Tag Archives: Jordan Peterson

Making Senses Out of Scripture

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Bible sales are “booming,” up 22% from the same time last year.  There are a variety of reasons why this is the case, but one of the major reasons is that the one of the most famous public intellectuals of the day, Dr. Jordan Peterson, has made the Bible compelling for a lot of people through his lectures and his newest book, We Who Wrestle with God.  For anyone who has listened to or read Dr. Peterson, it is clear that he has a gift of seeing the moral meaning of a text and presenting it in a way that makes it relevant to the audience.  While this might increase interest in the Bible, there is a great danger that it will lead people away from Faith.

To be fair, it is clear that Dr. Peterson is wrestling with the texts in real time (thus the name of his book) and in a public fashion.  He believes that the Bible is true, or as he puts it, “more true than just true” and forms the “precondition for the manifestation of truth.”  But what he doesn’t believe is that it is inspired.  Instead, in true Jungian fashion, he thinks that it is best explained by the collective unconscious (pp.103-104 We Who Wrestle with God).

Why Inspiration Matters

It is not necessarily expected that a man who has not yet found the Faith would believe that the text is inspired, but anyone who is going to truly plumb the depths of its meaning must accept this as a precondition.  It is an assumption that the Author Himself expects the reader to make and it is an assumption that Dr. Peterson himself should make.  He should place himself in the seat of the intended audience and see the text come alive.

Inspiration essentially means that God is the primary author of Sacred Scripture.  He uses human authors as secondary instruments, but those authors using their own language, always say exactly what God wants them to say.  Why this matters becomes clear when we turn to the Angelic Doctor’s Disputed Questions (VII, Q.6, art.1):

“the author of Scripture, namely the Holy Spirit, is not only the author of words but also of things. Hence not only can he accommodate words to signify something, but also he can arrange things to be the figure of something else. And according to this, truth is manifested in two ways in Sacred Scripture: one way is how things are signified through words, and in this consists the literal sense; another way is how things are figures of other things, and the spiritual sense consists in this.”

When a human author writes a story, he uses words to symbolize things.  God is not hamstrung like a human author.  When He writes a story, He uses not only words but also events.  He does not need to make up stories to write them down, He can simply make the events in the story happen.  These same events can then have a deeper meaning.  These means truth can be manifested in both the event itself and the meaning of the event.

An example from Scripture itself will make this clearer.  In writing to the Galatians, St. Paul says the following:

“For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.  But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother.”

St. Paul takes the actual historical event and circumstances around Abraham and his two sons (literal sense) and deciphers the meaning of those events (spiritual sense).  Each son represents a covenant.  But just because they represent something else does not mean they did not actually exist and that those things did not actually happen.  This is what Peterson struggles to grasp and therefore posits that the collective unconscious grasped the deeper truth and made up the story to demonstrate it.

Before discussing the problem with this approach, it is worthwhile to understand more fully the Four Senses of Scripture.  The literal sense is the meaning of the words themselves.  Every passage has a literal sense and we should always start with the literal before attempting to understand the spiritual sense.  The spiritual sense is broken down into three elements: the allegorical, the moral and the anagogical.  The allegorical sense is how the passage relates to Christ or the Church.  It probably the most oft used in Scripture, especially the Old Testament, because every word of the Bible points to the Word Made Flesh.  The moral sense is the sense in which they are commands to govern our actions and train us for righteousness (1Tim 3:16).  Finally, there is the anagogical sense which points towards eternity. 

An Example of the Four Senses

An example might help, especially because there was a long debate recently on X about the interpretation of the Good Samaritan in which a group of Protestants each argued for only one sense of Scripture being the “clear interpretation”.  If they were Catholic they would have known that there are at least four “valid” interpretations.  The literal meaning of the Parable is in the question that Christ answered, “Who is my neighbor?”.  Essentially the literal sense is that anyone in need, even someone who we think is our enemy, should be given aid so that they can live in the Inn (the Church).  The allegorical sense is that the Good Samaritan is Christ Himself who rescues us from the ditch, gives us the Sacraments and securely places us in the Church.  The moral sense is the same as the literal in that we are always to imitate Christ Himself.  Finally, through the anagogical sense we can see the inn as heaven and that only Christ can bring us there.

With a foundational understanding of the senses of Scripture in place we can see that Dr. Peterson’s focus is completely on the moral sense.  This overreliance on just one of the senses renders Scripture a dead letter.  This is why the Church condemned Origen in the 3rd Century for a similar approach.  Those passages that do not have a moral sense are set aside and the Scriptures become a giant self-help book.  The other problem is that any interpretation must first be based on the literal sense.  We must first understand the meaning of the words themselves before trying to assign some symbolic meaning to them.  If we skip this step, Scripture loses the power of “reverse inspiration” so that God no longer speaks to us personally in them.

