A Letter to Jordan Peterson on Christianity
Dear Dr. Peterson,
A few of your recent activities, such as your most recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, along with some recent revelations of my own, have compelled me to write to you on the topic of Christianity. I believe the best way to address you about this topic is in the form of a public letter. My hope in writing this letter is to help you answer a question that I have often heard you repeat: “What do you mean by ‘Do I believe in God?’“
When asked if you believe in God, I have often heard you answer, “I act as though God exists.” You’ve defined ‘God’ in a variety of unfamiliar ways, such as ‘the highest value in the hierarchy of values’ and what ‘calls/responds in the eternal call of nature.’ Some were bothered by those definitions. For instance, Sam Harris accused you of having “robbed the traditional noun of its traditional meaning.” Your answer puzzled others as well, not just those who adhere to Harris’s strand of secular moral philosophy. However, your recent discussion with Jonathan Pageau and Mohammed Hijab helped me understand why you have answered the question in this way.
Hijab, like any good religious apologist, asked you, “If I were to bring reasonable evidence, which would satisfy some probabilistic reasoning that the prophet Muhammad … was a true prophet, would you be willing to become a Muslim?” In response, you said, “I wouldn’t dispute, a priori, the idea that Muhammad was a true prophet. But I don’t understand what that means.” Earlier in this conversation, you elaborated on how you interpret theological phrases like ‘true prophet’ within a biblical context:
“The mere reduction of these profound [biblical] stories to a historical reality is an underestimate of their truth because they’re a strange kind of truth. They’re the truth that always happened, and is happening now, and always will happen… When I look at a story like Cain and Abel, I think, the question ‘did that happen?’ begs the question ‘what do you mean by happen?’ Because when you are dealing with fundamental realities, and you pose a question, you have to understand that the reality of the concepts of your question, when you’re digging that deep, are just as questionable as what you’re questioning. So, people say to me, ‘do you believe in God?’ And I think, okay, there’s a couple of mysteries in that question. What do you mean ‘do’? What do you mean ‘you’? What do you mean ‘believe’? What do you mean ‘God’? And you say, as the questioner, ‘well we already know what all those things mean except belief in God. And I think, no! If we’re going to get down to the fundamental brass tax, we don’t really know what any of those things mean. And so, for me, belief, for example, is often reflected, not so much in proposition as it is in action.”
Hijab then challenged you, accusing you of “postmodern” thinking. You responded, admitting that “the postmodern problem does emerge” when you interrogate questions like this. But I do not think your counter-questions are rooted in any kind of postmodernism (or epistemological subjectivity). Rather, I think they are rooted in a desire for precision in speech, i. e. whether the semantic content of words used do justice to a metaphysical truth behind those words. In my view, your counter-questions are consistent with a proper understanding of scripture.
Psalm 82 describes a metaphysical scene (a series of events occurring in the heavenly realm) where “God [Elohim] has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods [elohim] he holds judgment.” The late biblical scholar Dr. Michael Heiser notes how the ancient Hebrew word “elohim,” used twice in this Psalm, identifies both the singular “Yahweh” (the God of the Bible) and the plurality of other spirit beings (“gods”) in his divine council. The word “elohim” describes where an entity dwells (just as the word “man” refers to those people born on Earth), not what kind of entity it is. As Dr. Eric Mason says:
“Yahweh is one of those elohim, and no other elohim is like Him… There is only one of Him. One of Him, existing as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And He is the Creator of all other elohim.”
Besides Israel, all other nations worshiped gods lower than Yahweh. Depending upon the nature and identity of ‘god,’ two nations (or two individuals for that matter) can profess belief in different gods and manifest their belief in different ways. In other words, although two people may respond affirmatively to the question “do you believe in God,” they may not believe in the same God or even the same type of god.
