On “Discernment of Spirits” in the Early Church

Abstract

THE TERM is used frequently—some might think too frequently—in contemporary spiritual theology. It is itself biblical term and has long and somewhat complex history. In modern usage it is found in three different phrases: or simply communal discernment, and of spirits. The first has been studied by (among others) John C. Futrell. He writes that there is no more central theme in Ignatian spirituality or, for that matter, in Christian spirituality itself than that of discernment. He describes this discernment as conception, which involves choosing the way of the light of Christ instead of the way of the darkness of the Evil One and living out the consequences of this choice through discerning what specific decisions and actions are demanded to follow Christ here and now. He later describes the goal of discernment as arriving the choice of authentic Christian response to the word of God in each concrete situation in life. As Futrell presents it, discernment is an act of choosing among morally good possible actions under the guidance of grace, and presupposes both the existence of divine providence and an obscurity in the manifestation of the divine will. The second phrase is communal discernment, defined by Jules J. Toner as a process undertaken by community as community for the purpose of judging what God is calling that community to do. The term is apparently recent one. The practice is generally traced by Jesuit authors to the Deliberatio primorum patrum, short account of deliberations conducted by Ignatius Loyola and others at Rome in 1539 which led to the formation of the Society of Jesus. The distinguishing charac-