Faith and the Suspicion of God

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Are you suspicious of God?  This is a rather strange question to open an essay, especially one written by a believer.  It seems to be the question of the skeptic.  If we are honest, we will admit that, yes, on some level, I am suspicious of God. That level of honesty is difficult because it shatters the image each of us has of himself as a Christian.  Nevertheless, it is there.  God has willed it (even if only permissively) as an effect of the Fall.  We have each inherited from Eve a suspicion that God might not totally have our best interest at heart.  Satan placed the question of whether God was holding out on her in her heart and its echoes have been heard in the hearts of her progeny ever since.

There is further proof that suspicion is part of our default condition.  In those children whom He has adopted in Baptism, God has placed the remedy—Faith.  Without it we will eternally go on questioning God’s motives.  With it, suspicion is wiped away.  The point is that Faith is not natural, not something we can obtain or, once we have it, even increase on our own.  It is beyond our natural capacities and is totally supernatural.  Upon hearing of the power of Faith (Lk 17:5, Mt 17:20), the disciples do not say “Lord we will try harder to believe”, but “Increase our Faith.” 

Despite its supernatural origin, it is nevertheless a habit infused into our souls that we have the power to use.  But in order to use it properly, we must become more aware of its mode of operation. 

Natural vs Supernatural Faith

Oftentimes we equate supernatural Faith with human faith and think it simply means trust.  Like supernatural Faith, natural faith is a form of belief based on trust.  We might have faith that a pilot has been properly trained and therefore get on a flight even if we are anxious about flying.  Natural faith is based on reasons—the airline would not want to put inexperienced pilots in the air because it is too great of a liability, we know someone who is a pilot and he went through years of flight school, the FAA unlike most government agencies is effective in monitoring airlines, etc.  Ultimately there is a leap of faith involved, but the leap is based upon solid reasoning.

Supernatural Faith is not quite the same.  Like natural faith it involves first believing someone (trust) before believing in his testimony.  But with Faith there is no leap of faith involved.  God has picked us up and placed us across the chasm of mistrust and doubt.  He has given us a share in the trust that Christ had in the Father.  Now, Christ did not have Faith because He had the Beatific Vision from the moment of His conception, but nevertheless He merited for us the foundation of Faith—trust.  The problem is that we often put the cart before the horse and focus on what is revealed before we address the issue of trust in the Revealer.

There truly is no such thing as an “intellectual conversion”.  You can think all of the doctrines of the Faith are reasonable and still not have Faith.  You simply have right opinion.  That is a good thing, but it is not Faith.  Faith consists first in trusting the Divine Person and then, knowing that He cannot deceive or be deceived, you believe everything that He says. 

There is a great recent example of this in an interview Jordan Peterson gave.  Anyone following him over the last few years will see that he is coming to think like a Christian.  He even admits to seeing Christ as an important historical figure who lived.  But he does not, and never will be able to, convince himself that Christ lives.  He still sees Him as living in the past and only influencing today through some natural progression of His doctrines.  This is natural faith, but, as I have said previously, one does not graduate from natural faith to supernatural Faith.  Pray that he receive the gift of Faith.

Disposing Ourselves to Receive Faith

We can detect our own tendency to naturalize Faith by how we respond to the interaction between Christ and the Apostles when He tells them it was because of little Faith that they could not cast out the demons (Mt 17:20).  Most of us read that as a rebuke.  But how can He rebuke them for something that they don’t naturally have?  Instead He is making them aware both of the power of Faith (it can move a mountain) and their need to ask and ready themselves to receive an increase (Lk 17:5). 

Because Faith is the foundation of the spiritual life and thus the deeper the foundation the taller the edifice that can be built upon it—but we said it was a gift and thus we cannot strictly speaking increase our faith we can ask for more faith and do certain things which dispose us for a reception of stronger Faith.  As St. John Henry Newman says :

“…with good dispositions faith is easy; and that without good dispositions, faith is not easy; and that those who were praised for their faith, were such as had already the good dispositions, and that those who were blamed for their unbelief, were such as were wanting in this respect, and would have believed, or believed sooner, had they possessed the necessary dispositions for believing, or a greater share of the them.”

St. John Henry Newman, Dispositions for Faith, Sermons Preached on Various Occasions.

There are two things in particular we can do to dispose ourselves to receive an increase in Faith.  First and most importantly is to ask.  Admit your unbelief and ask for an increase in Faith (Mk 9:24).  Second, exercise the virtue of Faith.  When you exercise the “muscle” of faith through its exercise, you will be ready for the Divine Spotter to add more weight on the bar of Faith.  The three exercises that are particularly helpful are:

  1. Make acts of faith, especially by reciting the Creed.  But also in general by affirming that you believe any particular doctrine you happen to come across in your spiritual reading or discussion.  I find this practice particularly helpful during homilies that otherwise would not move me.
  2. Study the Faith.  When you also understand you are able to make a firmer assent to what is believed.
  3. Teach the Faith or openly profess the Faith in front of others.  This requires first a trust in God that He rewards those who proclaim Him and then a trust that He has spoken truthfully.