Discernment Of Spirits Research Articles

"Discernment of Spirits" in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the "The Synodal Way" project in Germany

„Die Unterscheidung der Geister“ klingt für zeitgenössische Ohren anachronistisch und wird mit Exorzismen, Okkultismus oder anderen unklaren Praktiken in Verbindung gebracht. Selten denkt jemand an die Gemeinschaft von Qumran, den heiligen Paulus, Origenes oder die Wüstenväter, obwohl man dort bereits eine gründliche Bearbeitung dieses Themas finden kann. Noch seltener kommt jemand auf moderne Philosophie oder Psychologie, obwohl gerade dort eine weitere Entwicklung der angesprochenen Fragen zu finden ist. Die Unterscheidung der Geister hat eine lange, faszinierende Geschichte und deckt sich mit den Ereignissen des menschlichen Geistes. Darüber hinaus dauert der Kampf der Geister — ob wir es wollen oder nicht — weiter an, und jedes weitere menschliche Dasein wird zu ihrem Schlachtfeld. Das letzte Wort in dieser Angelegenheit ist noch nicht gesprochen. Daher ist die Rückkehr zur Theologie der „Unterscheidung der Geister“ bei Hans Urs Balthasar, die auf den geistlichen Übungen des heiligen Ignatius von Loyola basiert, die in diesem Artikel vorgestellt werden, von Interesse. Die Rolle dieses Artikels ist dankbarerweise weniger auf die Systematik und Disziplin des Unterrichts ausgerichtet, sondern betont die Praktikabilität und Nützlichkeit der präsentierten Realität, insbesondere bei der „Unterscheidung der Geister“ im Rahmen des Synodalen Weges in Deutschland.

В.Д. Кудрявцев-Платонов о духовных дарованиях в апостольской церкви

The archival text of the Russian religious philosopher, professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Viktor Dmitrievich Kudryavtsev-Platonov (1828–1891) “On extraordinary spiritual gifts in the Apostolic Church” is published; publication is based on a manuscript from the archival collection of Victor Kudryavtsev-Platonov (RSL, F. 823, cardboard 2, storage unit 2). In this early work, Kudryavtsev-Platonov examines and characterizes the “extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit” described by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, notes their differences from the “ordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit”, arranging this consideration according to their significance: the gift of the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge, the gifts of prophecy, discernment of spirits (the first row of spiritual gifts), the gifts of faith, healing, miracles, tongues, interpreting tongues (the second row of spiritual gifts). Among the essential signs of the true gifts of the Holy Spirit, Kudryavtsev-Platonov considers the preservation of the clarity of human consciousness and freedom (during the action of such gifts). The archival publication is preceded by a brief introduction describing the difference between continuationism and cessationism, referring the position of Kudryavtsev-Platonov to the latter.

Modern demonology: the discernment of spirits in the theatre of colonial modernity

ABSTRACT This article analyses contemporary Charismatic evangelical ideas of ‘discernment’ in the context of US ‘spiritual warfare’ demonologies to argue that these demonologies are distinctly modern. Through a critical examination of spiritual warfare texts, it first demonstrates that discernment situates spiritual warfare demonologies in wider modernist projects of taxonomic classification, intertextual referentiality, and empirical observation. Then, drawing on post- and de-colonial scholarship that has shown European modernity to have arisen through the mechanisms of colonialism, the article contends that narratives of missionary encounters with the demonic replicate this relation between modernity and coloniality. Spiritual warfare reduces vibrant non-evangelical lifeworlds to objects of demonological knowledge, raw data that can only be properly interpreted and systematised by evangelical discernment. This systematisation permits the assimilation of these lifeworlds into a soteriological narrative of modern progress through religious conversion and (thus) socio-economic development. By demonstrating discernment’s inextricability from modernist methodologies and modernity’s foundational and enduring relation to coloniality, the article argues for understanding contemporary Charismatic demonology as distinctly modern.

