So I grew up around Jesuits and, while I obviously can’t speak for all of them, I’d say that they probably qualify as proto-rationalists, if not rationalists. To the point where a large portion of other Christian sects denounce them as atheists because they refuse to wallow in mysticism like everyone else.
A core principle of the Jesuit philosophy is that God gave us our intellect specifically so that we could come to better understand him. You won’t find them trying to quibble about “micro” vs “macro” evolution or any of the other silliness that other groups use as a membership badge and try to talk in circles around. They do still believe that there is a super-natural world beyond our ability to directly observe, but everything about this world must be logically consistent and any apparent inconsistency is a flaw in your own understanding, not a flaw in the world or a “divine mystery”.
They are trained to draw a hard line between what they believe and what they know, and to treat any perceived inconsistency between the two as a reason to probe deeper until it makes sense. And any fellow Christian who gives the appearance of engaging in “belief in belief”? They’ll tear him a new one just as fast as Yudkowsky would, if not faster. They have his lack of tolerance for it, coupled with encyclopedic knowledge not only of the Bible’s contents, but also generally of practically every work by every significant Christian and major pagan philosopher before or since.
I suppose a good way to explain the fundamental difference is that where most Christian sects believe that certain things are true because they are in the Bible, the Jesuits would say that the stories in the Bible were selected because they teach a fundamental truth or two. Were it not for the weight of Catholic tradition, I strongly suspect many Jesuits would be in favor of continuing to add to the anthology that is the Bible as we develop better stories for teaching the desired lessons. Or, at least, developing an updated one that would make sense to a modern reader without having to spend decades studying all the cultural context necessary to understand what’s going on. I first heard the observation that “The Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Christian story and worldview, just dressed up in different mythology” from a Jesuit for example.
Definitely interesting people and nearly always worth developing a relationship with when you can. And while they’ll try to convert you, they’ll do it by presenting logical arguments, not by shouting and hitting you with a large book. They’ll take what they consider to be the core lessons and principles of Christianity and recompute how to explain them couched in your own world view. And if you end up agreeing on everything but the mythology? Well that’s good enough.
So I grew up around Jesuits and, while I obviously can’t speak for all of them, I’d say that they probably qualify as proto-rationalists, if not rationalists. To the point where a large portion of other Christian sects denounce them as atheists because they refuse to wallow in mysticism like everyone else.
A core principle of the Jesuit philosophy is that God gave us our intellect specifically so that we could come to better understand him. You won’t find them trying to quibble about “micro” vs “macro” evolution or any of the other silliness that other groups use as a membership badge and try to talk in circles around. They do still believe that there is a super-natural world beyond our ability to directly observe, but everything about this world must be logically consistent and any apparent inconsistency is a flaw in your own understanding, not a flaw in the world or a “divine mystery”.
They are trained to draw a hard line between what they believe and what they know, and to treat any perceived inconsistency between the two as a reason to probe deeper until it makes sense. And any fellow Christian who gives the appearance of engaging in “belief in belief”? They’ll tear him a new one just as fast as Yudkowsky would, if not faster. They have his lack of tolerance for it, coupled with encyclopedic knowledge not only of the Bible’s contents, but also generally of practically every work by every significant Christian and major pagan philosopher before or since.
I suppose a good way to explain the fundamental difference is that where most Christian sects believe that certain things are true because they are in the Bible, the Jesuits would say that the stories in the Bible were selected because they teach a fundamental truth or two. Were it not for the weight of Catholic tradition, I strongly suspect many Jesuits would be in favor of continuing to add to the anthology that is the Bible as we develop better stories for teaching the desired lessons. Or, at least, developing an updated one that would make sense to a modern reader without having to spend decades studying all the cultural context necessary to understand what’s going on. I first heard the observation that “The Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Christian story and worldview, just dressed up in different mythology” from a Jesuit for example.
Definitely interesting people and nearly always worth developing a relationship with when you can. And while they’ll try to convert you, they’ll do it by presenting logical arguments, not by shouting and hitting you with a large book. They’ll take what they consider to be the core lessons and principles of Christianity and recompute how to explain them couched in your own world view. And if you end up agreeing on everything but the mythology? Well that’s good enough.