The Bible as Comparative Literature: Essay #2 on Jordan Peterson

Dear Friend,

     I ended my last letter on a question about why Christians should be concerned about historical (physical) reality. I intend to tackle that question at some point, but before I do, I want to continue with discussing the distinction I introduced in my last letter, namely, the distinction between soul-stuff and physical stuff. (These are, of course, technical terms I invented.) I want to discuss how I was raised to read the Bible. My hope is to somewhat supplement my thoughts outlined in my last letter. Here, I must admit, I am not really analyzing Jordan Peterson, like I would hope to. That being said, Peterson does figure into my analysis, and so I think it is quite appropriate to go on this little tangent.

     As I have stated previously, I was raised Catholic, and Catholic theology, even if it upholds certain literal interpretations of scripture, is structured around spiritual interpretation. This is especially true when it comes to reading the Old Testament, which is interpreted not so much as history but as a sign or symbol of the spiritual reality of the New Testament. (Catholics refer to this as typology, though I will try not to be technical about terminology here.) I do not mean to suggest that Catholics do not read the Bible as history. They do. But the historical literalism is itself symbolic. Consider the following example. In the Catholic Church’s rite of baptism, you will find the following prayer spoken by the priest prior to baptism:

Father, you give us grace through sacramental signs, which tell us of the wonders of your unseen power. In baptism we use your gift of water, which you have made a rich symbol of the grace you give us in this sacrament. At the very dawn of creation your Spirit breathed on the waters, making them the wellspring of all holiness. The waters of the great flood you made a sign of the waters of baptism, that make an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness.

Through the waters of the Red Sea you led Israel out of slavery, to be an image of God's holy people, set free from sin by baptism. In the waters of the Jordan your Son was baptized by John and anointed with the Spirit. Your Son willed that water and blood should flow from his side as he hung upon the cross. . . .

      Take a look at how this prayer takes these stories from the Bible and spiritualizes them. The waters of creation are a symbol of baptism. The waters of the flood are a sign of baptism. The waters of the Red Sea are an image of baptism. Everything is a sign or symbol of baptism. So when I was growing up Catholic, asking the question of what was real and what was figurative, I believed that the real thing was baptism. The waters of creation, the flood, or the Red Sea were just symbols. All the force of these Biblical stories, their meaning and significance, is not contained in the historical events being described by the Bible, but in the spiritual event of baptism which they prefigure. And baptism is soul-stuff. The soul-stuff is the real stuff. The spiritual truth of baptism is what matters.

     Again, I know I am beating this horse to death, but I do not mean to suggest that Catholics deny Biblical historicity. Still, that does not change the fact that I personally was taught (intentionally or unintentionally) to read the Bible as though it were a giant analogy that points to a spiritual reality, and the natural consequence of being raised this way was that I didn’t care whether the Bible was historical fact. It might very well be the case that a worldwide flood is a great analogy for baptism, but it would be a great analogy even if it didn’t happen. Perhaps it’s a better story precisely if it didn’t happen?

     Great analogies can make bad realities. For example, the story of Adam and Eve is a great story of creation and mankind’s fall, but do we really want to believe that, as a historical fact, God created only two humans, and God designed them with the intention in mind that their children would need to commit incest in order to populate the world? This seems very strange. The writers of Genesis themselves do not even appear to think this. (Observe how Cain fears other people, as though they already existed.) It would surely be ridiculous to suppose that Adam and Eve were ashamed of each other’s nakedness but God nevertheless forced their sons and daughters to have sex with each other. Yet some Christians would rather defend incest (at least in this instance) than to give up the literal interpretation. How does it make any sense that God wanted incest when the story itself is about sexual shame? That’s a rhetorical question. It makes no sense. 

     While it is true that many Catholics consider the story of Adam and Eve to be literal, it is not a great aberration from Catholic teaching to adopt the story of Adam and Eve, or any number of other Biblical stories, as figurative. In fact, it is quite in line with how Catholic theology works. The function of the Bible is, in many ways, to offer us spiritual schemas, analogies, prefigurations, parables, typologies, or any number of other literary structures that can then be transfigured into theological structures. Let me give you a perfect illustration. A few weeks ago, Catholic theologian Scott Hahn shared the following picture on social media.

