Bishop Robert Barron (5:02)

My great pleasure, Jordan. Thank you. I'm Robert Barron. I'm the bishop of the Winona Rochester Diocese, which is basically southern Minnesota. I'm also the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, which is an evangelical. So I'm here, you know, as a believing Christian, as an evangelist, and I think there's saving power in these great texts. But I'm also here as someone interested in the cultural impact right now of the Scriptures. I think it's fascinating you played a role in this, that there's been a revival of interest in the Bible. And a lot of my ministry is directed toward the nones, the n o N e s, those who have no religion, but many of them are fascinated by the Bible. So I'm eager to hear everyone's perspective. And I'm here partially to, you know, try to unlock some of the power of this text for those who have been alienated from religion for different reasons, but just delighted to be part of it.

Jordan Peterson (5:54)

Mr. Hurwitz.

Greg Hurwitz (5:55)

Well, I'm honored to be here. My name is Greg Hurwitz. I'm a novelist and screenwriter. In Exodus, I felt a lot like I was at a table with chess grandmasters, which was really cool to see everybody's engagement and finding these jewels that had different interpretations and everybody, you know, except for Pageau, who never says anything fascinating. And I'd like to say that, you know, a shallow gaze might indicate that there's a lot of similarity among us. And one of the things that I thought was really compelling during Exodus was there's enormous amount of differences and that the text was really a welcome into the best of inquiry and hospitality. I thought it was incredibly productive. Part of why I'm here is that I Think that intellect alone can't grasp the speed and complexity of the change that is upon us now and unconscious projection. And I think that we're seeing the world burn down in some ways to fundamentals. You know, is man smarter than machine? With AI, we have wars breaking out at the birthplace of original sin. We're trying to redefine what it means to be a man, male versus female. And I think when we have that level of definitional collapse, we need to go back to forms of thinking and forms of meaning that are different, whether that is sacred, symbolic, spiritual, mythological, or religious. And going back to the source means we started with Exodus. You know, a lot of us have been going back to or come from Plato and understanding of Plato and all sources. All stories are not necessarily equal in the Bible. This text, to me, is a story. And the Gospels particular, they're like a story with maximal pressure applied. It's like, you know, carbon turned to a diamond where it is fractal and pure. The amount of pressure generationally, historically and spiritually on the story has condensed it into something that is impossible. And in some ways, the Gospels are, I think, well, in many ways, in many different ways, a perfect narrative. It's a hero story. It's structurally incredibly sound, extraordinary fashion. And it sets the conditions in a lot of ways for the most peace, thriving and freedom of differences of nearly any other story. And so why I'm here in some ways is I think what we, in the spirit that we're all here is this is an invitation of sorts to what is a sacred text, to those who might be intellectually reluctant or even have intellectual shame about engaging with a story in a book like this. And a lot of people might be familiar with this sort of light shone through Shakespeare or blasting in the Ode to Joy, or in the words of mlk, these sort of safer reflections for the Enlightenment or secular mind. And this, of course, is the rock on which Western civilization is built. And I think we're here not just to take it seriously, but to apply our serious attention, which means radical openness and also radical judgment in holding this up as a story against which other stories should be compared. If we're borrowing back to what a foundational narrative should be.

James Orr (9:07)

Dr. Orr, James Orr. I'm an associate professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge. Wonderful to be with you all again and to be with new people, too. Look, I think we're all agreed that there is something badly wrong at the heart of our culture. I think if you said 15 years ago at the High noon of the new atheism, that we'd be gathering round the table talking about these sacred texts, talking about Exodus, that it would have the impact that it has had and what I think this series will have too. I'd have thought you were mad. But there is clearly a need for this, there's a yearning for it. There's an emerging coalition of intellectuals, public intellectuals, Jordan at the forefront, John too, who maybe not card carrying Christians but who recognize the power of Christianity and are beginning to realize that we've been, we can't keep running on empty, that it may be the case that we're cutting off Western culture, is cutting off the branch that it's been sitting on and that we're getting, we're starting to get worried about this. And so I think what we're going to be looking at now, what we're going to be trying to do in a small way is to look for the taproot, to explore the taproot of Western culture, which is the Gospel. It's not just the gospels, it's the gospel message. Paul says the Gospel just is Christ crucified. It's a scandalous thought. Christ crucified, scandalous, he says to the Jews and it's madness for the Greeks and it was an offensive superstition for the Romans. And I think that is still true today very much in our culture. But Christianity I think has been tamed, it's been domesticated. We've become very used to it as something which is just part of the furniture. It's now expressed very often in the language of the therapeutic. We've moved from sin to syndrome, as one theologian has put it. So I hope what we can do here is to reflect on the scandalous nature of the Gospel message, to reflect on why it seems like folly, why it seems so offensive and, and with that try and inject new life into Western culture and to learn from the pages of the Gospels, to learn from the figure of Jesus and his teaching, to wrestle with who he claimed to be. Looking forward to it.

John Vervaeke (11:38)

Hi, I'm John Rivaeke, I'm associate professor of psychology and Cognitive science at the University of Toronto. Colleague of Jordan's. I'm here with sort of two hats. One is I'm here as a cognitive scientist. I do a lot of work on the nature of meaning, meaning in life and how that relates to transformative experience, how it relates to a sense of the sacred, about how it's often carried in non propositional kinds of knowing. And of course these are topics that overlap deeply with people's religious lives and the religious practice. And I'm interested in how we can, I'm going to use this word, realize this text as sacred again, because the second hat I'm wearing is I believe there's a meaning crisis. And I've talked at length about that. And I believe that there's an advent of the sacred happening right now in response to the meaning crisis. I feel deeply, vocationally called to be in service to this. And so I want to get into a relationship with this figure that recaptures how Jesus is strange, not in a pejorative sense, but the way I have found Socrates, another one of my heroes, to be profoundly strange in a way that has been deeply transformative for me. And so I'm hoping that in this that I can take a role. I will often. I'm not a believer, I'm not a Christian, I'm not an atheist, I'm a non theist. I guess the closest name you could put to me is I'm sort of a Zen Neoplatonist. But nevertheless I want to listen very deeply, I want to probe very deeply. And I'm very grateful to be here.

Jordan Peterson (13:46)

Mr. Prager.

Dennis Prager (13:48)

Thank you. It's wonderful to be here with all of you. I'm Dennis Prager and it's a joy to be back with you. So I have a slightly different background. I'm a religious Jew. I went to yeshiva Till I was 18, 19 years of age. Taught Jewish religion at City University of New York, written books on it. I have a five volume commentary on the Torah, four volumes of which are completed. I'm now working on Leviticus. Wish me luck. It's not the easiest of the five books, but I'm falling in love with it for other reasons. So I'm here for a number of reasons, one of which is to learn and I want. I've always found that I learn best from those who believe in the text that we're studying. I had a Buddhist teacher in England when I studied in England, and it was the best way to learn Buddhism. I'm also here because though I'm not a Christian, the death of Christianity frightens me. It is my nightmare and I ask people all the time name me one ideology that has supplanted Christianity, that has done good for humanity and nobody can come up with an answer. There is a quote attributed to G.K. chesterton, though it's not verifiable that he actually said it. But it's brilliant when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. And as I point out on my radio show each day, I probably say this once a week. Only secular people say men give birth. Not all secular people say that, but only secular people say that we have entered a post Christian or really post Judeo Christian world of the absurd. One final word. I see Christianity as a divinely ordained vehicle to bring the world to the Torah. So I have a very pro Christian, Jewish, Jewish based view. It hasn't always been done right, but Christians are human and human nature is awful or at least not particularly good. So people can screw up anything but when done properly and I think America and Britain have been particularly good. It was Christians who abolished slavery. It's also Christians who made the who made the Inquisition. I'm well aware. I wrote a book on antisemitism and I pray that Christians come forth now and speak out against a raging anti Semitism that I did not think I would see in my lifetime. But nevertheless, this Jew, this Westerner is very frightened of a post Christian Society.

Jordan Peterson (17:14)

Dr. Headley.

Douglas Headley (17:16)

My name is Douglas Headley and I teach the philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge. And I have a particular interest in Christian Platonism and particularly one might call the Neoplatonic version of that strand of thought. And from this perspective of my work in the history of philosophy, I've always been struck by the extent of theology as a crucial, no pun intended, backdrop to Western thought. And yet philosophers are often either oblivious to this or consciously ignore it. Now, the Gospel narrative is absolutely central to this Western intellectual tradition. And yet this gospel tradition, this Gospel narrative, is, as a couple of people already mentioned, both astonishing in its claims and very profoundly familiar. Almost too familiar in a sense. Now you refer to the death of Christianity. I think that's putting it a bit too harshly. But nevertheless it is the case that Christianity has been through a fiery furnace in terms of the Enlightenment critique of its central claims. Now, I think from a philosophical point of view, from a theological point of view, we do have to take those criticisms seriously and consider the questions of meaning and truth. That having been said, there is, I think, a profound hunger for these philosophical and theological questions that we find expressed, I find personally in an inexpressibly beautiful manner in the Gospels. And so I'm very much looking forward to, to the forthcoming discussions.

Jordan Peterson (19:46)

Dr. Blackwood.

Stephen Blackwood (19:48)

I'm Stephen Blackwood. I'm the founding president of Ralston College, a new university in Savannah, Georgia. I grew up in a Christian home reading the Bible really on a daily basis. And so These stories, you might say, were maybe the most important frame through which I understood, or came to understand, so far as I came to understand it, the world, especially my relations with my family, my younger siblings, nature, the community at large, beauty. It was only later, when I went to university, that I learned that these stories and the stories of the Judeo Christian traditions, both in their synthesis with the Greek intellectual tradition, really produced Western civilization that is fundamentally the synthesis that drives the whole unfolding of the West. My deepest conviction is that human beings matter, that they are made in the image of what is most real and fundamental. And yet I think it's plainly the case that the dominant ideological positions in our own time are woefully, painfully, desperately inadequate. Whether that's reductivist materialism or certain kinds of existential immediacy, or the hyper politicization and activism of everything all the time. You know, the nihilism that there is nothing but power. These are psychologically, morally, theologically destructive in every sense. And so it seems to me there's nothing more important than our rediscovering modes of understanding what the human being is, what we are, and how we can recover our relation to what is most fundamental and real, which we could call, say, God. So I'm hoping that this text, in all of its power, will come alive for us and we'll make some headway in that.

Jordan Peterson (22:04)

Mr. Peugeot?

Jonathan Peugeot (22:05)

So I'm Jonathan Peugeot. I am a liturgical artist, a writer, but mostly, I would say I'm someone who loves patterns and loves to show the beauty of the world, the beauty of art, the beauty of stories, the beauty of images. And the Gospel is, for me, the key. It really is the place where these patterns come together. And I often say that, but it's rare that I have the chance to sometimes show it, to be able to point it out so that people can see to what extent the story of Jesus brings all the stories together. And so, you know, it's a huge undertaking. But because we're coming in the shadow of our Exodus Seminar, that's the way that I'm going to approach all of this, which is what I'm hoping to do, is to constantly help people see that the realities we perceived in Exodus, right, this fractal mountain of the world and how the world comes together, some of the puzzles that were presented in Exodus and are presented in Genesis actually are brought together into this story. So that is my hope, is to hopefully help people that are watching and everybody here see just how precious and beautiful this story is. And the fact that it has become the cornerstone of Western civilization is not an accident of history, but it is through the very nature of the character of Christ, but also his story.

