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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Hello there and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith and I am joined by my father, Dr. Sky Keith, and by Dr. Adam Francisco for our first episode after finishing the Chronicles of Narnia and a series on C.S. lewis and the Inklings. And, you know, that started in November and I didn't expect it to go all the way to February, but it did.
- [00:44]
C
You even had a baby in the meantime.
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B
Yeah, I did. This is the first episode his wife had the baby. Yes, that's true. He now.
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A
Baby is part of his family now, but she did the work.
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B
All the work. That's.
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A
Did you take a.
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C
Did you take a nap after the delivery like I did with one of mine?
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B
He was born at 12:45, so you know how it goes in the hospital is that the nurses leave you alone during the day when you're awake, but they just come in every 25 minutes at night for those 48 hours. And then they look at you and go, you guys look really tired. And you go, no. And it's not actually the baby keeping you awake because newborns. I mean, a lot of newborns sleep. Mine. Mine have. So it's been good. Yes. But since the last time we recorded, my third child has been born, which is very exciting. So I'm. I'm contributing to my dad's dream of nine grandchildren. My other siblings are slacking, so.
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C
They are. Yeah, they gotta.
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B
They gotta catch up.
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A
Well, so we. You.
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C
You want to adopt some?
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B
Do I want to adopt some? Not. Not right now. Not till. I mean, I don't.
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C
I could potentially give you six. That, plus six.
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B
Boom.
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C
You'd be done.
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A
Oh, yeah.
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C
Bam.
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A
Where would they all live?
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B
Yeah, where would they all live?
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A
I have to take some here. So negative.
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B
Yeah, he likes being grandpappy.
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A
Yeah.
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C
We don't want to say your son's name on the air, I'm sure, but I'm a little disappointed you didn't name him Archibald or Muhammad.
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B
Oh, I say my children's name on the air, they don't have an online footprint.
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A
He has a designation do.
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B
Yeah, yeah, he has a Borg designation.
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A
For Star Trek Voyager fans out there. Three of Nine.
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B
Three of nine. That's good. So, guys, we're gonna do something we don't really or haven't really done on Thinking fellows, before. We're gonna do some pop culture commentary.
- [02:48]
A
Really?
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B
Dun, dun, dun.
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A
Now.
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C
We'Re taking Britney Spears.
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B
Yeah, like Britney Spears. No, we're taking a break between. I think we're setting ourselves up for another, like, series of episodes. Or a couple throughout the year. And we're going to take a break now to do this episode and a Q and A episode. And the topic of this episode is going to be Jordan Peterson's recent comments on the Bible on the Joe Rogan show and maybe some other of his public comments about Christianity, God, Scripture. And the reason we haven't done something like this in the past is I'm not a huge fan of shows where their relevancy and the reason to listen to them is only because they can keep up with the latest trend.
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A
I believe we actually have done one other Jordan Peterson show response to Jordan Peterson Show. I don't remember that a while.
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C
Yeah, a long time ago when it's 12 rules for life.
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A
12 rules came out and I actually wrote a response to it on, I think. And we talked about it a bit.
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B
But obviously a big break. And we did do some. We've done like, we did some, like, initial responses to Covid stuff. And I think maybe a sprinkling of other things here or there. And there's. On one hand, it's from like a content perspective. It's important to occasionally do these things because we would like to build the audience. It's important to hit the trends. On the other hand, I don't like the idea that thinking Veloz is just about being trendy. But this time I think it would be good to do, because this happened on the Joe Rogan Show. And actually in the fall when we did a different Q and A episode, I brought up some things that Joe Rogan said about the Bible years ago on the podcast, which basically related to Lewis's chronological snobbery. He made comments years ago. I don't remember the name of the episode.
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A
Well, usually it goes like, you know, how could Bronze Age peasants know anything about anything? We know so much more now that of course, they can't be believed because they're ignorant fools from the past. And he was making smart fools from the future.
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B
Well, and he was making a pro science argument. He. He had scripture versus science. Now, that was, that was before.
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A
He kind of is now being accused of being anti science.
