Ignatius of Loyola on the nature of saving faith
Assent to revealed truth, made saving by love
occasion be not given to the people to be lazy and slothful in works, whether before faith is formed in charity or after.
THE POSITION
The sixteenth rule warns against speaking of faith without distinction in a way that leaves hearers careless of works, and the phrase it uses is the scholastic one: faith "formed in charity". The rule is about preaching and does not say which faith saves, but he uses the distinction without arguing for it, which suggests it was the frame he thought in: faith brought to life by love.
3 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 the nature of saving faith", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/ignatius-loyola/saving-faith (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/ignatius-loyola/saving-faith).