Your investigations into the precise meaning of “God” reminds me of the wise man’s desire to build his house upon the rock. One such investigation was your analysis of Exodus, where you define God as the “highest spirit that can guide you:”
“The proposition of the [Exodus] story is: the highest spirit that could guide you is the spirit that objects to tyranny, and that calls the enslaved to freedom. And that’s the representation of ‘God’ in Exodus…That is the God that, if you abide by that God, then you believe that tyranny is implicitly wrong, even if you tyrannize yourself. And that there is something implicitly virtuous about striving for freedom, especially if you are enslaved. So, anyways, that’s the voice that speaks to Moses. And the voice tells Moses to tell the Pharoah, the tyrant, to let his people go. That’s that famous line, ‘let my people go.’ But the line is actually, ‘Let My people go so that they may worship Me’… God, through Moses, calls the Israelites out of tyranny and he punishes the tyrant. So if you believe that fate punishes tyrants, you’re already immersed in the Exodus story to some degree… Now, the Israelites leave the tyranny. And you think, ‘hey man, great! Freedom!’ because now you’re out of the tyranny, but that isn’t how life works… you go out of the tyranny and into the desert. Not to the promised land, desert first. And what’s the desert? … Everyone turns to the worship of false idols. Everyone wants the tyrant to reassert himself. And that’s the situation that we’re in in the aftermath of the death of God in the West. So that’s really useful to know because one of the things you may want to know in your life is ‘why do people cling to their own tyrannical presuppositions?’ And the answer is they’re at least orienting structures, pathological as they might be. If you drop them, you’re not redeemed. You’re just lost. And the idea that being lost is freedom, that’s a preposterous idea. No one lost is free. They’re just enveloped in chaos.”
You argue that the Exodus story portrays God as He who brings the Israelites into “ordered freedom.” The Israelites use their newfound freedom to worship God in the promised land under the law of Moses. You properly note that this was not the immediate outcome. Instead, the Israelites came from the shackles of Egyptian slavery (tyranny) and were forced to wander the desert for their worship of false gods (chaos).
Scripture sometimes alludes to symbols that popular middle-eastern myths used for chaos, such as the sea and monsters within it. For example, some scholars compare Genesis’s use of the “deep” and division of sky and earth to the Babylonian creation myth of Enuma Elish, where the god Marduk vanquishes the goddess “Tiamat,” a primordial being who birthed other gods from the sea, and uses her two divided remains to create the heavens and earth, a habitable order. But, as biblical scholars note, the authors of scripture use chaos symbolism to craft a polemic against false religions, arguing that Yahweh is far above lower gods and will triumph over the “sea” (Revelation 21:1).
“Ordered freedom,” as described by your concepts of chaos and order, can be properly observed in Eden, the Earthly garden where God dwelled with a sinless Adam and Eve. The Edenic story describes mankind in a state of liberty, subservient only to God and His commands; they must be “fruitful and multiply,” “subdue the Earth,” and must not eat “from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” The “ordered freedom” in Eden is humanity’s willful submission to God’s authority. The placement of the tree of knowledge in Eden and God’s command not to eat of this tree necessarily implies the existence of two worlds: (1) one where humanity follows God’s commands in the same way Israelites would follow the Law of Moses; (2) one where humanity can subserviate God’s commands to their own will to discern good from evil. But these two worlds cannot co-exist. Either humanity does or does not eat of this tree; either humanity lives or does not live in Eden. According to Genesis, humanity chooses the latter. Humanity’s willful action to eat from this tree, despite God’s prohibition of this conduct by His authority, triggers God’s responsive judgment to cast them out of Eden. And that conduct is what Christianity calls humanity’s original sin. But for sin, only a world of ordered freedom would exist. But, it is by sin that chaos and tyranny, as observed in the story of Exodus, are born. By their birth and existence, we “are sure to die.”
In other words, to again borrow your language, sin is what we do as a consequence of elevating the will of another “spirit” above and contrary to the will of God. And by elevating that “spirit’s” guidance as more authoritative or superior to that of God, we also sin. And just as the story of humanity in Eden implies the existence of two possible worlds that cannot coexist, Exodus implies the existence of two worlds that cannot coexist: (1) one where the Israelites worship God in the promised land and; (2) one where the Israelites are forced to wander the desert as a consequence of rejecting Yahweh. One cannot simultaneously follow God to the promised land and another “spirit” to the desert. As Christ says, “no one can serve two masters.”