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B
Yeah. Now his whole shtick is being anti science. And now that he's sort of like, let's.
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A
First of all, you know, Joe Rogan is a comedian by trade who got his start on a show called Newsradio, which came out in the 90s as sort of what would sort of Rush Limbaugh radio station look like behind the scenes kind of thing, where I think he played like the Maintenance guy on the show or something like that. And then he went to host a show called Fear Factor where basically, you know, contestants would come on to see whether or not they could endure being buried in a coffin in the ground covered in tarantulas.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, and then he went on to host a podcast. And he's a great thinker, you know, now maybe he is a great thinker. Maybe he's a great interviewer. I don't know. I don't listen to the Joe Rogan show, but at the end of the day, you know, when he talks on a subject, he may be very well educated on it, but it's not necessarily his background. And I would, I would take some of it with a grain of salt.
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B
I think he in particular, that's my snob. He doesn't claim to ever be an expert. He's a guy shooting from the hip. He's. He doesn't claim to be smart. He claims to be a guy willing to have conversations with smart people.
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A
You know what I think he probably is an expert on is what percentage of the population can handle being covered in tarantulas while buried six feet underground.
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C
That's. Can I give a minority report here?
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A
Yeah, go ahead.
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C
Like. So I don't listen to Joe Rogan's podcast, mostly because it's on Spotify and, and especially in the last week or so, I won't even go near Spotify, though. They, you know, they did kick. Was it Neil. Is it Neil Young? They kicked him off and kept Joe Rogan, but now they're starting to kind of cave to pressure. Is that right?
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A
Everybody's going to cave to pressure.
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B
Yeah, everybody will catch.
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C
But I have listened to him in the past and I think with Joe Rogan, the thing is. So yes, he was in the Fear Factor. He's an MMA commentator for the ufc. He's.
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A
Oh, I forgot that. He probably knows a lot about that, too.
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C
Yeah, he, he does. But I, I think the good thing with Joe Rogan is he's willing to. As you guys said, he's willing. He's really good at asking questions and having a. What do they call a long form conversation. Sometimes he's way outside his lane. He makes these silly comments about the Bible and the history of the, of Christianity and so on and so forth. But generally he's not only fun to listen to because he is funny sometimes, though, crass, quite a bit virtue signaling there. But he's, you know, he is, he's, you know, we talked about before, Scott, you and I, Caleb, too, about specialists, you know, and how we. We appreciate people who are specialists and they stay in their lane, but once they go outside of the lane, that's when things go. Go awry. I think Joe Rogan knows he's not a specialist. He's just, again, he's somebody who just kind of wants to know. But he does have these ideological blinders that I think he's maybe not aware of when it comes to historic Christianity. The stuff that I can't stand only because he has such a huge platform, I think. Caleb, is it right that he has the largest podcast or the. Yeah, that's pretty well podcast in the world.
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B
Yeah, that's. That's true.
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A
Yeah. He.
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C
The thing that irritates me is how cavalier and careless he is when he's talking about drugs. Not just pot, but like the hallucinogenic and stuff like that. Such that his listeners are gonna. Well, you know, because he's got people. He posts photos. So I. I think it's on Instagram, I follow him or whatever, and he'll. He'll post pictures of people who get tattoos of. Of Joe Rogan on their body. So he's got a lot of followers. And, you know, some of his stuff he does, and it's good. Some of the stuff I think is problematic, especially when it comes to the drug stuff. And, and when he's. When he does venture outside of his lane, unaware that he's speaking or putting forward, like, theories or whatnot that really have no basis whatsoever in any sort of facts or evidence.
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B
Yeah, I think, yeah, he's. He's loosely commenting. And one of the reasons to then do a show about his show and about Peterson afterwards is that sheer number of listeners that he has means that the topic becomes popular, either from a. An angry sort of contingent who wants to undo what he said or people regurgitating it. Right. So if you have Jordan Peterson come say something that he believes is clever on the Bible on the Joe Rogan show, you're probably going to run into, over the next couple weeks, several people paraphrasing, repeating what he said, who then want to also sound clever. Like this is going to become the popular narrative about the Bible for a month.
