Ignatius of Loyola on Justification
No position located on this map
Searched in the sources read for this figure and not found. A limit of the reading rather than a claim about the figure — a source not yet read could settle it.
THE POSITION
Nothing found that says what justification is. The rules on faith, grace and free will (the fourteenth to seventeenth) are the nearest material, and they are about how to preach those subjects without making people careless of works; they never define whether justification is a declaration, a transformation or an infusion of grace. The Exercises were largely written before the Council of Trent's decree on justification (1547), and his Constitutions and letters were not 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.
WHAT OTHERS HOLD HERE
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 Justification", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/ignatius-loyola/justification (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/ignatius-loyola/justification).