Has Jordan Peterson (Finally) Found Christ?

Mar 13, 2021 by

by Kennedy Hall, Crisis Magazine:

I imagine that most readers are at least tacitly familiar with the Canadian psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. He rose to worldwide fame in a strange way for his principled stance against the encroachment of postmodernist ideology in Canadian universities. This all happened in 2016, and he went from a locally well-known, yet globally obscure professor to an international celebrity, filling theaters, arenas, and garnering hundreds of millions of views on YouTube and network television.

What was remarkable about his meteoric rise was that he did not espouse opinions that were in any way part of the mainstream narrative. Instead, he put forth all sorts of politically incorrect ideas. Among many controversial topics, he called into question whether men and women should work together in offices; he expressed that birth control has been a net-negative for civilization; he reaffirmed the biological reality of men and women being created as such; and he routinely dismantled the futility of atheism and nihilist thinking. Needless to say, his rise to fame was a curious thing to watch, as he was somehow on the ‘inside’ of the culture, but challenged every pillar or thought that our fallen culture rests on.

Perhaps he was able to do so while still being taken seriously because he never really committed to being a Christian. For all the lectures he gave on the psychology of the Bible, or all the times he was quoted exalting the narrative of the story of Christ, he could never commit to saying that he was a believer all the way through. When asked about whether or not he believed in God, he would always skirt around the question. “I can’t commit to a yes or not because I am not certain what you mean by that,” he would say. Or, “I do not like being put in a box where you will disregard what I have to say if you can pin me down.” It was fascinating to watch him joust with interlocutors, but he surely was not putting forth an orthodox Catholic belief. And, to be fair to those who criticize him, many of his ideas are not much more than gnostic or strange heretical claims if looked at from the bosom of the Church. I am not recommending him as anyone’s theologian.

Read here

See also:

Is Jordan Peterson about to move from Jung to Jesus? Damien Thompson and Gavin Ashenden in conversation, The Spectator

 

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