Maps of Meaning with Jordan Peterson

Part 13, On Christ and Chaos

Having described the symbolism associated with the Great Mother, on page 176 of Maps of Meaning Jordan Peterson turns to consider "The Divine Son" described as "the Knower" involved in "the Exploratory Process." In an earlier post I described this archetype as "the Explorer," but in this section Peterson explicitly unpacks this archetype as the Hero, which then bleeds into the "the Divine Son" and "Savior" archetypes.

If you've been following along, you know the role of the Hero: confront and order the Chaos. As Peterson writes in this section, "The mythology of the hero, in toto, depicts the development and establishment of a personality capable of facing the most extreme conditions of existence...Chaos breeds novelty, promising and threatening; the hero leaves his community, voluntarily, to face this chaos. His exploratory/creative act quells the threat embedded in chaos, and frees what is promising from its grip." Again, slay the dragon. All this should be review for those following this series. 

Peterson then goes on, pushing further, to link the Hero archetype with the Savior archetype. This makes sense, as heroes are often heroes because they save us from danger. Peterson writes, "The hero is narrative representation of the individual eternally willing to take creative action...It is declarative representations of the pattern of behavior characteristic of the hero that eventually comes to approximate the story of the savior. Behind every particular (that is, historical) adventurer, explorer, creator, revolutionary and peacemaker lurks the image of the 'son of god,' who sets his impeccable character against tyranny and the unknown. The achetypic or ultimate example of the savior is the world redeemer, the Messiah--world-creating and -redeeming hero, social revolutionary and great reconciliator."

Okay, theologically some alarm bells are going off here.

First, let me say this. There is absolutely no doubt that in Biblical imagery, narrative, and drama Christ's victory--as archetypal Divine Son, Savior, and Messiah--over Sin, Death, Satan, and the Principalities and Powers is described in the heroic motifs highlighted by Peterson. So on the surface, I have no quibble with viewing Jesus through a Jungian hero archetype.

But that said, one has to treat this archetype with great care in relation to Christian theology, and given Peterson's lack of theological depth--and that's no slam, as Peterson isn't a Christian and is a psychologist rather than a theologian--he often handles Christology superficially. To come to the point quickly, Christ wins his victory--slays the dragon--through kenotic love, through cruciformity. And that cruciformity stands as a subversive sign of contraction over against any vision of "slaying the dragon" that privileges power, competition, or dominance. Christ wins through love, giving his life away. Christ slays the dragon by getting on his knees and washing feet. The concern here is that, if we lose track of the cross, Peterson's vision of the Christ-Hero as "adventurer, explorer, creator, revolutionary," as one "who sets his impeccable character against tyranny," can become dangerously imbalanced, and even anti-Christ/ian. 

And this isn't an idle concern. We saw, for example, a similar imbalance affect the Christology of Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church, his leaning too far into agentic motifs to create a "muscular" Jesus attractive to young men who enjoy MMA and the UFC. As Driscoll famously declared, "I cannot worship a guy I can beat up." Even though, you know, Jesus gets beat up on Good Friday. It's a peculiar and puzzling thing, watching Christian pastors forget the death of Jesus.

But, to be very clear, I'm not comparing Peterson to Driscoll, though both, I'll remind everyone, do appeal to young men. My concern here today is Christological, that a purely Jungian approach to Jesus will consistently fail to reckon with the deeply subversive message that sits at the heart of the Christian faith. The cross cannot be fully understood from "the outside," as one archetype among archetypes. The cross is the Crisis of Jungian psychology, the Contradiction of all mythology, and the Subversion of the hero archetype. When Christ confronts the Chaos, in allowing the dragon to slay him, he interrupts and negates everything you thought you knew about dragons and how they might be killed.