Despite the fact that God gives His people the law of Moses, the lesson of scripture is that man is not capable of redemption by following the law. Time after time, God’s chosen were forced to submit to tyrannical powers as they constantly violated the law of Moses. This is why the Judaic culture desperately longed for a Messiah, the Christ, to redeem them. And, as you said to Joe Rogan, the highest Spirit that could guide a people must be capable of redeeming those He guides. Christ uses this context to reveal the purpose for his historical birth and life: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” Christ’s historical person came to accomplish a metaphysical mission, one that can only be expressed by the physical representation of the cross.
You have spoken about Christ’s crucifixion from the perspective of Carl Jung’s view on tragedy, that the cross “at minimum…[means] something like the sum of all possible tragedy.” Specifically, you have said:
“Jung pointed out that the passion narrative was an archetypal tragedy. And this is what he meant by that: Imagine that you took a bunch of stories that were tragic, and so you could identify them all as tragic stories. A tragic story is something like, something terrible happens to someone who doesn’t deserve it. That’s a tragedy… And then you took all those tragedies, and you took the core of the tragedy, and you made it into one story. And that’s, in some sense, what the passion story is. It’s the sum of all possible tragedies insofar as that could be construed by the revelatory imagination. And then you might say, well, ‘why gaze upon that?’
In response to the question of why one should gaze upon the cross, you cite the instance where Jesus likens his crucifixion to when Moses raises up a bronze serpent in the desert, which God used to heal believing Israelites of maladies caused by snake bites:
“Imagine this, it’s a bad thing to be confronted with snakes … There’s something like the sum total of all possible snakes, and that would be all the terrible things that could happen to you in life. Then you could think, maybe you need a story that encompasses that territory of terrible things that you could then look on, and that’s at least, in part, what the passion story represents… around that story, there’s also a cloud of mythology of associated imagery. And one of those developed dreams is something like the harrowing of hell. So, not only does Christ die terribly despite not only being innocent, but being good, and being betrayed and subject to tyranny, and having to die before the eyes of his mother… But that’s not enough, that hell itself has to be confronted. I would say, is that true of your life? … Terrible things are going to happen to you, and you better be prepared… You’re actually going to have to do something like confront the reality, at least, of historical atrocity and human hell because that’s part of your character too. And in order to fully reveal what you could be, then you have to contend with all of that, and you have to do it voluntarily… Well, that’s your responsibility, to confront the catastrophe and hellish aspect of life forthrightly. And then the question is, ‘is that transformative?’ One answer is, what did Nietzsche say, you can tell the character of a man’s spirit by determining how much truth he can tolerate… Life is going to throw its catastrophes at you, sometimes, even if you’re innocent, and if you’re not prepared in faith, you’re going to fold, and then it’s going to be much worse. How much do you have to face? The answer might be, every bit of it!”
Christ claims both the identity of “I Am” Who prescribed the Law of Moses, and the One who fulfills the law as God commands. However, Christ tells his apostles that they will understand His identity as “I Am,” the highest spirit that can guide us, when He is raised up onto the cross. I can think of no better illustration of this point than your reference to the harrowing of hell.