Die ›Imitatio Christi-Kompilation von Natur und Gnade‹

Abstract This article analyzes and edits a vernacular compilation on the ›discernment of spirits‹, which was written in the second half of the 15th century by an anonymous writer from Tegernsee for lay brothers and sisters in the context of the Melk reform. The text deals with the inner influence of grace and nature on man and compiles the chapter ›De diversis motibus naturae et gratiae‹ from Thomas à Kempis’ ›De imitatione Christi‹, as well as excerpts from Henry of Friemar’s treatise ›De quattuor instinctibus‹. The author aims to maintain proximity to the Latin texts and theological terminology, and achieves a hybridization of the compiled hypotexts in terms of style and content.

Jesuit Kaddish: Jesuits, Jews, and Holocaust Remembrance by James Bernauer, S.J. (review)

Reviewed by: Jesuit Kaddish: Jesuits, Jews, and Holocaust Remembrance by James Bernauer, S.J. Beth A. Griech-Polelle Jesuit Kaddish: Jesuits, Jews, and Holocaust Remembrance. By James Bernauer, S.J. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2020. Pp. xxx, 220. $55.00. ISBN: 9780268107017). In James Bernauer's work, readers are drawn into the distinctive elements of Jesuit spirituality: the examination of conscience and the discernment of spirits in order to address and more fully understand the Holocaust and members of the Society of Jesus's attitudes toward Jews. His work challenges the reader to think about how Jesuits thought about the Jews. How did Jesuits perpetrate evil against the Jews, but also how did actions of Jesuits bring about good for Jews as well? By scrutinizing the conduct of Jesuits, the hope is to gain not only a greater understanding of the events of the Holocaust, but also to achieve a type of reconciliation [End Page 420] with the Jewish community. The Kaddish is recited as a prayer of mourning that praises God and the gift of life. From the opening chapter the reader is invited to accompany Bernauer on a pilgrimage. He begins with the work of Pope Saint John Paul II in seeking forgiveness for past sins against the Jews. In calling for genuine brotherhood with the Jews, the Pope made confessions of guilt for Catholics who participated in crimes against Jews, from his visit to Auschwitz in 1979, through his visit in 2000 to Yad Vashem in Israel. In all of these travels, the Pope instructed Catholics that honestly addressing the errors of the past would be a step toward atonement and forgiveness. What the Pope had done was earth-shattering in importance. The Pope had recognized that in order for a true reconciliation with Jews to happen, Catholics would first have to remember what had actually occurred. Readers continue their pilgrimage in Chapters Two and Three, learning about the concept of "asemitism" which was often practiced within the Society of Jesus. Asemitism meant strict separation between Jews and Catholics, accompanied by an indifference to what was happening to Jews in society. This attitude of indifference also did not argue against other forms of antisemitism that were running rampant in European society. It essentially rendered Jews and their problems invisible to Catholics. Despite the separation that "asemites" might have wished for, there were tracts published intimating that Jesuits and Jews shared similar characteristics, e.g., a desire for world domination, wealth, etc. By Chapter Three, one encounters the subtler forms of Jesuit hostility toward Jews, particularly in the realm of fears over the sexualization of culture which were then linked to a supposed Jewish materialist, carnal way of living. The Jesuits were calling for chastity and obedience. The Church, along with the Nazi state, were out to cleanse the German people from the sensual and erotic elements of Weimar Germany. That frequently meant that "Jewish influence" had to be eradicated. The final portion of the pilgrimage brings readers out of the darkness of the previous chapters. Here we encounter French and German Jesuits who realized that they were part of a larger, wider community: the community of the human race. They recognized that one could not remain indifferent. These individuals aligned themselves with persecuted Jews, at times sacrificing their lives in order to save the persecuted. The work then takes us back to the central image of the pilgrimage, where the image of Jesus as a Jew becomes central to our understanding of Catholicism and concludes with the author's proposed statement of Jesuit repentance. The Society of Jesus has come a long way from its early history of banning men of Jewish origin as members to embracing true community with Jews. A 1995 Jesuits' General Congregation recognized the need for special dialogue with Jews, "The first covenant which is theirs and which Jesus the Messiah came to fulfill, has never been revoked. A shared history both unites us and divides us from our elder brothers and sisters, the Jewish people, in whom and through whom God continues to act for the salvation of the world" (p. 118). Bernauer's work on the evolution...