Stephen Blackwood (23:48)

Whether the challenge, in a way, is pretty simple to state easily. It's that we're trying to cover all four gospels in really just a few hours. We're talking about perhaps the most influential, the most powerful, the most difficult, the most radically unexpected words and stories of all time. And, you know, we're trying to cover it quickly. And the temptation, if I can put it that way, will be to schematize so we can kind of make sense of it. And I think the challenge will be to sit with it in a way that what is most powerful and transformative in these unexpected words can speak to our own hearts and hopefully to the hearts of those who are listening.

Jordan Peterson (24:31)

So I think part of the reason that we're in a crucial moment is because the Enlightenment doctrines that have savaged Christianity have also now turned upon themselves. And partly conceptually, but also scientifically. One of the things I've come to understand as a practicing research psychologist is that we see the world through a story. In fact, that's a technical description, a description of the structure through which someone sees the world is a story. It's their story. And we have to see the world through a story because we have to direct our attention. And I think that's been revealed on the scientific side as incontrovertible. I've interviewed many top cognitive scientists pushing on this issue, and the best of the best of them now understand that even our perceptions of objects are micro narratives. We see the world through a story. All right, so that's radical. That's a. That's a radical realization. We can't derive the world from a simple list of facts. That's become starkly evident. We don't even train our AI systems that way. It's just not the case. Okay, so then what's the story? Exactly. That's the crucial issue. What's the story? Well, maybe there is no story, but if there's no story, there's no point, and there's no aim, and there's no way of organizing attention and action, and in that chaos, there's nothing but despair. And I think that's also evident, say, neuropsychologically, neurophysiologically no aim, no hope and despair. What are candidates for this story? Well, the big candidates that have emerged since Nietzsche announced the death of God is the story of power and the story of sex. And those are good Contenders for the throne. But power is the most dismal of stories, except for perhaps, the story of hedonism, right? Those two things compete. These two great stories, power and sex, they lead to catastrophic ends. They play with each other, they rotate around each other. They drive us either towards a remarkably unproductive and bitter hedonism that cannot sustain itself psychologically or socially. And then on the power side, well, if everything's about power, then that claim to me is no different than the claim that, like the spirit of Lucifer rules the world. It's the same claim in a different guise. There's nothing but power. All right? So there's no basis for marriage that isn't power. There's no basis for friendship that isn't power. There's no description of human society that isn't power. It's just all against. All right? And. And for what? And not only is that a stunningly hellish and dismal story, I think there's absolutely no evidence that it's true and plenty of evidence that it's not. The religious question, the monotheistic question could be conceptualized as what could unite even power and sex and something higher and harmonious psychologically and societally. And I think that's what the biblical corpus is about. I think that's what the Gospels focus on. And I've come to realize, to understand, not just to believe, but also to understand that it has something to do with sacrifice. And so to mature is to sacrifice. To mature is to sacrifice the immediate delights of power in the present for the long term, psychologically and the communal, broadly, as the definition of maturation. And there's a spirit that underlies that movement towards integration and community. And that spirit is the spirit of progressive sacrifice. And the gospel story is the culmination of the sacrificial story. And so I don't understand how it can be true. I don't understand how it can be right. But I now don't understand how it cannot be true. Because the converging evidence that something like the spirit of divine sacrifice animates the world, I think that's. I think we're there. I think that's the realization. Now, what I hope to accomplish in this seminar is to further my understanding of that. Because the story upon which our culture is based, the gospel story, let's say, is deeply mysterious and dramatically peculiar and hallucinogenic. It's a. A trip. And it's not understandable from the purely rational perspective. Yet it seems to be right. And I don't know what that means. It's a terrifying thought, that's for sure. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, that's for sure. If you understand that the gospel's call to you to bear the weight of tragedy and malevolence on your shoulders, along with the divine Spirit that guides you, there is nothing more terrifying and no greater field of opportunity than that. And so we've got our work cut out for us, gentlemen. This is one peculiar time and one peculiar text, and I sure hope we're up to the task.

Bishop Robert Barron (29:52)

Could I maybe suggest, in some ways, the climax of the New Testament revelation is the claim that God is love. I like the way you set that up. If power and hedonism are absolute values, then we're in serious trouble. Put love above both of them. Now, power is directed by love. And what's love but to will the good of the other? So the sacrificial narrative of the cross fits under that heading as well. But if the ultimate reality is love, then we can find a place for all these subordinate values. If we get rid of love as a supreme value, then we have the serious problem of power unleashed or hedonism for its own sake. So I think that's the trajectory toward which the entire New Testament is going, that God's name is being. In the Old Testament, I am who I am, and Christian theology recognizes that as a supremely high name of God. But higher still is the claim that God is love. And in fact, the Trinity comes from that. You know, if God is love in his ownmost nature, there must be lover, beloved, and love shared. So I might suggest that's where the New Testament is going, is love is the supreme value, the supreme reality.

Jordan Peterson (31:00)

Well, it's a hard thing to. What would you say to come to terms with when that's the claim? But the arc of the narrative of Christ is the worst possible death for the least possibly deserving person, and the full encounter with malevolence right out of love. Right?

Bishop Robert Barron (31:19)

Right. That's the great expression of love.

Jordan Peterson (31:22)

So I thought I'd start. If you gentlemen are in accordance with John 1:4, and because it's one of the most peculiar paragraphs, let's say, in the Gospel account, we could talk about it for 10 hours, which we won't. But it'll set us up to start to investigate the metaphysical foundations of the text as well as the autobiographical foundations. One other thing I'd like to point out to people, perhaps before we get going from a conceptual perspective, is that Dr. Headley, for example, pointed to the Philosophical as part of the understructure of the cultural. And made the claim that perhaps underneath that is the theological. And I think that's a nice pattern. It's a nice description of the pattern of conceptualization itself. It appears as though philosophy is nested inside drama. That's a good way of thinking about it. And a verbally portrayed drama is a story, and a story isn't philosophy. It's got a dreamlike quality to it, still something embodied and dramatized. And if philosophy emerges from the story and then our other cultural concepts emerge from philosophy, you can see kind of an inverted pyramid with something at the foundation. And the foundation is the story itself. And at the base of that foundation is something like sacrifice in love. And that's the claim that's being made in the Christian context. Now, John opens up with an allusion to that whole sets of set of claims. Because John does this extremely strange parallel by making the radical and improbable claim that Christ, the Christ of the Bible, who was born in a particular time and in a particular place, a no account place in the middle of nowhere in an equally nondescript time, in some ways is equivalent to the Spirit that gave rise to the cosmos at the beginning of time and has always existed. It's an unbelievably radical way of starting a book. And I'll read the words. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word existed in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. And God created nothing except through Him. In him was life. And this life brings light to all mankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of truth and kindness. We have beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of the Father. And from the abundance of Jesus grace we have all received blessing upon blessing. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. But the only Son who is closest to the Father's heart has made him known to us. So I structured this seminar in relationship to a book called the Single Gospel. And he describes it as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John consolidated into a single narrative. That's not an approach without its pitfalls. He compresses and retranslates many of the verses. So I'm sure there'll be something in that to offend everyone who's listening. For me, it allowed me to enter the single narrative of The Gospels relatively rapidly and to make sure that we had the appropriate narrative through line. Jonathan, maybe you could start with that terribly complicated piece of writing.

Jonathan Peugeot (35:13)

Yeah, well, the first thing I think it's important to see is that it is definitely referring back to Genesis 1. It's basically giving us a type of account of Genesis 1, which is God spoke the world into being. It's joining it with the Greek idea of Logos, which is huge. Obviously we'll talk about that, but what I'd like to just propose is that what we'll see when we look at the narrative of Jesus is that what's described right there at the beginning, which is that the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness does not recognize it. But just this idea of the light moving down into the darkness is the whole structure of the life of Jesus. You'll see that happening all through his life, which is, it explains everything that he does, is that he moves from this mysterious meaning, this source of being, and then he moves out into death, into disease, into the margin, into all the things that don't fit. He basically fills the world with himself, but the world does not recognize him. And so that's the first thing that I would say is that as we read the rest of all the other scripture, because people will tell us that, that, you know, John is the weird gospel. It doesn't, it's not the same as the Synoptic gospels, but I think this pattern here is the actual pattern of the life of Jesus that you see all through, all through the story and in some ways what the story of Jesus and how he does that non stop and in every single way that you even haven't thought of is going to be the proof of this, that it's like, do you know what that looks like for the light to move down into the darkness? What does that look like? And Christ will show that through his miracles, through his teaching, through his crucifixion, all through the story.

Dennis Prager (36:58)

Can somebody explain to me, because I admit I've wrestled with this as long as I've studied Christianity. In the beginning was the Word. I've never fully understood that, especially if it hearkens back to Genesis. I don't have an issue with it. Please understand, this is truly a question from ignorance. Is the word when God said, let there be light, is that the word that's being referred to?

Jordan Peterson (37:25)

To some extent, yes.

Jonathan Peugeot (37:27)

So the idea is to.

Dennis Prager (37:29)

So what word was at the beginning?

Jonathan Peugeot (37:31)

The idea is to say, I think this is ultimately the Christian understanding is to say that The God speaking is not created. When God speaks. It's not. It's not something else. It is in some ways separate from him, but also God. This is coming to love that Bishop Barron was going to talk about that God speaking is his own being that is speaking into the world.

Jordan Peterson (37:58)

And there's a. You would understand this in the Genesis context is that there's an insistence on something like the primacy of the process that extracts the order that's good out of potential and chaos. And that's the Word. And the Christian insistence is that Christ embodies the pattern of loving sacrifice that characterizes that word. And so that idea is something like the foundation of existence itself is the spirit of loving sacrifice. And that's equivalent. It's the same thing as the Word that extracts the order that's good out of potential at the beginning of time. And one way of understanding that, more prosaically, I would say, is that imagine the order that you establish in your family, if that little microcosm of the walled garden, your family, to the degree that you embody the spirit of loving sacrifice as a father, then you'll create out of the potential. That's your family relationships, the order that's good and it's sacrifice because, well, that's what you do on behalf of your children, right? You. You put them first. Not you. You certainly put them first before your whims. You put what's best for them before their whims, too. And so there's an upward aim in that. And all that upward aim is sacrificial. And then. Well, then we get to the issue of what constitutes the ultimate sacrifice, which is partly what's explored in the Gospel accounts. It's obviously explained Abraham, because Abraham is called upon to make an ultimate sacrifice. But this is an extension in a different direction.

