Ignatius of Loyola on Divine plurality & the unseen realm
Never posed as a question in these terms
THE POSITION
Never posed as a question in these terms. The unseen world of the Exercises is Lucifer, "the enemy of human nature", his demons and the good angels; the Two Standards meditation sets Christ's camp against Lucifer's. The other elohim of the Hebrew Bible, and whether they are a council, human rulers or nothing at all, do not come up in anything read.
WHY THERE IS NO QUOTATIONThis column rests on two texts: the Spiritual Exercises, a manual for giving a retreat, and the Autobiography he dictated near the end of his life. Neither is a work of doctrine, so nine cells carry a quotation, six of them with a stance, and the rest are recorded gaps. No cell is filled from his tradition. The gaps are not copyright: both texts are long in the public domain in English. His Constitutions and his nearly seven thousand letters were not read, and a pass over them is the likeliest way to fill baptism, justification and the Lord's Supper.
6 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Basque soldier turned pilgrim, founder of the Society of Jesus (1540) and its first superior general. His Spiritual Exercises, begun at Manresa in 1522–23 after his conversion at Loyola in 1521 and approved by Paul III in 1548, are still widely used for retreats; their closing rules for thinking with the Church are his nearest approach to doctrinal statement. This entry rests on the Exercises in Elder Mullan's 1914 translation and the Autobiography in the 1900 English edition by J. F. X. O'Conor.
Cite this page
"Ignatius of Loyola on Divine plurality & the unseen realm", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/ignatius-loyola/divine-plurality (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/ignatius-loyola/divine-plurality).