     This picture is meant to trace the structure of Biblical covenants from Adam to Jesus. All covenants are structured using the same elements. There’s the covenant mediator who is the Biblical figure through whom God establishes a covenant with mankind. The mediator takes on a role, which is expressed in a form established with a sign. As a literary device helping us see the structure of covenants expressed in the Bible, this illustration is quite good. It shows the sort of “typological” thinking that Catholics use when they study the Bible. But the problem with this illustration is obvious to a sophomore philosophy student. This illustration works just as well even if none of the characters actually existed. Superman is Clark Kent even if Superman doesn’t exist, and Adam is a husband even if he is purely fictional. Abram was circumcised, even if he was made up. Noah had a household, if only in the story. We can make completely true statements about things that don’t exist. In philosophy, this is referred to as the problem of counterfactuals, and this problem has fascinated philosophers from Plato to Russell.

     Regardless of these counterfactuals, Catholics love these parallelisms. Scott Hahn is rather famous because he converted to Catholicism precisely because of these parallelisms (or types, as he would call them). But imagine, for a second, growing up in an environment where these parallels are the most important thing. There is this tendency to want to analyze the Bible for every parallel, every foreshadowing, every cross reference. Here’s a picture I have seen shared around Christian circles on social media. While this is not a strictly Catholic example, it is a perfect illustration of what I am talking about:

     This graphic of the Bible’s cross references (no pun intended) is accompanied by a Christian apologetic argument that the cross references are proof the Bible is divinely inspired. How can this book not be divine when it is so intricately woven and interconnected? The shear volume of these connections alone is convincing.

     Growing up, I was quite impressed with this type of textual analysis. In some ways, I still am; but while I once might have found these patterns to be evidence of God, I no longer think they are. A certain realization clicked in my brain that I was more fascinated in the theology than in the reality. I was more interested in the symbolism of the flood than in the flood itself, more interested in the foreshadowing of the Passover than in the Passover, more interested in the meaning of the crucifixion than in the actual crucifixion. There is a certain type of death by theology. Man shall not live on cross references alone.

     Even in this example, the author I linked to makes the argument that the intricacy of the Bible is proof of 1) divine authorship and 2) God’s ability to harmonize your life the same way he harmonized the Bible. Notice that the one thing the post does not argue is that any of the Bible is accurate history. In my experience, Christians will often supply that last step themselves, as though literary impressiveness was proof of historical accuracy, but it does not, in fact, follow as a matter of pure logic.

     There are two distinct thoughts that I have at this point, and they are both complicated enough to deserve their own letter to you. The first one I will mention only in passing, but the second I will expand on just a little as it will segue us back into discussing Jordan Peterson.  

     Firstly, while I have stated that I grew up taking the Bible quite figuratively, and in fact still take quite large portions of it figuratively, as I have matured I have come to appreciate the historical value to a lot of the text. This historical value, however, I have learned almost entirely from secular scholars. Some of the best Biblical research comes from people who have, as it were, no theological skin in the game. I’ll perhaps discuss this in more detail some other time, but for now I will simply note that some Bible scholars (I am primarily thinking of Bart Ehrman) take the approach that you should not try to harmonize the Biblical text. If you want to think of the Bible as history, it becomes necessary to stop thinking about all the symbolism, signs, types, parallels, etc. Ehrman's approach is the exact opposite of the approach I was raised with. It is therefore no surprise that if I had no appreciation for the history in the Bible while wrapped up in the theology, this historical appreciation would come precisely through suspending theological judgment as Ehrman suggests. Many Christians hate Ehrman for this approach, but personally, Ehrman has done more for me than most Christians when it comes to thinking about the Bible as historical text. 

     Secondly, and more relevant to the current discussion, if the goal is to create an intellectual and/or spiritual framework of cross references, analogies, typologies, archetypes, etc., there is no strict reason why one would limit this scholarship or spirituality to the Biblical canon. In fact, many people do not. I know I personally cannot and do not think of the Bible as a closed text. Having grown up learning to find the parallels in different parts of the Bible, and having taken up the attitude that these parallels are the primary method of interpretation, it is quite impossible not to draw those parallels to other non-Biblical texts.