Christ’s descent into hell is not a metaphor for bearing every bit of suffering thrown at us. When “hell” is properly understood, it becomes a joyful story about metaphysical redemption and spiritual liberty. The English word “hell” usually replaces two categories of terms. The first category describes an “underworld” beyond empirical observation, not a place of suffering or condemnation per se. The words within this category are sheol (Hebrew) and hades (Greek). The other category describes a fiery place of suffering. The words within this category are gehenna (Greek) and its Hebrew derivative hinnom. Christ’s “descent into hell” falls within the first category. It is there that He demonstrates His identity as the One who guides believers of the past, captive in the abode of rest and comfort, into paradise, into ordered freedom. Those who were captive in sheol/hades did exactly what you said men must do forthrightly in faith: they confronted catastrophe with sacrificial repentance and followed the Law of Moses to the extent they could. More than anyone, they acted as though God existed. Yet, they could not enter paradise, into a state of ordered freedom. The metaphysical strength of chaos and tyranny, sin, prevented anyone from entering paradise. Only Christ, as the highest spirit that could guide us, can redeem and guide His people into ordered freedom. As Christ said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
The night before His crucifixion, Christ instructed his apostles on how they must act and treat others once He goes to take his place with the Father:
“As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
Abiding in Christ produces “fruit” within believers, commonly known by Christians as the “fruit of the spirit.” That fruit is perceived by others in our conduct, which is explainable by your definition of God as the “highest value in the hierarchy of values.”
A “value” is something important that fixes our decision-making. Actions taken pursuant to this “value,” in some way, instantiate the value in reality. For a “hierarchy of values” to exist, there must be some quality of a “value” that makes some superior or inferior to others. One generally recognized feature of a “value” that determines its place within a hierarchy is its accordance with truth. For example, a value that inspires one never to sleep is discordant with the truth that humans require some degree of rest. Similarly, a value that leads one always to sleep is discordant with the truth that productivity, some kind of work or activity, is good for human beings. Thus, moderation, a value that balances these extremes, is superior to those values that lead one to no sleep or constant sleep because it accords with both examples of truth. Truth is the superstructure that confines all values within the hierarchy, and the highest value in the hierarchy of values would, logically, be the greatest manifestation of truth. The apostle John expressly refers to this highest value in the introduction of his gospel by describing Jesus as the “Word Made Flesh,” the incarnate logos.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
Thousands of years before John the apostle lived, Psalm 119 also declared that the “entirety of [God’s] word is Truth.” But peculiar to John’s description of the “word” is its relationship with sanctification. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth,” Christ prayed in John 17. The logos sanctifies. Nowhere does this relationship become more clear than in John 8:
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
Christ says He (the Son) is the one that frees, just as I Am frees His people from tyranny in Exodus. In other words, Christ claims to be the logos, truth itself. Christ, as the living incarnation of the logos and the I Am, is the highest value in the hierarchy of values. Fixing our decision-making on the highest value in the hierarchy of values is to be like Christ, like God.
During a conversation with Jonathan Pageau at the beginning of 2021, you expressed concern about the consequences of believing Christ is the union between the physical and metaphysical:
“What you have in the figure of Christ is an actual person who actually lived plus a myth. And, in some sense, Christ is the union of the two things. The problem is that I probably believe that. But … I’m amazed at my own belief because I don’t understand it… Partly because it’s too terrifying a reality to fully believe. I don’t even know what would happen to you if you fully believed it.”
I found your words deeply moving. As Proverbs tells us, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” To fear God, we must know Him.
But belief is more than knowing God in a rational sense. As you’ve said, “rationality should be subordinated to something above it.” The love that a child may feel for their parents is not rational, but it is good and praiseworthy. A child who trusts his parents to know what is best for them does so because he loves them, not because it is rational. Believing that Christ is God is similar to this. It requires humbling ourselves, subordinating our rational faculties to love He Who gave us our reason. In this way, we also act like God. Christ did not bear the wages of our sin on the cross because it was rational, but because He loves us. This is why Christ says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
To believe in God requires us to humble ourselves by confessing to Him our sins and professing that He can free us from them. Those acts of confession and profession recognize His authority over life and death, ordered freedom and chaos. That is the leap of faith that believers are called to take. Christ says those who do so are “born again” of the Spirit, set apart to be fully glorified into the ordered freedom of God’s Kingdom.
Throughout this letter, I have tried my best to accurately and fairly describe your views. If you believe I have failed to do so at any point in reading this letter, I sincerely apologize. I regard your commentary as a force for good in the spiritually and culturally divisive times in which we live. But I hope you will see my intention in this letter, that is my hope to one day call you “brother” in spiritual kinship.