“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:9-10).
For centuries, Christians have followed the advice given by the apostles John and Paul in these scripture passages, practicing “discernment of spirits.” Great saints like Augustine of Hippo, Bernard of Clairvaux and Ignatius of Loyola taught on this topic. The basic idea is that many different impulses or spiritual influences are at work within each human soul. The Christian, sometimes with the help of a spiritual guide, attempts to determine where they come from: good spirits? Evil spirits? The body? The world? God? One’s own spirit? The purpose of the discernment of spirits is sanctification and spiritual growth.
Recently, many non-Catholics have been talking about discernment of spirits but with a different meaning. They use the phrase to describe the believer using his own spiritual authority to sense what spiritual forces are at work around him in the “invisible realm” or “second heaven” where angels and demons operate, and then acting to control those forces. This action is called “shifting atmospheres.” This view is summed up in the slogan, “be a thermostat, not a thermometer.”
This teaching was popularized by Dawna De Silva of Bethel Church in Redding, California. For her, discernment of spirits is part of spiritual warfare. Operating of the “dominion theology” I wrote about previously in this space, De Silva sees discernment of spirits and “shifting atmospheres” as a way “to discern, dispel, and displace negative spiritual forces around them and to partner with and release heaven on earth.”
Helen Calder of Enliven Ministries and Planetshakers Church in Melbourne Australia, teaches, “You can be a thermostat and, you can set the temperature.” She says that discernment includes “perceiving the spiritual realm” and “the ability to discern the demonic realm and spiritual realities.”
These ideas have been seeping into the Catholic Church. A 2022 post in the blog of the National Catholic Register, called “10 Truths I Learned from Encounter Ministries,” put it this way:
“Thermometers measure the temperature. Thermostats change the atmosphere. … With the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are thermostats where we can change the temperature in our lives and those around us by the way that we pray in faith for the miraculous change that God wants to do through us.”
This new definition of “discernment of spirits” is very different from the traditional Catholic understanding, in which discernment of spirits is not just about seeing into an invisible realm, or having power to “change the spiritual temperature,” but about looking into one’s own soul, seeking the will of God and accepting it, finding consolation by making the right decision. We practice discernment, not to assume authority over the spirits, but to make God the only authority over our lives. We practice discernment, not in order to become “thermostats” who “shift atmospheres,” but to be able to lead a holy and blameless Christian existence, allowing God to set the temperature and direction of our lives.
This, in fact, is how the Letter to the Romans describes the purpose of discernment: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:1-2).”
Furthermore, St. Paul tells the Colossians that Christ, triumphing on the cross, has disarmed the demonic principalities and powers (see Col 2:15). Changing the spiritual atmosphere is his job, and he has accomplished it, once and for all.
In sound Catholic teaching, discernment of spirits is not about enabling us to take charge, or become world changers, or planet shakers, but about becoming saints by heeding and responding to impulses that come from the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit, God’s good angels who do his will, his revealed truth, the accumulated wisdom of the Church, the experience of prayer, human wisdom, and an accurate knowledge of one’s self.
In July, the prayer intention for the Pope’s International Prayer Network was “for formation in discernment.” Pope Leo XIV asked us to pray “that we might again learn how to discern, to know how to choose paths of life and reject everything that leads us away from Christ and the Gospel.” By that criterion, we should reject the false definition of discernment of spirits that leads us away from confidence in Christ’s victory and tells us to focus on our alleged authority to be world-changers, atmosphere shifters, and thermostats.
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