     You see, this way of learning the Bible as parallelisms and cross references teaches one to read the Bible as comparative literature, whether one realizes it or not. Once one accepts this, then opening up the field to include other texts is not a change in hermeneutics. It is merely a change in scope. And because I have an education that includes classical literature, I find it easy to expand that scope. Today, when I read the Biblical account of Noah’s flood, my brain files it away next to the Deucalion flood and the flood of Utnapishtim. Moses wandering the desert for 40 years gets classified next to Odysseus navigating the Mediterranean for 10 years. Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? That gets placed on the shelf next to the story of Epimetheus and Pandora. Lott’s wife looking back at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? Orpheus looking back at Euridice. Each of these stories are so profoundly parallel to each other that their coincidence speaks to deeper realities. Personally, and maybe quite blasphemously, even the story of the crucifixion and resurrection feels to me like it belongs as a footnote to Prometheus Bound. 

     If this way of reading the Bible as comparative literature sounds familiar to you, it may well be because this is how Jordan Peterson reads the scriptures. I am currently making my way through his book We Who Wrestle with God. As I have previously mentioned, I think almost all his interpretations of the Scriptures are wrong, but he approaches the Bible in this open ended, comparative hermeneutic, which fits in perfectly with what I am talking about. In the first chapter of We Who Wrestle with God, Peterson spends a long time discussing creation, not from the account of creation found in Genesis, but from the account presented in the Enuma Elish. He goes on at length discussing how the divine masculine, Marduk, slays and brings order to the divine feminine, Tiamat. Peterson’s account of creation is extremely gendered, and the Enuma Elish is much more gendered than Genesis chapter 1. In chapter 2 of his book, Peterson picks up the Genesis account with the introduction of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, that is to say, exactly where the Bible’s creation story becomes gendered. Now, I have my problem with this gendered approach to creation, but what I want to point out here is that Peterson has an open canon. Creation, for him, does not begin in the Bible. Creation begins in the Enuma Elish and is only then transferred over to the Bible. He follows the gendered thread running through these two creation accounts, not in order to preserve a canon, but rather to preserve an interpretation.

     Notice that Peterson approaches interpretation and text as two variables subject to negotiation. Peterson could have presented an interpretation of creation that does not go outside the Biblical text, but such an approach would limit the textual sources and preclude interpretive options. The story of Yahweh bringing forth creation ex nihilo does not permit the gendered interpretation of the story of Marduk and Tiamat. On the other hand, the gendered interpretation of Marduk and Tiamat goes together very well with the gendered interpretation of Adam and Eve. The choice of whether to use a closed canon (limited to Biblical text) or an open canon (not limited to Biblical texts) has very real consequences for interpretation.

     Here is where I will diverge from most other people on Jordan Peterson. Many people agree with Peterson’s scriptural interpretations but disagree with his tendency to use an open canon. They will, for instance, think about Adam and Eve in very gendered terms, like Peterson, but disagree with opening the comparison to Marduk and Tiamat. I, on the other hand, am quite at home with using an open canon; I just disagree with his interpretation.

     Friend, I will leave this discussion here for now. This letter did not go in the direction I had originally planned. I had wanted to segue back into the Jordan Peterson vs. 20 Atheists video. That unfortunately did not happen. I hope, however, that in my explanation of my own reading of the Bible, I have helped you understand some of the workings at play in how Peterson interprets the Bible. This will be continued soon enough. As I continue my way through We Who Wrestle with God, I will let you know if I come across anything worthy of discussion.

     Farewell.

Some Thoughts on Jordan Peterson’s Religious Views (Part 1?)

Dear Friend,

     I have decided to craft this little essay in a letter to you as a way of gathering my thoughts on the topic. I know you share a similar interest in Jordan Peterson as I do, even if that interest is built on a love-hate relationship. I think both you and I see good and bad in Peterson. For myself, talking about Peterson has always been a challenge. On the one hand, I disagree with almost every single thing he says. On the other hand, he approaches the world from the same point of view as I do (or did at one time). Indeed, his approach to Christianity is nearly identical to my own, although mine is changing even as I speak. I have long desired to put some of these thoughts into words, but the Jubilee video “Jordan Peterson versus 20 Atheists” has given me the additional motivation I needed to actually do so. 