Editors’ Introduction

We are delighted to present this special issue of the Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures.Instead of the usual set of scholarly articles, this issue brings together new editions and translations of primary texts with new research guides, ranging from well- to little-known figures from the medieval religious world. First, Ana Rita Parreiras Reis offers an edition of the heretofore unedited Treatise Against Fleshly Affections, an anonymous fifteenth-century Middle English text found in London, British Library, MS Royal 17 C xviii, which may have originated at Syon Abbey. Second, Andrew Fogleman translates Jean Gerson’s Sermon on Angels, a text that reveals some of the origins of Gerson’s later (and better-known) thought on the discernment of spirits. Next, Clarck Drieshen’s article explores manuscript evidence that suggests that a visionary text from Hampole Priory may in fact be an English adaptation of Continental sources, rather than an original production of the Priory, and suggests new areas of comparative material research in medieval women’s visionary texts. Finally, Andrew Halpin and Claudio Peri provide an extensive bibliographic survey on Jacopone da Todi, highlighting the importance of international scholarship to a fuller understanding of his poetry.While each piece collected here is concerned with distinct texts and is not inherently related to the others, all suggest exciting new opportunities for research into later medieval Christianity, in particular on areas that have long been the subject of study: Syon Abbey, discretio spirituum, the presumably English origins of the Hampole revelation, and Jacopone da Todi’s mystical verses. Reis speculates that the Treatise may have been affiliated with Syon Abbey, which would offer new insights into that community; Fogleman’s translation illuminates Gerson’s well-known thoughts on the validity of visionary experience; Drieshen challenges received assumptions regarding the source of a visionary text; and Halpin and Peri argue for the inclusion of both European and Anglophone scholarship in the study of a well-known Italian mystic. Alongside these new editions, translations, and approaches, we are pleased to present our inaugural special review essay: in “Denying Sameness, Making Race: Medieval Anti-Judaism,” Samantha Katz Seal surveys several new books focused on different aspects of medieval Judaism, illuminating emerging work in an important area of medieval religious culture. Additional book reviews survey new theoretical approaches, new interdisciplinary readings of visual culture, and new work on religious literatures and cultures from Ireland to Iceland. With this special issue dedicated to new bibliographic, editorial, methodological, and translation work, we aim to expand the JMRC’s offerings to medieval studies, making room for considerations of method alongside new scholarship, and inspire new approaches to all areas of medieval religious cultures.

Holy Instruction, Demonic Deceit, and the Body: A Translation of Jean Gerson’s Sermon on Angels (Collatio de Angelis)

ABSTRACT Jean Gerson (1363–1429), theologian and chancellor of the University of Paris, is well known for his writings on the “discernment of spirits.” Gerson’s Sermon on Angels (1392), translated here, provides his earliest thoughts on judging the supernatural. In it, Gerson explains how angels instruct and demons seduce the cognitive faculties of men and women. The related challenges of authenticating true religious visions and exposing demonic or naturalistic fakes led Gerson to doubt some would-be visionaries and even question the role of visionary evidence in canonization trials. While these doubts are also articulated in his later, better-known treatises on discernment, he describes how he came to those conclusions here, in an exploration of the physiology of visions and demonic deception. Gerson’s sermon highlights the delicate role that cognition plays in assessing supernatural experiences and helps to explain the criticisms of ascetic practices included in his later treatises on spiritual discernment.

Ontologische Voraussetzungen der geistlichen Begleitung in gemeinschaftlicher Spiritualität

In the history of spirituality, a way to search for the wisdom facilitating the imitation of wise people’s lives has been developed. This sort of spiritual guidance had been developed by the desert fathers and mothers, in the cloisters, and through the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. An important step in the achievement of spiritual guidance is a search for a guide to help the guided person learn to discern the spirits. The discernment of spirits is to help one in selecting the goals and means of one’s activities of self-improvement. Spiritual guidance can be provided by individual men and women, but also by communities. A specific type of communitarian spiritual guidance was developed within the Focolare Movement, founded by Chiara Lubich, who understood God as love. Forsaken Jesus and Jesus who dwells in unity can be considered a foundation of this communitarian spirituality. The mystical experiences of Chiara Lubich in Paradise ‘49 point to the fact that this spirituality is premised upon an ontology, which has been developed into a Trinitarian ontology by Klaus Hemmerle.