Bishop Robert Barron (39:40)

One thing I would say in response to your question is the Logos being talked about here is the interior word of the Father. So the word of creation is more of a word that goes out. But within the Godhead itself, there's an interior word. The Father has an imago of himself that we call the Son. The Father and Son fall in love with each other. The mutual love is the Holy Spirit. So we would see from the beginning, this very text, there's a Trinitarian overtone, but it's the Word that in a way precedes the word of creation. It's interior to God himself. So the Word was God, as it says.

Douglas Headley (40:11)

May I just add to that in terms of the text, there are two Words here that are very difficult to translate into English. And one, of course, is logos, which can mean, obviously, word, proposition, meaning story. The resonance of that word is very rich. But also the word that's translated as beginning, the ache. Because in the Greek philosophical tradition, that word is used for God. And there are reasons why this should be the case. But the ache is a term which has a very powerful theological meaning within the Greek philosophical tradition. It's the first principle. It's the source of all reality. So one way of looking at this is to say, well, in the source there was the word. That is to say, the trinitarian reading, although that sounds like an observation, absurd Christian introjection of a much later period. You could see that as making perfect sense with just these initial words.

Jordan Peterson (41:28)

John?

John Vervaeke (41:28)

Yeah, I want to pick up on the fact that there's actually, I call them the four Ls about God. There's love, agape, there's logos, there's light and life. And these are all the identity claims that are somehow circling. And I'd like to propose we slow down a little bit, because the familiarity of those terms, to us, I think, is masking something more profound going on here. And if we think about all of these, they're pointing. Well, to me, they're pointing to something very radical here. They're asking us to get out of a normal way in which we think about reality in terms of stable, substantial, independently existing objects. All of these are inherently relational realities. And think about how profound that is to say that ultimate reality is inherently ultimately relational, and that therefore our relationship to it has to be primordially a relational. And this is very, very hard for our way of thinking because we have got into the mode and for all kinds of historical reasons, we don't need of thinking, you know, of that. What there really is are individual things. There's no relationality. This is, of course, normalism. All of that's in our head. And then that gives us a dualism because the mind has the patterns, the world. And there's something going on here in this language. And I want to slow down a little bit and get at Right. These terms are very familiar, and I think that's. I understand while they're there, but their familiarity is actually, in some sense, problematic because I think it's easy. Like these are all nouns, and it's easy to think. We're talking about four things. These are attempts to disclose. And all four of them, I feel they're playing off against each other. The relation between them is as important as any one of them. And all of them are playing off against each other and trying to call us into a way of trying to relate to ultimate reality. And so like when I try, because Jesus makes these claims too, he talks about I'm the light of the world, abundant life, like all of the. And this to me, if I could hear these words again, I could get to a place where I think the idea of. Could have more real relevance to me. And so we live in metaphor. Metaphors aren't fast on the parle like we've just begun. But I hope this, you know, this discourse isn't too hard. But I hope we understand it. I hope you see my point. I hope you get what I'm saying. Try and say anything. Right. Metaphor is not an ornament. It is part of the fundamental grammar of our cognition. And these are more than metaphors. These are metaphors that are trying to transcend themselves and they're trying to point. And I'd like to also, I mean, I'd like to try and make sure we're not only paying attention to the text, we're paying attention to what is the mental framing. I'm trying to use a very. That we're bringing to this text. I want this text to challenge me. And I assume that's what everybody is doing here. And so what is our stance, our orientation towards it such that we can be appropriate to it, we can really listen to it very deeply.

Jordan Peterson (45:01)

It seems to me that what John is establishing a radically extending, a radically non materialist axiom. He's trying to identify what the core phenomenon of being is. And it's in this story, it's not material, it's being itself. It's very fundamentally associated, I think, with what modern people would call consciousness, which is a complete opaque mystery in and of itself. Right. John is attempting to characterize the spirit of being itself. And he's making a claim. The claim is it's embodied in Christ. It's the same as the divine principle that generated order at the beginning of time. It's apprehensible, it's foundational, and it's also the fullest expression. This isn't directly in this text, but it emerges. It's the fullest expression of the tradition that's made manifest in the Old Testament, that emerges out of our primordial stories and announces itself as the principle of being itself. And it seems to me irrefutable that the principle of sacrifice is the basis of sophisticated psychological integrity and community. I just can't see how that Cannot be true. And that's being pointed to here as well. Sacrificial love. It's something like that, for sure.

Jonathan Peugeot (46:26)

The light, the life and the word, they are things that make other things exist in the sense that light is that which makes things seen, life is that which makes things move. And word is meaning that makes things happen. And so you can see that the analogies that John is putting together are there to say, like, if you don't understand what the word logos is, then light will bring you a little further. And if you don't know what light is, then life will bring you a little further. And like you said, it's not that one of those is actually describing anything, is that all of them playing with each other are pointing you to the mystery of the notion that there are. That there are invisible movers that make things move or make things happen, make things exist.

John Vervaeke (47:11)

I think that's helpful. But what I'm saying is, like, think about what we're saying here. Imagine going into a room of physicists and saying, ultimate reality is love, light, logos, life. Right? They're going to look at you and they'll either. Well, that's very nice. It's a platitude and they don't really believe it. Right.

Jordan Peterson (47:30)

But they actually live in their life.

James Orr (47:32)

They should get it.

John Vervaeke (47:32)

But that's the point I want to make. But these things are not. They're not out there metaphors. You can't do science without these principles of intelligibility. Right. And so I'm trying to wake us back up to John's not making a scientific claim. I'm not saying that that's ridiculous. But he's not saying something that's irrelevant to the scientific worldview.

James Orr (47:59)

He's making a meta. Scientific claim.

John Vervaeke (48:01)

Yes.

Jordan Peterson (48:01)

Right.

John Vervaeke (48:02)

Thanks, James. That's exactly. And also this can be easily trivialized. That's my concern here. This can be. Oh, yes, that's very nice. Light. Yeah, light Love. Oh, we like love. Right. Imagine proposing that relationality is that from which things emerge, rather than things are that from which relations emerge.

Bishop Robert Barron (48:28)

As I jump in, I completely agree with what you're saying. And you're very close to Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict xvi. He said trinitarian doctrine turned upside down the classical view. It said, substance is primordial, relationship is accidental. Just the opposite. Ultimate reality is a relationship. Hence the importance of. In the beginning was the Word, and the word was God, and take the next step. Aquinas says this, that a creature is. He says, quaedam relatio it's a kind of relationship to the Creator. It has to be. If it's coming into being every moment from nothing, the creature is a relationship, then I'd link it to Jesus ethical teaching. Why do you love even your enemies? Because it's not so much substance against substance, but all of us are, whether we like it or not, connected to each other through God. So I think that's really an absolutely right intuition and it's the metaphysics of this opening line.

Greg Hurwitz (49:19)

I think it dovetails too in within space and time. It's very interesting. Douglas, you said that the word for beginning is God, right? And so this goes into John, you know, the discussion of, well, what is a cup, right? A cup is. It's designed for a certain purpose. It is also the purpose and the end of it is also what it's intended to be. And so there's a circularity too in God was the Word, and the Word was with God, and, and the Word was God that temporally this is that same fractal thing that's also being expanded across time and space, that the meaning is embedded in the object as it exists. What its use is and what its end is are all simultaneous. I think that's a connection back to some of your thinking.

Douglas Headley (50:03)

The other interesting aspect about that passage as well is that what we read as in the beginning is using another very important word in Greek philosophy. And that word is the which means beginning, which means source principle. And that usage is also very interesting. So in ancient Greek and the philosophical tradition, tradition, the word God is not. So theos or theos is not used for the first principle. The word that is used is this word ache. So the fact that we start off this prologue with these terms which resonate with profound metaphysical questions, is I think of profound significance.

Jordan Peterson (51:09)

You made a comment about this, James. It was you. About this being a meta scientific claim. And so I want to add a couple of things to that. So I watched Richard Dawkins yesterday talk about his existence as a cultural Christian. And he's also. He's not just a cultural Christian ethically, he's a cultural Christian scientifically because the scientific program itself, which is a very particular sort of program and only emerged in the context of a Judeo Christian society. And that wasn't accidental. It makes a bunch. It is predicated on a variety of meta scientific claims. One is that the logos characterizes the cosmos, which means it's intelligible. Also that that intelligibility is good because otherwise the scientists studying the intelligibility of the cosmos could be a terribly destructive force, which is of course something that we're afraid of and is also true if the aim of the scientist isn't proper. Right. And that, and that there it is possible for us to exist in a relationship with the cosmos such that its intelligibility will reveal itself to us if we participate in that investigation. Both in the spirit of truth, which is core to the scientific enterprise, but also in relationship to our upward aim. Because scientists don't ever have to say we're conducting this research to further the good. That's just axiomatic. But the reason it's axiomatic is because it's nested in this underlying ethos. You can easily imagine a science that serves totalitarian claims. I don't think it would last long as a science because it would eat itself. But we've certainly seen that enterprise perverted in directions that take it away from what it is and, and what it has to be nested in in order to be genuine science and to serve psyche and society.

Douglas Headley (52:58)

The most incomprehensible fact of the universe is its comprehensibility. That's the Einsteinian thought.

Bishop Robert Barron (53:05)

The other thing you need is that the world is not God. So the world has to be intelligible for science to get off the ground. But also it can't be God. If it's God, you're going to worship it or you'll keep it at a distance. If it's not God, you know, you can experiment, you're going to analyze and so on. And both those are contained here. It's radically intelligible and it's not God. It's been made by God. I think those two things have got to be in place for the scientists to emerge.

Jordan Peterson (53:26)

Right, right. That's an interesting point. The idea that you can't be scientific if you worship nature. We're actually seeing that played out at the academy now, because as the academy decolonizes, there are claims by the decolonizers that the scientific enterprise itself violates the sacred.

James Orr (53:43)

Well, this is what's so interesting. From the 19th century onwards up until relatively recently, maybe 10 years ago, you know, the standard discussion on campuses that you'd see a Christian union put on would be religion and science. How are they compatible? How do you reconcile the two when it's quite clear that the paradigm now it's really the hard boiled secularist or the heart, the hyper progressive who is struggling to reconcile the constructive view of reality to the discovered intelligibility of the natural world. So we've seen a huge change here, and I think it unsettles the old materialist paradigm. I think it's. And I think even I defer to John here. But if you talk to really cutting edge physicists, they'll be the first to say that matter is a lot more complicated and mysterious than it used to be. And we're starting to see now that structure, that relationality, the mapping of relationality through structure has a lot more heuristic power within the hard sciences than the old sticks and balls physics that you used to learn at school.

John Vervaeke (54:50)

I just came from such a conference around Imilgirkhorst work, and there was a physicist there. And what the science is. At the bottom you're getting pure relationality, right? And at the top with relativity, you have pure relationality. And then the scientists are driven by this thing that they can't justify scientifically. But somehow the two theories have to be integrated. They have to be one. And. And they've been struggling with this for like 50 years. I think part of the problem is they're still bound in a kind of substance metaphysics, even though they're wrestling with this more of a Neoplatonic understanding of reality. Go ahead.