     Without dancing around the issue, my primary similarity to Jordan Peterson is his and my mutual inability to think of the Bible through a literalist lens. I have always been prone to thinking of basic theological statements such as “God exists” and “Jesus rose from the dead,” as spiritual declarations rather than statements of fact. As you know, Peterson has time and again stated he does not like being asked whether he believes God exists or whether he believes Jesus rose from the dead. He often refuses to discuss these basic questions on the grounds that, “It depends on what you mean by God,” or believe, or rose, or dead, or any of the words people use to ask these basic questions. While this is a point of frustration for Christians and atheists alike, I understand exactly where Peterson is coming from. 

     Many Christians are frustrated by Peterson because the Bible says things like “believe in your heart and confess with your lips that Jesus Christ is Lord.” For Christians, actually stating your belief in God and Jesus is a necessary feature of believing, whereas Jordan Peterson, throughout his career and throughout the Jubilee video, holds a position that one can both be a true believer and refuse to confess their faith at the same time. Most Christians will tell you this is Biblically false, and some will go as far as to say that Peterson is actually deceiving and leading people away from true Christianity. 

     On the other hand, atheists get frustrated by Peterson because they believe he is twisting the meanings of basic vocabulary, as though words like “believe” and “true” were somehow too profound in the depths of their meaning to ever be spoken, or as though the proposition “God exists” did not have a commonly understood meaning, even if that meaning does not capture the very essence of God. Jordan Peterson sure says an awful lot about God only to turn around and question what the heck anybody means by the word “God.” It is therefore completely understandable that many atheists, and indeed some theists, will accuse Paterson of “word salad.”

     Nevertheless, I personally find myself quite at home with Jordan Peterson’s refusal to answer these questions. These are, in fact, the sort of questions that I myself do not like to answer. My own personal reason for this is largely due to the sort of faith that I was brought up with. I am, on the one hand, highly attracted to religion due to my belief in morality and my “relationship with the infinite,” as Peterson might put it. But I have serious reservations about accepting the Biblical claims of a God who commissions the genocide of the Canaanites, or a God who demands animal sacrifice, or a God who would demand cutting off a boy’s foreskin. That sort of God – that is to say, the God actually described by the Bible – has always felt to me unworthy of the titles “moral” or “infinite.” 

     As you know from watching Peterson, when confronted about these sorts of Biblical claims, Peterson has a tendency to act as though the historical accuracy of these claims didn’t matter. Instead, what matters is the spiritual meaning or significance behind the claim. Thus, when Peterson is asked whether he believes the exodus from Egypt really happened, he turns the story into a metaphor and claims that “In a sense, it’s still happening.” Or elsewhere, as in the Jubilee video, Peterson can take a prophet like Elijah and claim that Elijah defined God as conscience, which is quite a nonsensical claim. One does not test one’s conscience as Elijah tested God, by calling upon it to rain fire from heaven to consume a sacrificial offering. But yet, that is exactly what Peterson says. 

     Still, I understand Peterson’s point of view. One of my problems with Christianity – and I do mean my problem, as this is specific to me – is that I grew up thinking the world was made of material stuff and spiritual stuff, and the spiritual stuff was realer and more important that the material stuff. I was told I had a soul, and this soul was somehow more real than my body. I was told that my soul had sin, and that believing in Jesus would save my soul from sin. I was told not to fear the one who could hurt my body but to fear Satan and demons who attack the soul. In short, I grew up believing that religion was all about soul-stuff. Souls, spirits, demons, angels, incorporeal worlds, things you can’t see but have to believe on faith – this soul-stuff was everywhere! 

     If you spend all your time thinking about soul-stuff as I did – focusing on your own soul, on the hell your soul deserves, on sin you can’t measure, on demons you can’t prove – and even defining faith itself as “assurance of things unseen,” it isn’t too long before everything becomes soul-stuff. The story of the exodus becomes soul-stuff. The crucifixion becomes soul-stuff. The Bible becomes soul-stuff. Jesus himself becomes soul-stuff. Everything turns into a damn spiritual reality that exists on a plane completely independent of the physical universe! I remember having a realization around the age of 20 that when I said “Jesus was crucified,” that this might actually be a statement meant to describe physical, historical reality. The thought had never occurred to me before. To me this was always understood as a spiritual reality. Sure, we used physical terms to describe it, but really the physical terms didn’t matter. What mattered was what happened on a spiritual level. Yes, Christians use terms like “incarnation” and say things like “Jesus is risen,” but if, at the end of the day, all I care about is the state of my soul, then what difference does it make whether the sentence “Jesus is risen,” is literally true or only spiritually true? All that matters is that confessing it saves my soul. 

