Sometimes here and over at NEO, Jordan Peterson is discussed. He is very popular among conservatives and libertarians as a voice of philosophical scepticism and open-mindedness. However, his Jungian stance, if I understand his position correctly, is not up to the task of grappling with spiritual evil in the world.
Recently, while visiting Liberty University, he had an encounter with a young man who cried out to him for help. It was discussed this week on Anglican Unscripted, by Messrs Kallsen, Conger, and Ashenden. They drew attention to the fact that the maxims offered by Mr Peterson seemed to have little power to address the turmoil in this young man’s soul, whereas prayer appeared to be effective. Whether the young man was demonised or not is unclear – but the grace of God, embodied in the person of Jesus Christ, is what we all need.
Humanity is involved in a spiritual war. The spiritual quality of this war, while unseen much of the time in the empiricist West, is likely to become more apparent as the end times progress. As God brings miracles of the Kingdom to His Church, so the enemy will produce diabolical wonders of its own, which he will use to empower the Man of Sin (2 Thessalonians 2; Matthew 24; Revelation 13).
In an age of deception and wonders, it is imperative that Christians be able to explain why the message behind the miracle is more important than the miracle itself, which serves as a sign. The False Prophet may call fire down from heaven, in the style of Elijah, but he speaks with the words of the Dragon. We know the Dragon’s strategies: seduction on the one hand, oppression on the other. The Dragon is a sower of discord, chaos, and misery. Christ said that the truth was not in him.
We must prepare for the coming events, understand their significance, and explain them to those who will listen. This year could be important: the Israeli elections and proposed peace plan, along with events in Europe, may produce unusual geopolitical events. God may also do wonders in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Let us minister to men’s souls, preaching the Good News of Christ’s victory and His return to usher in the new age.
All Along the Watchtower 
yes, christians should be able to give account of the faith in them. im not doing a very good job on my end. i hardly ever witness to anyone. does anyone know what fate has befallen good brother Jeff? I miss him calling me names.
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I do not know what is going on with him, but it may be advisable to pray if he feels he cannot spare the time / effort to comment here.
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I have been skeptical of Jordan Peterson and his popularity among conservatives. If one is looking for philosophical heroes against the tide for Catholics Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI wrote a great amount of philosophical works against modern philosophy and relativism. For Protestants, one can read Kierkegaard.
I don’t know if it’s wise to attempt to synthesize Peterson’s rhetoric into a Christian philosophy, simply because it’s been said better. I think people are more or less starved for a personality in their corner. At times, I’ve watched debates/interviews with Peterson, and I think to myself, this guy has talked for 5 minutes and said nothing. Peterson evades more than he asserts. For this reason, I don’t think Sam Harris finds the man threatening to his rhetoric when they “talk” or “debate.” Harris, as Peterson hints is Anti-religious from a priori perspective, which lenses his entire spectrum, so he isn’t actually unbias in his findings. However, this is common with most people, so why does it take Peterson to say to make it all the sudden more credible?
In response to your example, it comes back to Augustine’s “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Well, if we ask Peterson, what does mean exactly, no archetypes, who is thee to which Augustine speaks?
Peterson just doesn’t understand this foundation of Augustine, for example, he writes, “In the Christian Tradition, Christ is identified with the Logos. The Logos is the Word of God. That Word transformed chaos into order at the beginning of time. In His human form, Christ sacrificed himself voluntarily to the truth, to the good, to God. In consequence, he Died and was Reborn.”
He goes on to explain it more in the paragraph. However, that understanding of Christianity has a lot of problems in it. God created ex nilhlo; there was no chaos, a void, if you will and The Word was there in the Beginning, because He is God. Peterson goes on to explain that when we continue to learn, we have little deaths and we’re reborn.” However, this archetype isn’t what Augustine speaking about when it comes to rests. Christ is the yoke, where we tie our wills to his own, to consent toward the goodness that we were originally created for made in the image of God. Goodness in the sense of the telos of what it means to be perfect, as we were intended. As creature, this “chaos” as Peterson puts it is a deprivation, it has no form, therefore it cannot “die,” but rather in the Christian sense, Christ has restored it through the Pascal mystery–Christ wasn’t reborn, he was resurrected, a nuance that Peterson doesn’t understand that is central to the fall and humanity’s redemption.
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Yup, and I agree with you completely. But, here’s a caveat. Peterson makes no claim to be a Christian, merely sympathetic to the Faith. He’s a Jungian, and I think a fairly good one. I also think he does quite a lot of good work amongst the heathen, but that is something of a two-edged sword, he is somewhat of a danger to incompletely formed Christians.
His message is perhaps 30 degrees off what we believe. That is still better than what many young people are hearing, spouting, and believing which is almost completely antithetical to our Faith. St Augustine he certainly is not, nor is he Kirkegaard, on the other hand, he makes no claim to be. I suspect he too is struggling to find the meaning of the Word, and he hasn’t yet. Perhaps, in time, he will. For now, he is something of a fellow traveler, who helps many and hurts few.
My final analysis is this. He isn’t talking to us, he’s talking to sheep so lost, that they have forgotten who the Shepherd is, and whose lives have become chaotic, so perhaps his role is the sheepdog, who helps the Shepherd without understanding why.
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Perhaps, it is like he is talking to sheep in chaos who have never experienced the voice of the Shepherd . . . oblivious to the fact that sheep are shepherded and the idea of the sheepdog strikes a chord with one of Ann Barnhardt’s latest posts with an appropriate beautiful picture of an Akbash Sheepdog . . . doing what he does whether the shepherds are doing their job or not: https://www.barnhardt.biz/2019/04/04/qa-ann-how-can-you-go-to-a-mass-in-which-a-man-you-are-beyond-morally-certain-is-an-antipope-is-commemorated/
I found your response rather interesting coming at the same time as Ms. Barnhardt’s post. 🙂 Funny, like that.
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That is funny. not the first time I’ve agreed with her, but usually not just out of the blue. It’s only a theory of mine, having listened to him, and I could well be wrong, but that’s what I hear.
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Jung would roll over in his grave
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For my part, I believe that Jung was involved with the demonic world. I do not hold him up as a good model for Christian approaches to the mind and spirit, except to endorse the general point that bringing subconscious positions to the conscious mind can be important at times.
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On that we would differ somewhat, as I go the other way. But I find Peterson’s work shallow, a kind 1950s patriarchal view hipped up.
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I find Peterson more useful as a questioner than as a proponent of any particular position. I am not overly fond of his approach because at times I think he takes insufficient account of the fact that much in life is beyond the control of the individual. His attitude at times seems to be “get over it” or “get on with it”, and sometimes that is not right. But I do like when he interviews people (e.g. the Camille Paglia interview) and we get to hear them properly lay out their positions, whereas many MSM interviews seem to involve the host saying more than the guest. I like it when he challenges assumptions as well. So many people assume that having more women in the workplace is automatically a good thing. I take exception to the assumption and the view itself (automatically) a view like that ought to be properly supported by reason and/or empirical evidence, depending on the formulation of the proposition (analytic or synthetic).
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I wouldn’t disagree with that – as a questioner, one should always challenge assumptions.
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