Greg Hurwitz (55:23)

Well, we see also this unconscious porting over of nature worship, that nature's elevated. It's the Rousseauian ideal where nature is elevated above man, right. So it gets out of place if you don't have that separation necessary. And it's almost this porting over of a notion of original sin that elevates it, that we have in some way that makes us inferior to the thing to be worshipped. If it's not differentiated from God, then we worship nature and hold it higher than us.

Jonathan Peugeot (55:49)

And this, I think, is like the first moving into this crazy proposition, which is that this fellow Jesus of Nazareth, that's where it all comes together. But at least at the outset, what we can perceive is that this union, the place where this comes together is in man. Right. Even if we don't come to the person of Jesus yet, we can understand that if we. The capacity, the consciousness, human consciousness in the world that we know is the locus through which all these vectors join together.

John Vervaeke (56:23)

Yeah, well, that's what I wanted to say. I mean, I'm not making any trespass on the doctrine of the Incarnation, but I was trying to say, look, these things are incarnated in us. They are not just things we're referring.

Jordan Peterson (56:34)

To out in the world.

John Vervaeke (56:35)

They're a body we understand. We live like. It's almost like what Paul says in acts in these we live and move and have our being, we are participating in them.

Jonathan Peugeot (56:45)

But right here it says, right, right. In the text it says, but as many as received him to them gave he the power to become sons of God.

Jordan Peterson (56:53)

Right.

Jonathan Peugeot (56:53)

And so like we'll see how this plays out in the story. But you know that this is already hinted at, right? That this is our role, that this is the role that humans play are to become sons of God, to become the place where this all of the invisible pattern, love, relationality, all that come together into this anchor. So are you saying then that mediates.

Douglas Headley (57:16)

That the microcosm, macrocosm structure is both significant and anthropologically and in terms of the theology of the incarnation?

Jonathan Peugeot (57:28)

Of course, of course.

James Orr (57:29)

If you had to pick any kind of being in which these patterns of intelligibility could be united, just as a purely secular matter, what kind of being are you going to choose if not human beings?

John Vervaeke (57:41)

Again, this is a cutting edge scientific idea. The idea that there's a deep continuity between how life works and how mind works and we can talk about whatever spirit is. How spirit. This is what people are now talking about. They're taking it seriously. Right. And they should, because we've hit this wall in our ontology in which science is making a picture of everything except the scientist, the living scientist who does science. That person doesn't fit in that ontology. That's a whole. Right. And we have to invert our epistemology and our ontology so that we can be proper place, we can find a proper home within that. Again, and I'm trying to, as a non Christian, I'm trying to see how this text can be relevant to that challenge. I'm skeptical. Not in the modern sense, I'm skeptical. In the ancient sense, skeptical means inquirer. I'm Socratic, I'm open. I want to learn and hear. There's an opportunity here. Because of the diversity of voices. I have a sense of responsibility as a challenge to speak on behalf of the nones, the N O N E Ss, many people who are aware as they come to my work, they're aware that there's something profoundly wrong. There's a meeting crisis going on, but they do not find an open sense of home. Not that anybody's rejecting them, but they just don't see the established institutions of the legacy religions, the axial religions, as viable for them.

Jordan Peterson (59:17)

Okay, so I'm going to move us now to the first biographical detail, let's say out of the realm of high metaphysics and to the story of Zechariah. And so this is the announcement of the impending birth of John the Baptist. And this is really where Christ's story starts. On the biographical side, it doesn't start with Christ himself in the Gospels. It starts with John the Baptist, who's an interesting and complicated figure assimilated by Jesus himself, to Elijah, who is the prophet of conscience, I would say above all. And also, by the way, the figure in the Old Testament who brings the worship of nature to a halt. And so I'm going to read this. This is the Annunciation to Zechariah one day. This is John the Baptist's father one day, when Zechariah's group was on duty and he was serving as a priest before God, he was chosen.

Dennis Prager (60:13)

What verse?

Jonathan Peugeot (60:14)

Luke.

Jordan Peterson (60:14)

Beginning of Luke. Luke 1:5,25. I'm hoping that's where it is. I'm using the single Gospels, by the way, in this journey forward.

Jonathan Peugeot (60:24)

So it's important to know that when Jordan is reading the Gospel text, he's not actually reading from a gospel, but it's a kind of compilation of different gospels. So sometimes it starts in one gospel and then it cuts to another. And so for people that know the Gospels really well, this might be a very frustrating experience. I know even for us at the table, it is a little bit of a frustrating experience. We, I think most of the people that are Christian around the table would have liked us to either pick one gospel or, you know, following gospel and then supplement with another. But Jordan is really adamant on going to the single gospel. And so, you know, I mean, in the end, what's important is we do get through the story of Jesus and, you know, we get through the major events and the major teaching of Jesus. But even at the table, if. I don't know if the camera picks it up, but sometimes we're bewildered because we don't know. We're like flipping through the Bible and we don't know where we are, you know. And so. So, yes, that's important to understand because even for the viewer while you're watching it, you'll have a little bit of that experience yourself.

Jordan Peterson (61:22)

One day when Zechariah's group was on duty and he was serving as a priest before God, he was chosen by lot, randomly, according to the custom among the priests, to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. At the time for this burning, all the assembled worshippers were praying outside. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah, standing on the right hand side of the incense altar. Zechariah was shaken when he saw the angel, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said, do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John, and you shall have joy and gladness. And many will rejoice that he was born. For he will be great in the eyes of the Lord, and he shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel back to the Lord their God. He will go as a forerunner before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous and to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. So Elijah calls the Israelites back to conscience. John the Baptist is the forerunner and the announcer of Christ. This is the announcement of his conception and birth. And so what do we make of John the Baptist? Why is it necessary? Greg, maybe you can start us off here. Why do you think it's necessary in the narrative flow of things for there to be an unroller of the red carpet, let's say, for someone to make the way ready.

Greg Hurwitz (62:56)

It's almost like the association with conscience, that conscience is what has to lead the way first to prepare the people to receive Jesus. Because if he. If he just arrives without there being. So first of all, I mean, in a dramatic sense, right? Every introduction for dramatic effect. And I know that we're talking about this on different levels, but for the theatrical, the introduction of a character is always key. I mean, you think about in Casablanca, the number of times that Rhek is mentioned before his back is turned in a chair and you see the cigarette smoke and he turns around dramatically. And I'm not implying this is merely dramatically. You want to set the stage for the arrival of a major character. And I think you have a culture in which the stage must be set before his arrival.

Jordan Peterson (63:42)

Okay, so you're making two points. One is that one's a psychological point or a theological point, which is that it might be that it's conscience that alerts us when our sacrifices are insufficient, or something like that. It's conscious that conscience that alerts us to the necessity for a higher form of sacrifice than what we're currently performing. And so conscience is continually the forerunner of the sacred. But then there's a dramatic level here, too, where you need to prepare the ground for the introduction of a major character.

Greg Hurwitz (64:14)

Yeah, and we do this all the time, dramatically. You have an opening act for a concert. You have somebody. An overture. Yeah, you have an overture. You have. If there's a late night show, they'll have somebody warm up the crowd. As a comedian, right. You have to set the stage.

Jonathan Peugeot (64:29)

You have to show how bad the situation is before the hero comes in. And that's one of the things that John the Baptist does. He says, you know, it's like the ax is at the root of the tree, folks, this is it. Things are dire. Everything, you know, you need to repent because the fire is coming, you know, and so everything is in a very dire state, you know, before the main character comes into.

James Orr (64:49)

It's worth making the point. I mean, Luke is seen as effectively a Greek physician having a Greek mindset. He refers back to the Old Testament a little bit less often, say, certainly, than Matthew. But it's worth saying that the reference to Elijah is. Seems to be a fulfilment of the last two verses of our Old Testament, as it were, in Malachi, which. This is Malachi 4, 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. So it's a clear. The sense is that he's fulfilling. That John is fulfilling something, that he's preparing the way for a sequence of events that is going to be a fulfillment of what is hinted at in Malachi in the Old Testament.

Greg Hurwitz (65:45)

And the precursor to Elijah in certain regards is Enoch right before the flood. The other thing I was thinking is that there's these different sides, as we're discussing, of what Jesus is. And he also is a man, because if he's not a man, then the story doesn't make sense. And so it comes along to say, why is Jesus baptized? That's a very unusual question. But if there's not a human being who predates him with some moral authority, who represents the voice of conscience, then he can't be baptized as a man. He just comes down with a full glory and righteousness and fear of God.

Jordan Peterson (66:19)

Well, that touches on something. Peugeot, maybe you can speak to this. There's a deep mystery there, because the story of Christ doesn't really get going, apart from some description of birth and youth, which we'll cover until the baptism. And so the question immediately arises, well, if Christ is the Son of God from birth? Why the necessity of the baptism? What does the baptism represent? Why is John a Baptist? What does it mean for him to be a Baptist? And what does baptism signify? Now, there's a lot of work on the anthropology of religion that's focused on this issue. And it's very frequently the case across cultures, anthropologically distributed, that men in particular must undergo a initiation ceremony which generally bears some symbolic relationship to the modern Judeo Christian concept of baptism before they can adopt their full individuality. And it's often associated with something like a passage or re. Immersion into the sacred waters or into the chaos. And it's a dissolution into chaos and then a restructuring. Right. That's the. That's the. That would be the neurophysiological take on it.

Jonathan Peugeot (67:30)

Well, so Elijah. So there in Elijah, Elijah in St. John, there are many things that are going on. I think the best way to understand is that he's there to kind of end the world. So you imagine there's Christ is the new beginning, is a new world, new creation, and then he's there to end that world, and then a new beginning will come. And, you know, in the story of Elijah, it's the crossing of the Jordan. That's where that happens, right? Elijah crosses the Jordan, then he's taken up, you know, and then Elisha receives the spirit, Elijah. And that is also the crossing of the Red Sea. It's the crossing of the Jordan when they enter into Jericho. There's all these images of the crossing of the water, this going down, this undoing of the world. It's the flood itself. Enoch goes up before the flood, this undoing of the world before the new world is born. And so in St. John, you see that happening. You see it also in his Annunciation, which is that it's a recapitulation of all the women of the Old Testament, of the barren women. So you have these old women that haven't had children, this kind of fallen world that God has to nonetheless give grace to. So to perpetuate it. Even though it's fallen and it's broken, that's the end of the world. And the annunciation to Elizabeth, to Zechariah and Elizabeth and the annunciation to Mary are like the end and the beginning. Mary is the virgin waters. She's the. And the Spirit of God descends on her, like in Genesis 1, where the Spirit is above the waters. So you can see that it's all of this relationship between the baptism, between the birth, the annunciation to Mary, the annunciation to Elizabeth, are showing the end of a world and the beginning of a new world that is happening. And it's layered. Like, it's layered in all these different ways.

