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Examined Doctrine

Ignatius of Loyola on Canon of the Old Testament

1491 – 1556 · ROMAN CATHOLIC / JESUIT
NOT LOCATED IN A SOURCENO POSITION FOUND
NO STANCE — AND WHY

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. Neither the Spiritual Exercises nor the Autobiography raises which books belong to the Old Testament. The Exercises' mysteries of the life of Christ draw on the Gospels, and nothing read cites a deuterocanonical book either as Scripture or as something less. 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

66 books — Apocrypha useful but not ScriptureATHANASIUS · CALVIN · JONATHAN EDWARDS · THE CHURCH OF ELEVEN22 STATEMENT OF FAITH · JOSH HOWERTON · SECOND LONDON BAPTIST CONFESSION · LUTHER · JOHN MACARTHUR · GAVIN ORTLUND · JOHN OWEN · JUSTIN PETERS · R.C. SPROUL · WESTMINSTER CONFESSION · ZWINGLI
Wider canon — deuterocanonical books includedAQUINAS · AUGUSTINE · POPE PIUS V
Predates or straddles the settled disputeCHRYSOSTOM · IRENAEUS
See all 28 figures on canon of the old testament →

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.

9 OF 19 POSITIONS QUOTED
Everything Ignatius of Loyola holds →
Cite this page

"Ignatius of Loyola on Canon of the Old Testament", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/ignatius-loyola/ot-canon (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/ignatius-loyola/ot-canon).

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