The Holy Spirit and Other Spirits in Asia: Discernment of Spirits in Non-Christian Religions

Malaysia is an ethnically diverse and religiously pluralistic nation. Within its population Christians number 9.2% while the remainder is comprised of Muslims (61.3%), Buddhists (19.8%), Hindus (6.3%), and other religions (3.4%) such as Confucianism, Taoism, folk/traditional/animistic religions, and others (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2010). It is thus not surprising that any non-Christian to Christian encounter should implicate followers of Jesus, who are trying to understand whether non-Christians may be following the right path towards truth and also whether the spirits they worship are in any biblical sense the Spirit of truth of which Jesus speaks (Jn. 14:17; 15:26; 16:13) or that of another spirit. If interreligious relationships can be understood in this context, then the task of discerning the spirits, whether it is the Holy Spirit or “other” spirits at work, is of great importance. Biblically, all Christians are called to discern the spirits (1 Jn. 4:1-3) of those at work in this world as well as the truth or error that may be perpetuated behind these spirits.

El discernimiento de espíritus en los cristianismos periféricos

El discernimiento de espíritus en los cristianismos periféricos

Trusting Women's Visions: The Discernment of Spirits in Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love

Julian of Norwich intervened in the clerical discourses surrounding the discernment of spirits (Latin discretio spirituum), a method for observing differences between divine and diabolical causes of visionary experience. During the late Middle Ages in Europe, churchmen used methods of discernment in some prominent trials to examine female visionaries for sanctity or heresy. In these instances, discernment offers a medieval analogue to what critics such as Rita Felski, following Paul Ricoeur, have termed paranoid reading practices or the “hermeneutics of suspicion,” premised on demystifying the illusory nature of signs, as opposed to reparative reading practices or the “hermeneutics of trust,” which calls for restoring their meaning. In a climate when discretio spirituum came to prominence, Julian responded to the suspicious techniques developed to interpret women's visions and bodies by incorporating an innovative guide for discernment in A Revelation of Love that prioritizes trust over suspicion. Julian's trusting form of discernment offers a way to recuperate one of the most stigmatized aspects of femininity: woman's perceived susceptibility to diabolical influence. A Revelation of Love shows how apparently diabolical signs can indicate God's divine presence.

„Rozeznawanie duchów” (διάκρισις) według św. Doroteusza z Gazy (505–560/580)

Opis ojcostwa duchowego z jego naczelną władzą „rozeznawania duchów”, jaki znajdujemy w tekstach św. Doroteusza z monasteru Thawatha pod Gazą, nie prowadził do absolutyzowania tej ascetycznej władzy. Przewodnictwo duchowe ojca nie znosiło odpowiedzialności indywidualnego ucznia. Duchowa władza rozeznawania reprezentowana przez ojca duchowego winna dopomóc uczniowi we właściwym kształtowaniu sumienia i wspomagać go w samym procesie rozpoznawania tego, co się Bogu podoba. Rady ojca duchowego, jakie następowały po „ujawnianiu myśli” przez ucznia, miały pomóc temu uczniowi w stanowczym odrzuceniu złych myśli. Poprzez stopniowe wyrzekanie się własnej woli, oparte na duchowym posłuszeństwie ojcu duchowemu jako przewodnikowi w wierze, mnisi z Thawatha stopniowo wyrywali się spod władzy namiętności. Znamienne są również warunki postulowane przez Doroteusza jako konieczne dla samego rozeznawania: łagodność i pokora, odrzucenie postawy samousprawiedliwienia się i przyjęcie skruchy oraz ustawiczna walka z namiętnościami. Postawy te winny się kształtować nie tylko u mnichów, ale i u każdego, kto „przez najpokorniejsze życie stara się jednoczyć z Bogiem”.

『안토니우스의 생애』에 나타난 안토니우스의 영들의 분별 : 영적 성숙의 동선을 따라

『안토니우스의 생애』에 나타난 안토니우스의 영들의 분별 : 영적 성숙의 동선을 따라

Spirit Readings: Spectral Hermeneutics in the Middle EnglishGast of Gy

ABSTRACTThe Middle English Gast of Gy is intimately concerned with the hermeneutic process. Irruptions of the preternatural are destabilizing events that threaten Church authority and so demand an interpretive response. The clerics in the poem serve as first-contact exegetes. They fulfill a vital, sacral function as interpreters of texts and phenomena, and as mediators between the mundane and the otherworldly. Hermes, a liminal god with dominion over both ghosts and the act of speech, is here deployed as a lens through which to view these separate duties and bring them together under a coherent conceptual heading. Gy then serves as an effective case study in how Church control is established over a disruptive paranormal event, how clerics in the field work at the discernment of spirits, and how orthodox understandings of the supernatural are formulated and propagated through dialogue and writing.