Bishop Robert Barron (69:15)

Can I just add something to that? Because that's, I think, the right framework. And I'd add the temple perspective, the very fact he's introduced as the son of a. His mother's from a priestly clan. So the question is, why isn't John the Baptist in the temple? And part of it, I think, is there's a really pronouncing of judgment on the temple. He's proposing a kind of new temple out in the desert, a new washing. There are people seeking forgiveness of sins, not in the temple, but from him. And so. And then his announcement in the Gospel of John when Jesus comes is, behold the Lamb of God.

Jordan Peterson (69:48)

Behold. So he's a radical. Is he doing the same thing, do you think, with the temple that Moses is doing after the Israelites leave God with the golden calf and he sets up the tabernacle outside the center of the community? Is that associated with Jonathan's claim that John the Baptist is signifying the end of the old world?

Bishop Robert Barron (70:10)

Part of the Messianic expectation was the renewal of the temple, right? So he would gather the nations, he would reign as Lord, and he would renew the temple. So I think it's the beginning of a temple renewal program. And then when Jesus comes, he goes, well, here's the Lamb of God. Here's the one who's meant to be sacrificed in the true temple. Then, of course, Jesus picks that up with, you know, I will tear this place down in three days, rebuild it, referring to the temple of his body. So I think that's the liminal thing, too. He's the end of the old temple, the beginning of the new.

James Orr (70:38)

If you look at John 1:14, it says, and the word became flesh and tabernacled. Amongst tabernacle, the word there is the verb from skene, which is the tabernacle, which is the word that the Greek translators of the Old Testament used of the tabernacle.

Greg Hurwitz (70:55)

And the movement to the desert, to the river Jordan is a movement from the strictures of law and architecture and ritual, right? It's all a movement out to take it out into it.

Jonathan Peugeot (71:09)

But he's also, I mean, John, like from the Christian interpretation, John is also telling people, Jerusalem is going to be destroyed. Like, he's saying, get ready, this is over. And so when Jesus, when Joshua crosses the Jordan, this time, it's not Jericho that's going to be destroyed. It Is Jerusalem that is going to be destroyed? Like, the imagery is really prescient.

John Vervaeke (71:28)

Moving away from ritual. I mean, John's engaging in a ritual baptism. What do you mean?

Greg Hurwitz (71:33)

Oh, I mean from the conventional ones in the temple. Why is he not in the temple? Why is he in the desert? Why is he committing, you know, baptism? His movement is out from the convention. Like you were asking, why isn't he in the temple, given his background? So he's moving out into nature and into.

Jordan Peterson (71:49)

Is it a radical archaism?

John Vervaeke (71:52)

No, what I'm asking, I mean.

Greg Hurwitz (71:54)

I mean, the old ritual, perhaps I.

Bishop Robert Barron (71:56)

Should say, yeah, it's a new ritual.

John Vervaeke (72:00)

That's an astonishing thing to me. Like, if I wanted to, hey, you know what I've done? I've set up a new ritual who's. Like, that's just. Like, that's just a powerful thing.

Douglas Headley (72:09)

But it's not also.

Jonathan Peugeot (72:11)

It's recapitulation. No, it's not completely of the Red Sea, across the Jordan of Elisha's sending for healing in the Jordan. Like, it's not like he's making it up with his own. Basically taking all of this and recapitulating.

Greg Hurwitz (72:24)

But that's the same thing of the entire. That's where it's fractal. That's what Jesus does for, you know, Exodus, for Genesis. I mean, what we're seeing is everything is a relation and a fulfillment of.

John Vervaeke (72:33)

The previous rituals, but it is new. It's a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Like, I don't see that anywhere else. Can I ask this question for Christians? What does that mean to you to have somebody proposing a ritual that's supposed to give the forgiveness of sins before Jesus has even appeared?

Jordan Peterson (72:52)

So what happens, the way I understand the baptismal event, let's say, if we can jump to that momentarily, is that it recapitulates the time. At the beginning of time, you have the water, which is the tohu va bohu, right? I would say that's the deep pool of possibility. And you have the spirit descend, that sets on the water, and that's a recapitulation of the initial state. You can think about that as a neurophysiological transformation writ large. Right? It's the dissolution of the old personality, the reissantiation of the. Of the process that brings order out of chaos and the generation of a new order. And so. And it's new in the sense that you said, but it's very, very archaic. The baptismal idea is unbelievably old, right? That initiatory Idea tens of thousands of years old.

Jonathan Peugeot (73:43)

But that is the forgiveness of sins.

John Vervaeke (73:45)

Right, but. Right, because I wasn't talking about the baptism by John of Jesus, I think, and even the ritual baptism. I appreciate what you're saying about its psychospiritual capacities for transformation. I'm trying to. Like, this seems to be. I'm not denying the continuity, but there's an innovation here. And then I'm asking a question, looking sort of from the outside, this seems problematic. How is this the forgiveness of sins?

Jordan Peterson (74:12)

Yeah.

Jonathan Peugeot (74:12)

Well, especially the Red Sea is already a forgiveness of sins because the Egyptians remain in the water. Right. The image is already there. Right. When did Israelites cross the Red Sea? The Egyptians remain in the water and the Israelites come out at the end.

Greg Hurwitz (74:29)

It's a willingness to die, so it's.

Jordan Peterson (74:31)

The death of the old tyranny.

Dennis Prager (74:32)

Why was that forgiveness of sin? I didn't follow that.

Jonathan Peugeot (74:35)

So if you understand transgression as the thing that doesn't fit, as the thing that isn't towards the purpose, if we get away from just the simple moral, this is good, this is bad. If we understand that what sin is is that which is not aimed towards the purpose. So you have things that step out of the purpose. That is what the drowning of the Egyptian is. Because they are not moving towards the end.

Jordan Peterson (74:56)

They're not forgiven.

Jonathan Peugeot (74:57)

They're not moving towards sin.

John Vervaeke (74:58)

Right?

Dennis Prager (74:58)

They're not forgiven.

Jordan Peterson (74:59)

No, they're not forgiven. No, no. But the people who pass through are.

Dennis Prager (75:02)

Well, forgive me.

Jonathan Peugeot (75:03)

So you have Egyptians inside.

Dennis Prager (75:04)

They're saved, but they're not forgiven. I don't.

Jordan Peterson (75:07)

They're forgiven enough.

Dennis Prager (75:08)

So they don't have Jews on the other side of the sea being forgiven for anything, because that's not what's said. They were just saved from the death of the Egyptian army.

Jordan Peterson (75:20)

Well, my sense is that they're comparatively forgiven because the Israelites and the Egyptians both have to face the chaos of the Red Sea. But the Egyptians are so tyrannical and so bent beyond redemption that that flood of chaos destroys them. Now, that doesn't mean the Israelites are finally saved, but they at least managed to pass through the chaos alive. And so there's an and what? They establish themselves as a new people on the opposite shore. Right. There is a new beginning there. And that doesn't necessarily signify that they've been washed clean by the chaotic Red Sea, but it does mean that the tyranny that held them back has been demolished by the chaos.

Jonathan Peugeot (76:14)

Well, they've been washed clean of the Egyptian.

James Orr (76:16)

Right.

Jordan Peterson (76:16)

They've been washed. That's a good idea of Egypt.

Greg Hurwitz (76:18)

And if you view them as one organism in a way, and also to be specific is the same thing as to be forgiven from sin in a way. So they're saved.

James Orr (76:26)

Yeah, I mean, I'm not. I can't find the verse that says that John intended by baptism the efficacious sort of salvation of people who are being baptized. And he says, at various points, he says, he actually draws a distinction. So Matthew says, this is what, 3, 11. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. I mean, you're repenting. And as an external mark of your having repented, I take it to mean I baptize you. But he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I'm not worthy to untie. Then in John, this is in. Let's have a look. This is at the beginning of the opening chapter. He, you know, he says, why you? He's asked, why are you baptizing if you're not the Christ? And he says, well, I'm baptizing you with water, but there's somebody standing among you who you don't know. So it's a kind of proleptic polemic.

Douglas Headley (77:19)

Is the apocalyptic eschatological context and one might say mood, isn't it? So maybe this fits in with your setting the scene.

James Orr (77:28)

Yeah.

Douglas Headley (77:29)

And this is a period when we know that there were these various groups emerging in this Jewish Hebraic context.

James Orr (77:38)

It's a symbolic prefiguring of.

Jordan Peterson (77:41)

And it's insufficient. It's only partial. That's right. But we do. There are psychological investigators, investigations that show, for example, that if people take a bath or a shower, they feel they declare themselves more morally pure.

Dennis Prager (77:54)

That's what women do after they're raped. It's a very powerful imagery.

Jordan Peterson (77:58)

Right. And it's a removal of contamination, but it's not as profound a removal as could conceivably be imagined. So, okay, so now for the Christians, again, why does Christ require a baptism?

Jonathan Peugeot (78:12)

He says he doesn't.

Bishop Robert Barron (78:13)

Can I try to answer John's question about baptism? I think it draws a lot of the themes together. Our sins are forgiven in the cross of Jesus. They're forgiven in that great act. And when the soldier pierces aside, out comes blood and water. And the church fathers read that as the blood of the Eucharist, but the water of baptism. And they further linked it to Ezekiel's great prophecy that, you know, the Shekinah of the Lord had left the temple, and it'll come back someday. And when it does, that's when water flows forth from its side for the renewal of the world and of the human heart and all that. And I think that's how they read it is from the side of the renewed temple. So when John the Baptist, this priestly figure, says, behold, there's the Lamb of God, there's the one who will be sacrificed, and whose very body is the new temple. That's what the baptismal water symbolizes. Is the water coming from the redemptive act of Christ on the cross. I bring all those themes together.

Jordan Peterson (79:09)

So is it is the baptism. The baptism seems to precipitate two events. One is the sojourn in the desert, and one is the onset of the ministry. So what's your reading? And, Bishop Barron, I'd like to hear your.

Jonathan Peugeot (79:22)

Well, in Matthew, it's amazing, because in Matthew, you really have this repetition of Exodus, you know, So, I mean, we'll get to it when we talk about it. But Christ is chased into Egypt, you know, to flee his brother. And then he comes back. When he comes back, he crosses the sea, he's baptized, then he goes to be tempted into the desert, and then he goes up the mountain to give the new law. That's where he does the Sermon of the Mount. And so that is really. The Christians really understand the baptism as.

James Orr (79:54)

This 40 days in the wilderness, 40 years in the wilderness.

Jonathan Peugeot (79:57)

So when you see Christ going in the water, it's a repetition of Genesis 1. It's, he goes down into the water, and then it says, when he comes up, the Spirit came down upon him as a dove. It's not just the Genesis one, it's also the end of the flood. It's the Genesis 1. It's the end of the flood. It's Joshua, you know, it's the Israelites going to the Sinai. It's all of these images of water crossings that are in the Old Testament are recapitulated into this image of regeneration, which is the beginning of a new world. But you could say that that's ritually what it is for us. That is that when we go into the water, we come out new. It is a new birth, a new beginning, like it's being born again, all of that imagery. But Christ says that he's doing it for he doesn't need it.