     I approach religion as "soul-stuff." Peterson approaches religion as "meaning." Neither one of these approaches requires any commitment to historical facts.

     You are aware that Peterson has described himself time and again as a pragmatist. The basic idea of pragmaticism is that the value of a truth claim does not depend upon whether the claim describes reality. The value of the claim depends on whether that claim is effective in bringing forward fruitful results. As Peterson puts it in one of his discussions with Sam Harris, “the truth of a statement or process can only be adjudicated with regards to its efficiency in attaining its aim.” (Video) This definition of truth would also seem to correspond with the Bible’s admonition that, “by their fruits you shall know them.” (I say it only seems to correspond because I hold a different interpretation I will not get into here.) And indeed, most Christians today will tell you they are Christian because of some sort of spiritual fruitfulness in their lives. They had a personal encounter with the divine; Jesus rescued them from a life of sin; they felt the power of the Holy Spirit; they have a personal relationship with Christ; they have received the assurance of heaven; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  

     There is a definite way to be a Christian pragmatist, but there is a big problem with this worldview considered in isolation. The moment the truth of Christianity is dependent upon the results Christianity has on the believer, and those results are measured entirely in terms of saving your soul, the natural corollary of this worldview is that the truth of Christianity need not be dependent upon facts. If Jesus is real because he saves my soul from everlasting damnation, does it make any difference if he lived 2000 years ago in Judea? If the sacrifice of Jesus is real because I have experienced the saving grace of the crucifixion, does it really matter whether the crucifixion was a bodily crucifixion or a spiritual one?

     This problem I am describing is an old Christian problem. In fact, one group of ancient Christians, the Docetists, believed that Jesus did not actually have a physical human existence. He appeared to be human but was not. He looked like he had a body, but he didn’t. The Docetists were condemned by the early church, but Docetism, as an idea, is still very much alive and well today. Many modern Christians gravitate towards it without even realizing. I was raised, quite unintentionally, as a sort of neo-Docetist. 

     As I have made clear, I grew up in such fear of hell and demons and the state of my soul that the nature of Jesus simply did not matter to me. All I cared about was the soul-stuff, the spiritual stuff. What did I care about history? What concern is the nature of it all? If Jesus needed to be a physical human to save my soul, then so be it. But if Jesus were merely a phantom human, that also makes no difference to me as long as he saved my soul. Or if Jesus was pure fiction and never existed, but our belief in him saved our souls, then I would gladly believe for the sake of my soul. The results are what’s important. Christianity is a matter of pragmatism, and in this regard, I was just being a pragmatist when I dismissed questions like whether Jesus rose from the dead. 

     This is how I grew up thinking. And this is also how Jordan Peterson thinks. You see, Jordan Peterson calls himself a pragmatist, but all of Christianity is pragmatic. Christians believe in Jesus because they are looking for the results of belief in Jesus. They want to be saved. Peterson looks for these results too. However, for people such as myself and Peterson, we recognize the tension of this situation. Most Christians make an automatic leap from their pragmatic religion to a statement of historical fact, as though their salvation through Jesus proved that Jesus existed. From the viewpoint of Christian doctrine, they are right to make that logical leap. However, what people like me and Peterson realize is, there is no logical necessity linking the historical Jesus to our salvation. I know that for myself, I cannot force myself to make that leap. And so, I too question exactly what we mean by words like “believe.” 

     My friend, I have many more things I wish to say on this topic, but my letter is already long enough. I will just add one more personal note. Easter will come up again in just three months; and every Easter, Christians like to post on social media, “He is risen!” And every Easter, this makes me very uncomfortable, and I refuse interact with any of these posts. Why do I refuse? That question must have its own essay to analyze in full, but there is a connection to the current topic. For years and years of my life, I believed that my soul needed to be saved, and so I never once took the Resurrection seriously. Why should I? There is nothing spiritual about the resurrection. The whole point is that the Resurrection was not a spiritual event. It is about flesh and blood. 

     I will leave with this one question: If it is souls that are important, then what good does a bodily resurrection do? Or, to ask this from Peterson’s perspective, if meaning is what is important, then what good is the body? I might have some answers to that question, but I will cut this letter off here as a thought provocation. 

     Fair well and take care.