Book Review: Gallagher, OMV. M. Timothy: Setting Captives Free: Personal Reflections on Ignatian Discernment of Spirits

Book Review: Gallagher, OMV. M. Timothy: Setting Captives Free: Personal Reflections on Ignatian Discernment of Spirits

A Compendium of the Wondrous Deeds of Caterina da Racconigi: Hagiography or Philosophical Treatise?

Gianfrancesco Pico’s interest in Caterina da Racconigi, a mystic and prophet revered in Piedmont in the first decades of the sixteenth century, was born out of a scientific curiosity prior to becoming devout admiration. The Compendio delle cose mirabili, Gianfrancesco’s last work, written after the completion of his Life of Savonarola, is a continuation of his treatises on prophecy and premonition and on the discernment of spirits and witchcraft; it aims to observe and describe the mystical phenomena attributed to a woman whose conduct is inspired by a specific model of holiness. The Compendio is therefore a composite text, part scientific treatise and part hagiography. This article examines the text in terms of hagiography by relating it to the model of Catherine of Siena and to the lives of the living saints that inspired Caterina da Racconigi’s own behaviour. It also explores the significance of the work within Gianfrancesco’s religious thought.

Spiritual diagnostic criteria in an African setting: The case of baruti in Limpopo province, South Africa

In many provinces of South Africa, especially in the indigenous societies, baruti (pastors) are consulted for different purposes, paramount among them being the execution of good health. The research was carried out to explore the diagnostic measures used to diagnose chronic diseases by pastors in Limpopo, South Africa. Ten pastors who specialised in chronic diseases were interviewed through individual semi-structured interviews in the Ga-Dikgale rural community, and the data were analysed using a thematic content analysis. The findings of the study indicate that diagnosis of chronic diseases by the participants relied primarily on power confession, and discernment of spirits. The researcher concludes by recommending policymakers and Western-trained health care practitioners to acknowledge the pastors as experts in their own right, as an additional resource in health promotion in the rural communities.

Pneuma y Nous. Los Dones del Espíritu Santo y la racionalidad humana en Edith Stein

A partir de la fenomenología de la vivencia religiosa de Edith Stein, el artículo pretende mostrar, que la estructura del espíritu humano se puede inferir por medio del análisis de las vivencias religiosas. Por una parte, en cuando ellas afectan la conciencia personal, o racionalidad estructurada por medio de la cultura, religión y filosofía. Por otra parte, en cuanto profundizan la comprensión antropológica-filosófica de las distintas dimensiones de lo humano, de sus capacidades y procesos de conocimiento. Siguiendo la investigación fenomenológica steiniana, se amplía el aporte filosófico hacia una aportación teológica que radica en el discernimiento de espíritus, y releva la acción del Espíritu Santo en relación con la libertad humana y el camino hacia la santidad.

Chinul’s Empty and Quiescent Spiritual Knowing (kongjŏk yŏngji 空寂靈知) and Ignatius of Loyola’s Indifference and Discernment of Spirits

Chinul’s Empty and Quiescent Spiritual Knowing (kongjŏk yŏngji 空寂靈知) and Ignatius of Loyola’s Indifference and Discernment of Spirits

What Hath Loyola to do with Azusa Street?

This paper argues that Ignatian principles for the discernment of spirits appear throughout Amos Yong’s theology of world religions. In an effort to locate a greater Pentecostal relationship to tradition and contribute to ecumenical dialogue, the author points to three examples. First, for both Ignatius and Yong, good and evil spirits exist and interact with human persons. Second, both see divine activity in all people. This argument stems from theological considerations and stands distinct from the metaphysical considerations made in the first point. Finally, both rely on the affective as a genuine source of knowledge in discerning spirits. The argument regarding this latter point will center on a methodological consideration.