Bishop Robert Barron (80:45)

Right?

Jonathan Peugeot (80:46)

He's doing it for us. He's doing it to show us what is real about himself.

Bishop Robert Barron (80:51)

Well, that's the scandal of it. So from the beginning, and even scholars today recognize that the Fact that it's in the Gospels is scandalous. Why would Jesus, the Son of God, have to seek a baptism of repentance? So the fact that it's there means that, boy, this really happened. You know, it's one of the stronger arguments, but to Jonathan's point, But how.

Jordan Peterson (81:08)

Do you read that from the human side? I mean, is Christ as a man? Does Christ as a man. He obviously matures. He matures from infant onward. Does Christ as a man reveal his relationship with God more and more deeply as he progresses even to himself?

Bishop Robert Barron (81:27)

He's the icon of the invisible God. Now, what's going on inside his own psychology, his own human psychology is a famously, you know, controverted issue. He grows in wisdom and understanding.

Jordan Peterson (81:36)

Right? It says that. That's right.

Bishop Robert Barron (81:38)

So I think that's pretty fine to say that in his human nature, to use more technical language, sure.

Jordan Peterson (81:42)

He grows well and he does go into the desert and encounter Satan and begin his ministry as a consequence, in his human nature.

Bishop Robert Barron (81:52)

And I think that's part of the baptism is the identification with the sinner. So he stands shoulder to shoulder with sinners in the muddy waters of the Jordan. And anyone walking by would say, oh, there's another one of those sinners. But that's anticipating the cross.

James Orr (82:04)

That's right.

Bishop Robert Barron (82:05)

It becomes sin on the cross.

Greg Hurwitz (82:06)

And that also explains the question of why do we need John the Baptist? Because we need a human being to stand in if. If Jesus is standing in for sinners that he doesn't need but to show us the path. You need another human being with enough authority to baptize him. Right.

Dennis Prager (82:23)

All the Christians at the table correctly, are making clear the references to the Old Testament, specifically the Pentateuch, the Torah. So I have a question which is sort of outside of the province of the Bible study, but it's always puzzled me and maybe you in particular, Maida, because you expressed the fact that you were an evangelist for the faith. I never understood why so many Christian groups will only hand out the New Testament to would be converts.

Bishop Robert Barron (82:56)

Big mistake. Yeah, I agree. One of the earliest fights the church had was against Marcion.

Jonathan Peugeot (83:03)

That's right.

Bishop Robert Barron (83:03)

So the Marcionite heresy that tried to divide the New Testament from the Old and the church by a very deep and correct instinct led by Saint Irenaeus said, no, you cannot understand Jesus apart from the Old Testament completely. So that's a very bad instinct to say, just read the gospel, you'll be fine. You won't get the Gospel apart from.

James Orr (83:21)

The Old Testament, what's interesting is that Marcion not only repudiated the Old Testament, he cut the four Gospels down to one.

Bishop Robert Barron (83:28)

Many parts of the New, which was.

James Orr (83:30)

The one he found most sympathetic and free of kind of Hebrew, the fingerprints of the Old Testament.

Bishop Robert Barron (83:36)

But we still fight when people say, oh, the God of the Old Testament, cruel and violent and all that. I love the God of the New Testament. That's a neo Marcionism. And the Church has got to stand against that just as clearly today.

James Orr (83:47)

Huge problem.

Dennis Prager (83:48)

No, I'm glad this is on record.

Jordan Peterson (83:50)

Yes. Okay, so another very strange occurrence happens. So after the annunciation to. To John's father and mother, we have the Annunciation to Mary. And I'll read that because it's worth going into. I would say in the sixth month of Elizabeth's term, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, a nowhere town, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the lineage of David. This maiden's name was Mary. Gabriel came to her and said, hail, O favored one, the Lord is with thee. Mary was greatly troubled at these words and wondered what this greeting might mean. But the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever. And his kingdom will have no end. Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I have never known a man? And the angel replied, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be holy and he will be called the Son of God. And Mary agrees to that. Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Okay, so I want to unpack a couple of things in that from a psychological perspective, and then I'll let the people who are more biblically oriented take it from there. So the first thing I would. I've got two things to say on that front. The image of mother and child is an ancient image. It predates Christianity. And the reason for that is that, well, any culture that doesn't hold the image of mother and infant sacred is done, because that's the very image of love life, maternal love life, reproduction, continuity, sacrifice, all of that. And so future, I think it's either Mary and the infant or the whore of Babylon. I think those are the directions for women fundamentally. And so there's that from the psychological perspective, is that the sacrificial relationship of mother to infant is core. It's fundamental. Then the next issue is possibly that the very definition of feminine, of female biologically isn't chromosomal difference. Chromosomal difference is a reflection of a more fundamental difference. What female means biologically is that sex, which contributes more to the reproductive process. And so right from fractally, right from the level of sperm and egg upward, the bulk of the reproductive responsibility, especially in its initial phases, is clearly feminine. And so it is as if, at least as if it's mother and God producing child, with the father donating a trifle, a trifle to the process. Now, in Mary's case, that's obviously taken to the ultimate degree, but at minimum, it reflects this underlying biological reality. It's also the case that Mary, embodying, as she does the spirit of motherhood, says yes to the fact of the child. Now, we don't know what Mary's informed of by the angel with regard to the destiny of her child, which is a very brutal and great destiny, but that's the destiny of all children. Right. Is that. And part of the reason we have a birth crisis in the modern world is because women now look at the world. A, they're unwilling to make the sacrifice, and B, they think, who would dare to bring a child into a world such as this? And the answer is, well, we've always brought children into a world of death and malevolence. And there isn't a deeper reflection of fundamental faith in the goodness of being and becoming than the decision a woman takes to throw herself wholeheartedly and without reservation into the relationship with her infant. And that's all, as far as I can tell. That's all packed into this story and more. So that's what I have to say. Biological.

Jonathan Peugeot (88:05)

And we're going to get to the. When she meets Simeon in the temple, then we get the fullness of what you're saying, where Simeon tells her, you know, a sword will also pierce your heart, like you are moving towards sacrifice of your own. It's not only your son that will be sacrificed, but you will also, as.

Bishop Robert Barron (88:22)

She brings the presence of the God of Israel back into the temple, fulfilling Ezekiel.

Dennis Prager (88:28)

In your read of this, this is typical when we read something, and then all of a sudden, after so many times of reading it, something pops up.

Bishop Robert Barron (88:37)

Yeah.

Dennis Prager (88:38)

So I'm sure I may be wrong, but the angel describing to Mary, whom she will give Birth to does not describe him as God. Correct. As a divine being, he will be.

Bishop Robert Barron (88:53)

Great and he'll be called the descendant of David.

Dennis Prager (88:56)

He's the new right. But that's not a divine being.

Bishop Robert Barron (88:58)

Yeah.

Dennis Prager (88:59)

So is that not interesting or worthy of note that this. That Jesus, if indeed is God incarnate, that that would not be stated by. In the description of him by the angel to Mary.

Jordan Peterson (89:18)

Do you think that's. It seems to me arguably that that's implicit in two parts son of the most High, say three parts son of the Most High kingdom will have no end and the intermediation of the Holy Spirit. So there's strong pointers in that direction. And so.

Bishop Robert Barron (89:38)

But you need the whole trajectory of the gospel fully to see it. But. Right.

James Orr (89:41)

There are parallels too. I mean, there's that moment in 2 Samuel where David leaps at the presence, leaps back at the presence of the ark. And some scholars think there's a parallelism here with John the Baptist leaping in the womb. That's a sort of presence that Mary is.

Bishop Robert Barron (89:55)

David stands and the presence of the ark.

James Orr (89:58)

Exactly.

Jonathan Peugeot (89:58)

Yeah. She's being treated as the ark of the covenant in the story because it says that the presence of God will descend upon you. And so the image is that she is the water. The Holy Spirit comes down upon her as the waters creation. But also the presence of God descends upon her as the ark of the covenant. And then that will. Obviously these are. The text is going to tease all of these things out. Right. Because these are things that you always have to remember how crazy what we're saying is it is crazy to say that this man is God. And so the story slowly teases out as we move towards the.

Dennis Prager (90:35)

So it was deliberate on the part of the angel to omit that?

Jonathan Peugeot (90:38)

Well, yeah.

Greg Hurwitz (90:40)

Or to intimate it.

Jonathan Peugeot (90:41)

Yeah, to intimate it.

Greg Hurwitz (90:42)

Because I think so much of this is, you know, there's so much of the gospel is around doubt. You know, it's like, you know, you go back to with Exodus where Moses says, hang on one minute, Aaron, I'm just going up the mountain and just keep things under control. And then immediately out of sight. It's like, you know, he's a calf city. And so it's again and again with the gospels is the all the way through, you know, Peter den, denying Christ three times. I mean, it's all the way through is the doubt and the disbelief even in the face of what is. And so I think that these intimations are also a way of like they sort of naturally build suspense from a narrative perspective, but they also are trying to move along at a pace that human comprehension can possibly keep up with.

Stephen Blackwood (91:23)

If I could just pick up for a second on something, Dr. Peterson, you were saying about motherhood. It's very interesting here, the pattern that is emerging, you know, the angel, an angel comes to both situations to prophesy the birth. And in one sense, you know, pregnancy is one of the great examples of fulfillment of nature. Right. It's the actualization of the potentiality for motherhood. And yet, you know, that fulfillment in both cases is a radical self othering. Both of these sons will die brutal deaths. And so I think what's being indicated here already in a very fundamental sense is the inherently non instrumental character of love itself. And so that you are fulfilled precisely in the transcending of your own fulfillment. And you know, when Jesus says that my kingdom is not of this world, I mean, it seems to me what the scriptures are speaking to us of already here in the announcement of the angels about the pregnancy and birth of the children who will die deaths that are not for themselves, is the radical self othering. That is the nature of self, you might say, the realization of the self in the deepest sense. And you see this, that, this in Christ at the very end, this is mirrored on the cross where he is going to say, as his last act, as you might say, reconstituting that family between, in a sense, between Mary and John. So that the ultimate act of self othering is the principle that is able to bring together some harmony in us and in what is around us.

Greg Hurwitz (93:11)

And I think we're also looking at this tragedy, especially in comparison to, let's say Abraham and Isaac, where his hand is stayed and he gets to keep his son. But the actual end of the Gospel is that the same thing happens with God. He gives his, you know, like in.

Bishop Robert Barron (93:26)

A way, no one stays his hand.

Greg Hurwitz (93:28)

Yeah, it goes all the way through. But then he has his son. And Mary also is reunited with her son.

Douglas Headley (93:34)

And by the way, just on Dennis point, I think actually it's fairly, fairly clear that, you know, this is the power of the highest. And that's a literal, very literal translation. And also this is hagion, it's the holy thing. And then the, it is the Son of God. So I think actually the, just to answer Dennis, this is not any human being.

