of discerning of spirits, “According to Cassian it is the ‘mother, protector, and guide of all virtues.’ Consequently, if Ignatius puts such emphasis in the Exercises on the use of this gift of discernment, then it only shows how dependent he was on the early monastic tradition.”92

Common to both Ignatius and Cassian is “the emphasis with which they insist on the continual exercise of this [spiritual] discernment.”93 And, the suggested method of receiving the gift is also common to both Cassian and Ignatius: submission to a spiritual director.

In connection with the necessity of striving for the gift of discernment of spirits, Cassian mentions . . . [an] aspect that can contribute to understanding the Exercises of St. Ignatius . . . the first requisite for this humility is that one open himself to his spiritual director.94

Both Cassian and Ignatius believed and taught the gift of discerning of spirits should best be caught, not merely taught, from one who already had the gift. Ignatius’ Rules are rooted in the monastic tradition of John Cassian’s Conferences, of which the following select quotes represent Cassian’s understanding of discerning of spirits, and its connection to ecclesial ethics.

The Conferences

John Cassian connects human ethical vices with the kingdom of the Devil and human ethical virtues with the kingdom of God early in his explanation of discernment. For example, he writes in his First Conference, On the Goal of the Monk,

XIV, 1. For just as the kingdom of the devil is gained by conniving at the vices, so the kingdom of God is possessed in purity of heart and spiritual knowledge by practicing the virtues. 2. And where the kingdom of God is, there without a doubt is eternal life, and where the kingdom of the devil is, there—it is not to be doubted—are death and hell.95

Here can be seen the beginning point of understanding Cassian’s ethics by his intent to connect them to their spiritual sources. Entry to the spiritual kingdom of the devil comes by practice of ethical vices, and to the kingdom of God by purity and ethical virtues. While this seems basic, it becomes more complex when understood in the fuller context of the gift of discerning of spirits.

XVII, 1. By saying that it is impossible for the mind not to be attacked by thoughts, however, we do not mean ...

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