Spirits can be summarized under three headings : The divine spirit, the diabolical spirit and the human spirit. God always inclines us to good, working either directly or through secondary causes ; the devil always inclines us to evil, working by his ...
Spirits can be summarized under three headings : The divine spirit, the diabolical spirit and the human spirit. God always inclines us to good, working either directly or through secondary causes ; the devil always inclines us to evil, working by his own power or through the allurements of the things of the world ; the human spirit may be inclined to evil or to good, depending upon wheather the individual follows right or selfish desires.
Christian ascetical tradition has adapted from two places in the NT.(1Cor 12,10; 1 Jn 4,1) the formulas "discernment of spirits". This discernment supposes the principle that two spirits may possess man, the spirit of good and the spirit of evil; its execution is by an "expert" invested with an official duty ; its norm is conformity to a set of rules.
there is no question yet of a spiritual experience as a source of one's own conduct. The spirit is not conceived as a power one invokes or with whom one communes, but as an asset from which one may profit.
In the scripture, by the time of St. Paul,St. John, each Christian is invited to be guided personally : "... be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may proved what is the good and the acceptable and the perfect Will of God" (Rom 12,1-2) "Try to find out what would please the Lord ; take no part in the barren deeds of darkeness, but show them up for what they are." (Eph 5,10-11) ; "And this I pray : That your charity may more and more abound in knowledge and more abound in knowledge and in all understanding : that you may approve the better things...." (Phil 1,9-10)
Paul is describing an interior experience of God's Spirit, whose results are light, peace, charity, and acknowledgement of Jesus as the Lord. "But the fruit of the spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, charity" (Gal 5,22-23).
St. John adds that the experience of the spirit has to be the same as the teaching recieved from the Apostles (1 in 2,24;4,6). He insists upon the confidence that this experience gives for the day of judgment. They apply to "the spirits" the Gospel recommendation for discerning true and false prophets : "By their fruits you shall know them." It is by the fruit that a tree is judged, not conversely. In this way the pharisaic attitude of judging in the name of an external criterion established a priori : Since Jesus does not observe the Sabbath, His miracles could come only from the devil.
In the pastristic period, the word διάκρις, in Latin discretio, is used to transmit this tradition from Paul and John. The key fathers are Cassian and John Climacus. They become much more preoccupied with unmasking diabolical illusions than with discerning the divine Spirit. They also speak especially of the origin of motions or phenomena, not of their orientation.
This leads to a recurring confusion between two questions which are quite distinct today : that of the "goodness" or "malice" of an interior morement, and that of its natural or preternatual origin.
In the Middle Ages, a number of spiritual authors continue to utilize the classical term. The better known are cardinal Bona and the Jesuit Scaramelli, whose Discernimento degli spiriti (1753) is well known through its numerous editions and translations. They are certainly subject to the influence of St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose Spiritual Exercises, without ever mentioning the virtue of prudence, attempts a forthright education with regard to spi-ritual discernment of Christian is no longer content to rule his conduct by laws and exterior norms that he has accepted without having interiorly assimilated and loved them. He comes fully conscious them of two influence that are at war within him,mixed together like the weeds and wheat of the parable: the power of grace and the power of sin. He proposes to himself true cases of personal conscience.
St. Ignatio is one of those rare teachers who make one enter into one's own conscience with dynamic discernment, by means of a series of personal exercises. Basically, the alternating experience of states of consolation and desolation normal to the spiritual life, teaches the Christian to stop opposing the difficulty, and to stop relaxing in the moments of euphoria.
These fluatuations are only transitory situations, "creatures" to be utilized by the believer for God's glory. Behind them, the conscience experiences the unshakable certitude of faith and the unique peace it brings. Then temptation under the appearance of good, the illusion of genorosity, must be controlled by its relation to this certitude and peace.
After the council of Vatican Ⅱ, the Holy Spirit acts freely on the laity as well as on the hierarchy, so that the question of the relation between structural and nonstructural charism must arise. With the same Spirit acting in both, there can be no true opposition between office and charism. There may indeed be a certain tention, but this tention is not undesirable.
The hierarchy and Spiritual leaders must judge the truth of charism and the acts of Spiritality, using the criteria for the discernment of Spirits. The laity must see their gifts as ordered to charity and must use them with courage for the good of the church.
The theology of charism in the life of the church must be further studied and a history of it written. Appreciation of charism leads to a vital ecclesiology in which the Spirit is seen as the source of all acitivity among the people of God.
The summary history of spiritual discernment, then, brings us in contact with a quality of judgment controlling the correctness of progress toward Christian perfection. The "subject" is sometimes the spiritual director ; more often it is the believer who ought to discern for himself. The object is the series of phenomena, ordinary or not, that company and reveal the interior life. An integrating part of Christian experience that is neither acquired nor popularized at will, Spiritual discernment is a little of that bread gives to those who are his, to keep from faltering along the way.