Jordan Peterson (94:10)

This is, you see it more clearly in the announcements of Joseph, right. In Matthew 1:18. So let's refer to that again. I'll read through that and then we'll go to the Birth of Christ. So this is the Annunciation after Mary has been betrothed to Joseph. But before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her into public disgrace, resolved to send her away quietly. But as he considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for the child within her is conceived of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son. You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive, shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God is with us. That's a bit clearer. Now, I'm going to speak about that biologically, too. And I think the easiest explanation on the biological side is that of paternal uncertainty. And so in any relationship between a man and a woman, there is always. Until DNA testing became possible. But there's always an element of paternal uncertainty. And one of the things that a man has to contend with when his wife is pregnant is that paternal uncertainty and his willingness to act in good faith is, of course, dependent on the integrity of the marriage. But it's that willingness to act in good faith that actually makes for the solidity of the family. That's a terrible place for doubt to emerge. And so, at minimum, that's part of what's happening in that story. And so I'll turn. Unless anybody has a comment on that, I'll turn to the birth.

John Vervaeke (95:57)

Well, I just wanted to pick up on what Dennis said, though. I mean, I'm a little bit hesitant of going from the title of Son of God immediately, because Son of God is used of other figures, even figures like the Kings. Kings in the Old Testament. And secondly, if this story is so central, why is it absent from Mark? And why does Paul never talk about it? That's problematic. I mean, if it's such a central thing that you're claiming it is, Mark doesn't even consider it, and Paul never refers to it.

Jonathan Peugeot (96:27)

People write towards purposes. And so the. There are different reasons why you would include it and different reasons why you would exclude it. I mean, in the Gospels, it says. I think it's at the end of the Gospel of John where it says, you know, all the books of the world cannot be contained. The story of Jesus. And so if we. If we ask why is this person saying this detail and why this other.

James Orr (96:49)

Person not saying this detail, do you mean defined sonship? The claim that Jesus is son of.

Greg Hurwitz (96:53)

God is, I think, in a lot of ways, and we've discussed this a little bit, the uncertainty or the lack of consistency across the stories actually makes them more believable.

Dennis Prager (97:04)

I agree with you.

Greg Hurwitz (97:05)

And so if we were to reconstitute something from historical memory and every detail lines up, I mean, think about like a police investigation, right?

Dennis Prager (97:14)

The exact same story, right?

Greg Hurwitz (97:15)

A bunch of guys in a heist, and they have all the details in place, you're not gonna believe them. And so part of this is it's a historical reconstitution, and memory works in different ways, story works in different ways. People are writing to different aims.

Bishop Robert Barron (97:27)

They had access to different sources. Maybe.

Jordan Peterson (97:29)

Yeah, it's a good criticism, John. But one of the things that's interesting because your criticism is if it's so central, why isn't it replicated? And people have addressed that. But interestingly, despite the fact that it's not replicated, it's also become a really fundamental part of the culture of Christianity. Right? Because there's nothing in many ways that people know more about Christ's life than the birth. The birth. Right. And so it does seem to speak to something that's very, very deep, despite the fact that those other gospels also, they say very little about Christ at all until. Well, until the ministries start. And so I think it's also carried.

Greg Hurwitz (98:08)

Through, though, inherently in the other gospels, because if Jesus is Jesus, it's not like he has another father. Meaning by dint of how the characters move and progress in the other gospels, this is the only conclusion of how the birth could have happened, or else it would be misaligned.

John Vervaeke (98:24)

I don't know if I agree with that. I mean, he has brothers and sisters, and there's no indication that they're considered half brothers or half sisters.

James Orr (98:32)

Well, no, the Greek. I think the Greek is Adelphos. Adelpha. I mean, that could mean. It could mean cousins and is thought to mean cousins as well. And he's referred to as the son of Mary, which is very old, very rare, and odd that the patronymic shouldn't be used. So I think there's quite a strong case for.

Jordan Peterson (98:50)

By the way, your point is that if Christ is God, then his patrimony is God.

Greg Hurwitz (98:56)

Right?

Jordan Peterson (98:57)

And that's implicit in the other stories.

James Orr (98:58)

Right.

Greg Hurwitz (98:58)

And if it's not, the other gospels would have something to say about it or everything wouldn't proceed and everybody around it wouldn't proceed as if that were the case.

James Orr (99:07)

I mean, we've got to remember that. Okay, maybe the divine sonship theme isn't central in Mark, but I think in all the synoptics, Matthew, Mark and Luke, at the moment, both are baptism and transfiguration. You have the divine voice saying, behold, this is my son. This is my beloved son.

Dennis Prager (99:25)

I'd like to answer my own question, which is classic Jewish way of learning. So it occurs to me it's actually very rare, real. He's speaking to a Jewish woman. And the whole context is Jewish. The Lord God shall give him unto the throne of his father David. He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. It is all Jewish references. If he'd have said. If the angel had said to Mary, I want you to know you're giving birth to God, she would have thought it was a hallucination or she had gone mad. This made perfect sense to her. And again, the Jewish context is so central. And that's why I raised my point about only giving out the New Testament.

Bishop Robert Barron (100:12)

Yeah. 2nd Samuel 7.

Jordan Peterson (100:14)

So partly what you're referring to there, perhaps it's an analog of what we pointed to before, is like, well, how much can you spring on one person at once?

Dennis Prager (100:24)

Yes.

Jordan Peterson (100:25)

Right. Okay.

Jonathan Peugeot (100:26)

Because you see that. I mean, in the entire rest of the Gospel, you'll have Christ saying, okay, don't say this, don't say this. Don't say messy. This is not like, nobody's ready for this yet. Wait, wait, wait. And then as things start to become clear, then the message gets out.

Greg Hurwitz (100:42)

It's tied in some ways, too, with him refusing to perform carnival tricks when asked. Right. I'm not going to show proof whether it's to Satan, whether it's to others. I'm not going to perform. Like, these things need to progress in their own time.

Jordan Peterson (100:56)

That's a very important story to me.

Bishop Robert Barron (100:58)

What's so beautiful in that story? Many things. But that Mary's the new Eve. So another Old Testament reference where Eve grasps the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I'm going to grab this for myself and make it my own. Mary, the handmaid of the Lord, Be it done to me according to your word. And that allows the divine to flow through her in this powerful way. So that's the way church fathers write this. She's the new God.

Jordan Peterson (101:18)

She's not putting herself at the center of creation.

Bishop Robert Barron (101:20)

And the Latin writers write. The Latin writers love doing the Ave of the angel. Hail Mary reverses The Eva of Eve. And it's just a beautiful motif of how the divine flows through the lack of pride. Right.

Jordan Peterson (101:33)

Lack of presumption.

James Orr (101:34)

Mary, pride, Christmas.

Jordan Peterson (101:36)

Right. Well, women in the throes of pregnancy do have to throw themselves over to a process that's really outside of them in a way that men can't understand. I'm going to read the birth of Jesus and the angels proclamation to the shepherds. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way in those days. A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to be enrolled each to his own city. And Joseph went up from Galilee out of the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was great with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn then. Luke 2, 8, 20. In the same region, there were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them. And they were very afraid. But the angel said to them, be not afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord. And this is how you shall know him. You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. All right, so there's a variety of things happening there. I'll unpack them briefly and then we can discuss them. So the first is that Christ is born under the dominion of the state. That's the point of the census and the forced movement of people. The state has a tyrannical element. Every person, even the Savior of the world, is born into a situation where they have to contend with the background tyranny of the state. And then the next part is that.

Jonathan Peugeot (103:36)

And Augustus is the first God Emperor. It's important to understand.

Jordan Peterson (103:39)

Right, Right. So that's amplified that fact. Right. Because the Roman state is also degenerating towards a theocracy. Right.

Bishop Robert Barron (103:46)

Isn't he called we ostute because he's the son of Julius Caesar, the son of the God, Exactly.

James Orr (103:52)

Right. So he would be on all the coins, you'd have Filios divi. And in the Greek speaking part of the world where the Roman imperial cult, the cult of the emperor was very, very strong, that's the language that would be used.

Jordan Peterson (104:04)

So we have the genuine God being born at a time when there's a false God who's emerged in the tyrannical state. Classic. That's a classic hero story. Okay, so who's the true God here? Well, it's a babe. Right, so is that every human baby with the potential to be, to participate in the redemption of the world born in a very lowly place? Well, that's a biological reality as well, because all human infants are incredibly threatened. Right. Our infants are extremely dependent. They're very, very vulnerable. We're born under the tyranny of the state. We're born in relationship to nature and even low nature. And that's associated with the manger. So it's the emergence of the highest in the lowest as a counter position to the false highest. That's Augustus. And then that's reiterated to some degree with the proclamation to the shepherds. It's like, well, who gets wind of this? Well, it's not the people of the court, it's the shepherds. Right, and the shepherds are an interesting choice too, because of course, shepherds, there's a kinship between the shepherd and the prophet all the way through the Old Testament. And that imagery is replicated continually in the New Testament. And shepherds take care of the vulnerable. That's essentially what they do. And they do that independently and responsibly. And so even though they're lowly, they're not because they're types of something much greater. And even though they are low on the socioeconomic totem pole, the fact that Christ's birth is announced to them is an indication of the universally salvific nature of his birth and mission. Right. So that's all happening in those.

Jonathan Peugeot (105:49)

The shepherds are also counter to city because they're the opposite of civilization. They have these flocks, they move around, they don't stay in one place, they don't have agriculture, they don't have all the things, all the tropes of the city.

Greg Hurwitz (106:01)

It's also an answer for the undeniable. In a way, it's the reversal of the cone. Right. If a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? If the son of God is born in a manger and there's only shepherds around. It's Is he still the son of God? The answer is yes.

Jordan Peterson (106:15)

Right, right.

Douglas Headley (106:16)

Just two points there.

Jordan Peterson (106:17)

Great things from lowly beginning just about.

Douglas Headley (106:19)

Augustus and as it were, the fragile or endangered state of the child. Augustus is also the emperor in this period of extraordinary stability for the Roman Empire. So it's also a good time for Jesus to be born because. Pax Romana. Exactly, exactly. So I think there's the tyrant element, the false deity, but also it's auspicious. And the second point about his vulnerability. But again the emphasis on David. Right. This is the Davidic house, so it's in a manger, there's no room in the inn. But the emphasis again, this is the true successor of David.

John Vervaeke (107:14)

Yeah. And I don't think Augustus is just the tyrannical Augustus is the ending of a civilization wide civil war. And I think there's an attempt to indicates something like a kairos happening here. That's interesting. Right. You've got. I'm not denying the tyranny of the Roman emperor. But you know, Augustus, many historians consider him maybe the greatest emperor. Right.

James Orr (107:48)

If God had to choose any period in history to leave his authenticating signature on the world in a way that would disseminate and distribute that message as quickly as possible, it's hard to pick a better time than a seat could be.

