Metaphysics Matters

Jordan Peterson's Nietzschean Christianity

This is a follow-up to my post a few weeks ago entitled "The Politicization of Enchantment." In that post I used Paul Kingsnorth's comments about Jordan Peterson to offer a warning about what I called the "Nietzschean Christianity" being promoted on the Christian right. To understand today's post you'll want to have read that prior post.

I want to make two clarifying observations about my earlier reflections.

First, what are my opinions about Jordan Peterson? Readers who just randomly dip into my posts won't be aware that my opinions of Peterson are complex. On the one hand, I've repeatedly expressed admiration for how Peterson gets young people, especially young men, to take the Bible and Christianity seriously. I've found Peterson's reflections on the Bible to be quite interesting and fascinating. I have also appreciated the way Peterson pushes back on prominent atheists. Jordan Peterson is, perhaps, the best apologist of faith we have. So, I admire many things about Jordan Peterson and think the church has much to learn from him.

And yet, I've also been quite critical of Peterson. My major criticism concerns the "Nietzschean Christianity" he is promoting. A second, but related, criticism, as described in my most recent post, is how this vision of Christianity is being put to use on the political right.

Which brings me to my second clarifying observation.

I've described Peterson's Christianity as "Nietzschean Christianity." Which might strike fans of Peterson as strange given how Peterson's project is quite explicitly working against our modern "crisis of meaning" which has resulted from a Nietzschean rejection of Christianity in the West. So, if Peterson is explicitly anti-Nietzsche where to I get the notion that he's actually promoting Nietzsche?

The answer goes to Peterson’s Darwinian-Jungian approach to Scripture. As everyone knows, Peterson isn't a Christian. He's very pro-Christian and might be on the verge of conversion, put when push comes to shove in his debates with atheists, Peterson doesn't cross the line into full confessional belief. And it's precisely at this point where Peterson stumbles and succumbs to a Nietzschean vision of Christianity.

Here's why.

Lurking behind Peterson's Jungian hermeneutic is a Darwinian view of human evolution and progress. Things like the "hero archetype," which functions as hermeneutical Rosetta Stone for Peterson, are "true" for Peterson because the hero archetype encodes vital information and behavioral strategies that have helped humanity survive and evolve across time. And it's this Darwinian connection that dooms Peterson to a Nietzschean Christianity, for the criteria of "true" for Peterson is always some version of survival and evolutionary success. Which means that Biblical truth, in the hands of Peterson, is always going to tip toward a will to power as the will to power is how Mother Nature sorts the weak from the strong. Simply put, pull back the layers of Peterson's hermeneutic and what you get is survival of the fittest. Truth = Survival. Truth = Fitness. Truth = Evolutionary Success. In short, a Nietzschean Christianity, a Christianity that privileges agonistic struggle, "slaying the dragon," and a will to power. And is it any wonder, when this is made plain, why Peterson's version of Christianity appeals to the political right? Let's quote Paul Kingsnorth again:

For Peterson, Christianity is a Joseph Campbell-style hero journey, one especially designed for young men. In his short film “Message to the Christian Churches” Peterson lays out his civilizational call and challenges the faith to keep up…Peterson goes on to lay out his case for the defense of civilization, which he defines as a society based on the "encouraging, adventurous masculine spirit." The Christian Church, it turns out, exists to encourage this spirit. It is, he states, there to remind people, young men included, and perhaps even first and foremost, that they have a woman to find, a garden to walk in, a family to nurture, an ark to build, a land to conquer, a ladder to heaven to build, and the utter terrible catastrophe of life to face stalwartly in truth, devoted to love, and without fear. Do you see anything missing in this list of what the church ought to be doing? It’s Christ. It's Jesus. He gets not one mention, not in the entire film. Neither does God the Father. Neither does the Holy Spirit. Instead, Peterson's civilizational church is to be a self-help club for young men. It's to be a cultural institution fighting back against the Woke and the bloody Gaia worshippers and the feminists and the life-sapping cultural Marxists. It sees life as a catastrophe, and the correct response to that catastrophe as masculine conquest. What Jordan Peterson wants, in other words, is a church that looks like Jordan Peterson.

I don't know if Jordan Peterson wants a church that looks like Jordan Peterson. But what I do know is that Peterson's Jungian hermeneutic is doomed to produce this sort of Nietzschean Christianity because a Darwinian vision of survival is regulating how Peterson reads the Bible. And until Peterson embraces Christianity, his vision of the faith is always going to drift toward the Darwinian and Nietzschean. For the simple reason that survival, rather than Christ, is regulating his hermeneutical vision and choices.

This is why metaphysics matters and why Peterson playing coy with Christian metaphysics is shooting his project in the foot. Let me make this plain.

The kenotic, self-offering love we witness in Jesus Christ only makes sense if you have a metaphysics of hope. More simply: Agape demands resurrection. Sacrifice requires eschatology. If I give my life away in love I have to trust that my sacrifice isn't futile or wasted. For example, think of Maximilian Kolbe's sacrifice in Auschwitz. Peterson likes to describe the hero as going off and making a great sacrifice to return with treasure for the community. But what if the hero never returns? What if, like Maximilian Kolbe, the hero is just dead? What then? A metaphysics of hope and resurrection declares that Kolbe's sacrifice is still heroic, even if it only echos in eternity. As do all acts of sacrificial love.

The point is that until Peterson adopts a metaphysics of resurrection, that the tomb of Jesus is literally and historically empty, his hermeneutics will never be fully able to describe the self-sacrificing nature of Christ that Kingsnorth so eloquently describes in his lecture. Peterson can't get there because he's not willing to cross over the metaphysical bridge to embrace eschatological hope. And without that hope, Peterson's descriptions of "the hero" will, of necessity, tend toward survival and a will to power. For that is the only vision of the heroic possible in a world governed by Darwinian struggle.

Again, metaphysics matters. Peterson cannot articulate a truly Christ-like vision of the heroic because he lacks a metaphysics of hope and resurrection. Nietzsche was right, it's either Christ or the Anti-Christ. And right now, Peterson's Christianity is on the wrong side of that equation.