Greg Hurwitz (108:02)

And so it's like, it's like if you introduce, it's almost like an enzyme, like what's the state in which this action can be most fruitful. And so in a time when everything's filled with sin, he sends the flood. In a time when things have a level of stability and there needs to be foundations through which to even to rise up to condemn him. Because in utter chaos you can't have so cleanly that the temple and the government, like every aspect of the culture fails him. So they have to be in place in order to render that judgment.

James Orr (108:32)

It's hard to imagine the Christian message spreading with the astonishing speed that it does from say the early 30s AD to the point where, well by 64 there are enough Christians in Rome for Nero to be able to scapegoat the Christians as a distinct group from the Jews. Yeah. So although you know, the conditions are.

Jonathan Peugeot (108:53)

But there is a desire to create a foil though, I think, you know, because even if we talk about the Pax Romana, we haven't got to the right after that when the angels announce, they say glory to God in the highest peace on earth of men of goodwill. Right. It's Basically it's trying to say it is, I think it is creating a foil to the Roman rule, which is, here's the great emperor, without maybe not necessarily criticizing, but here's the great emperor, here's this, but now here's the true emperor that's hidden at the bottom of the world in a cave, in a manger, and that this is through this, that the true peace will be found.

James Orr (109:28)

It's the language of. That's the language of an imperial edict. And actually it's worth pointing out that the word, the Greek word for good news or gospel is evangelion, which is the word that emperors would send out often for the emperor's birthday. You would send the evangelion to, to the towns and villages that worshiped him, particularly in this part of the world. And this was the good news, the good news of the emperor of Caesar's birthday. There's a clearly, I think, a semi conscious aping and mimicking of the language of the imperial cult to assert that Jesus is Lord and therefore Caesar isn't.

Bishop Robert Barron (110:09)

I think it's a formula that in some ways sums up the whole Bible. Glory to God in the highest among us. That's how it works. When you give glory to something other than God, then violence breaks out and division breaks out. But if you really give glory to the summum bonum appropriately, then peace will obtain among us. So the angelic message is, that's the whole Bible.

Jonathan Peugeot (110:28)

It's the whole Bible. That's the whole Bible. I totally agree.

Jordan Peterson (110:30)

And some of that's associated with the glorification of the infant as a center of attention, which is a proper center of attention.

Jonathan Peugeot (110:38)

But it also has to be like for it to be the fullness. You also have to have these extremes where the angels appear above these singing angels, the music of the spheres, and then the lowest aspect of reality being connected together. So that you say, oh, this is the fullness of God's revelation, the fullness of God's presence in the world represented by these two extremes with the angels.

Jordan Peterson (110:59)

Up above this ladder.

Bishop Robert Barron (111:00)

But what is the Greek again for the. We say host or is a company of angels. It's. But it's like something with army, like stratias or stratus.

Dennis Prager (111:08)

The Hebrew is army.

Bishop Robert Barron (111:09)

Pardon me?

Dennis Prager (111:10)

The Hebrew is army.

Bishop Robert Barron (111:11)

Yeah. And what I find so fascinating. So Caesar can dominate the world because he's got this big human army, but in fact the baby king has the real army. It's an angelic army of these fearsome supernatural realities. So who's going to Win this battle, the baby king's going to win.

Dennis Prager (111:26)

So, Bishop, I have a question which I know a lot of people watching this will have, but I have it, too. I agree 100%. If we all acknowledge the God of the Bible, it would be a much better world, even a peaceful world. So how do you explain. Because it's a very real question for all of us, not just people who claim to believe in God, who did horrible things, but horrible things to other people who believed in God. The Christian wars in Europe probably precipitated the rejection of religion, ultimately.

Bishop Robert Barron (112:11)

Yeah, I agree with that.

Dennis Prager (112:12)

So I'm just curious, and I really am curious. It's not a provocative question. It's, in fact, the first book I wrote is called the Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism. And one of the questions of the nine questions questions is, if religion, specifically Judaism, is supposed to make people good, how do you account for unethical religious Jews? It's one of the nine questions I asked in my first book, the question of people who believe in God, who do bad. I mean, the God of the Bible, that's all I'm talking about, is a very real one.

Jordan Peterson (112:46)

Dennis, let's let that hang and get that back into that. When we. We talk about the Pharisees, I'm not.

Dennis Prager (112:53)

Sure they're the best example of bad God.

Jonathan Peugeot (112:55)

No.

Jordan Peterson (112:56)

Well, but I think the question is specifically addressed in some of the stories of Christ's conflict, let's say, with religious authorities per se. And I think we should address that.

Jonathan Peugeot (113:06)

It has to do with hypocrisy.

Jordan Peterson (113:08)

Yeah.

Jonathan Peugeot (113:08)

The idea of saying one thing and doing another, like that's the opposite of incarnation. It's this disjoining of heaven and earth where you have a word and a being that aren't connected. You say things, you think something, you say something, and then you do another thing where Christ is saying, no, Heaven and earth have to be united. That is what the incarnation is trying to show.

Jordan Peterson (113:30)

We'll spend a whole session on that question in some ways. Okay, so I'm going to go through the lead up to the baptism here and we'll conclude with that. So what happens in the next few stories, essentially, and I'll compress them, is that Mary and Joseph and the people around Christ are presented with evidence of various sorts that something particularly special is going on here. So we have. We first of all have the naming and events in the temple. When Jesus is presented in the temple and there's a prophetess there who describes his eventual destiny, and a prophet there, too. Simeon. And so he tells Mary that her son is destined to do spectacular things. And then after that, we have the gifts of the Magi. And these are magicians, magi from the east who have seen. Who have analyzed the patterns of the stars in heaven because they're astrologers and have determined that an old age has ended. And that would be the age of the Ram and a new age, Pisces, is about to begin. And so there's signs in the stars, so to speak, that something new is about to be born. And the Magi come and find Christ and represent and regard him as the fulfillment of their prophetic intuition. And so that's another. And then we have the parallel. This is an Old Testament parallel with the flight into Egypt and massacre of the innocents. Do you want to speak about that? Sure.

Jonathan Peugeot (115:08)

I mean, the interesting thing about the flight into Egypt and the massacre of the innocents is, you know, the story of Jesus is always smashing the Old Testament references together, bringing them together in a way that is absolutely crazy. And so what happens is when Jesus goes to Egypt, he's doing the flight and return from Egypt at the same time. That is, when Joseph goes to Egypt, he flees his brothers trying to kill him. When Moses leaves Egypt with the Israelites, he's fleeing the Pharaoh that tried to kill the children of Israel. And so in this version, the two come together in one story. And there's a third element, too, which is also King David fleeing King Saul, who? The true king fleeing the king that is there at this moment. So you have this wild image where, you know, Christ goes into Egypt in order to flee the king in both ways, like fleeing his own brother, but then also fleeing the tyrant Pharaoh. It's hard even to say it because all the images kind of come together. But this is. We talked about this in Exodus. It's a difficult situation because in some ways it has to do with the problem of the 1. It has to do with the problem of the concentration of a generation into one person. It's a little scandalous to talk about it, but I think that that is part of what is happening.

Jordan Peterson (116:38)

So the magi tell Herod that a king will arise, and Herod determines to.

Jonathan Peugeot (116:42)

Kill all the babies, right?

Jordan Peterson (116:45)

All the babies. And so that's equivalent to what happens Moses time. And it's another echoing of the idea of.

Jonathan Peugeot (116:52)

And also Joseph, like Joseph leaving his brothers that want to kill him into Egypt, but then also Moses leaving Egypt into the promised land. Those two get smashed into one image.

John Vervaeke (117:02)

There's also. I mean, there's extra biblical reference. They're magi. They're plausibly from the Zoroastrians. And so. And there's been an ongoing relationship between Israel and Persia and Persia figures. I mean, I believe I read somewhere that Cyrus was actually one of the first people called Messiah in the Old Testament and King of Kings. And so there's also that relationship to. And you know, and Zoroastrianism, you know, is the idea that there is a. That the future has an openness to it and we are a moral battleground in which that openness can be decided. And I think by having the magi there, there is a recognition of that.

Jonathan Peugeot (117:50)

There's also the intimation that's been presented right from the beginning and will be continually presented, which is that it is related to the story of Joseph. Something like the stranger will recognize him first, like that. This will move towards the strangers.

John Vervaeke (118:06)

But see, it's the opposite also of the Old Testament, because the Persians send the Jews, but now the Persians come. Right? It's also an inversion which is trying to say, I think there's something happening about the relationship to the Zoroastrian tradition that's being talked about here in an important way. And they are magi, and that's really important.

Bishop Robert Barron (118:29)

It's deeply Israelite that Israel has chosen, but not for their own sake, but chosen for the sake of the nations. To your earlier point that, I mean, ultimately the whole world has come to Torah. Well, that's. You find it in the Psalms, you find it in Isaiah. From a Christian standpoint, here's the beginning of it, that as Christ comes, the other nations get interested in the shepherds.

Jordan Peterson (118:46)

And foreigners are the.

Bishop Robert Barron (118:47)

They want to come and see them. They don't go back the same way they came.

Jordan Peterson (118:51)

I'm going to close, gentlemen, with this last story. I think because this sets us up for the baptism and then the flight into the desert, which is where we can start our second session. So this is the story of the culmination in some ways, of Christ's youth. And this is Luke 2, 40, 50. The young Jesus confers with the teachers. Luke 2, 40, 50. The child Jesus grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. Now, his parents went to Jerusalem every year for the feast of the Passover when Jesus was 12 years old. They took him with them when they went up according to the custom of the feast. But after the celebration was over and they were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know this, but supposing him to be in their traveling party, they went a day's journey and then they looked for him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his responses. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, son, why have you treated us this way? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you. And Jesus said to them, why did you need to search for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house? But they did not understand the significance of these words. So we see a variety of intimations there. We see the young Jesus first taking his place with the learned men in discussion. And that's a prodroma for much of what happens in the remainder of the Gospels. We see the fact that he's exceptionally good at it enough to hold his own, even as a 12 year old with the learned adults and that. And he is also pointing out to his parents who still don't understand this, that he's marked out for a very particular form of destiny. And so it's after that that that seriously starts to unfold. And that's where we'll pick up when we reconvene. Thank you very much everyone.

Jonathan Peugeot (121:09)

For the Christians too, it's important because the early church, there was a debate. It was actually an early Christian who proposed a single gospel. You know, we have to take these unwieldy texts and merge them into one nice, clean, coherent text. But the Church resisted that because, you know, in some ways they knew that the Gospels were the closest accounts of the life of Jesus. They were handed down through the apostles, through the apostolic succession. They trusted these texts and they in some ways, the variety in the text, it is a witness to the, the kind of energy, you know, like the kind of frenetic desire to get this story down. And even the idea that you, in some ways it represents different perspectives on the same story. So Christ is hidden in the four Gospels, right? He is, he is somewhat more than the four Gospels. That's important to understand. His life is not simply told in those Gospels. We have to understand that he's more than that, but that these Gospels are the right testimony for, for his life. And they have a reason why. Each of them have their own thrust, their own narrative, their own emphasis. And that's very meaningful for the Christ.