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A
You're probably right, though. It probably will become the popular narrative about the Bible.
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B
I think especially in, like, American, right, quasi Christian politics, you're gonna have, like.
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A
Evangelical Christians running around saying the Bible's not true. It's beyond truth. Beyond truth. Oh, boy.
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B
And so, because it sounds smart, right? It sounds like you're Both saying it's true and it's better than true. And, and so I think that's what we're gonna have.
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C
That's the thing is he, he will say things like he just wants to know what's true and he's gonna let the evidence do all the talking. And in a lot of discussions, the case. But when it comes to things like religion, the discussion is very undisciplined. You know, it's not ordered by facts and evidence. It's ordered by his Wild Joe Rogan in particular.
- [11:10]
A
I mean, that's conspiracy regarding conversations about religion and theology in general is how oftentimes they're ordered by flights of fancy and oh, that sounded interesting or that sounded good. And sort of rationally or deductively, it sort of. It hit all my preconceived notions about what should be true or what God should be like or what the Bible should be like. And so I'm really drawn to it and not really any attention paid to the evidence, which in this case is, you know, if you're talking about Jesus is going to be like what Jesus says about himself and talking about the Scriptures, it can be, what are the evidence? Is there available evidence for the fact that the Scriptures are reliable? And if they are reliable, what do they say? And even leading to, you know, based on their reliability, what do they say about themselves eventually? And you miss that because it's all emotion. That's even. I mean we can spend time specifically on it, but that's even, I think the root of this stuff that the Bible is not true. It's beyond true. You know, it's like, well, that really fit. That really ticks an emotional box.
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B
So let's scoot back because we're making a lot of assumptions about what listeners. Listeners know or don't know about what's going on. Joe Rogan had Peterson on the show.
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A
Author of 12 Rules for Life, Peterson and Maps of Meaning, which is a.
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B
Little more convoluted since that book is.
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C
And now there's a new beyond order 12 more, right?
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A
Because 10 were good enough for God and Moses and Jordan. Peterson came around and figured out we really needed 12.
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C
Oh really? Is that what he says?
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A
No, that's what I'm saying. Then a few, few years later he figured out that the 12 weren't enough. So he added, I believe another 12 or 13. So if you really, if you sort of non Christians and agnostics out there really thought the Christians were putting you to the screws by saying you had these 10 rules to live by. Look out for Jordan Peterson, because he's got 20 plus.
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B
So in those, in the years since that the book has come out, he's become. He's waned. He's waxed and waned in popularity as a social commenter, especially become more popular amongst conservatives in America and I guess Canada, where he's from, about the impending collapse of society, which he sort of describes as the loss of meaning and truth in words and actions and all sorts of things. So that there's a loss of communication.
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A
To be honest with you, in 12 rules, he's really going at the loss of hierarchy.
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B
Well, I'm, I'm talking about his. Since social commentary. I think 12 rules is.
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A
I think he's basing a lot of it and he's going to his. On the social side. I actually think he's got a lot to say. Like, if you take him sans conversations regarding sort of capital T, truth, theologically as you might know it from empirical sources, you take him away from that kind conversation. You put him in the social commentary side of things solely. Right. I think he's got a lot of good things to say regarding how our societal urge to shun all hierarchy is influencing our ability to say anything is right, anything is wrong, anything is true, anything is good, anything is beautiful. And how that is really tearing down societal structures that we relied on to interact with one another in liberal societies. I think he's got a lot of good stuff to say about that.
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B
Any. Any. My point was, is that he, since the book came out, he's done a lot of that and that's. He's transitioned into that lane. He went from professor to essentially this lane. And when he comes onto the Rogan podcast, he comes as that social commentator. And he now has figured the Bible into that hierarchical system that he's talking about.
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A
Well, as. And as I understand it, this has come through some personal life struggles that have involved himself, his wife, and now his daughter. I mean, a lot of the 12 rules has to do with struggles that he had, health struggles of his daughter. But yeah, I mean, he's. He had a breakdown essentially. Right. And it affected his family. His wife in the meantime became a Christian. Um, his daughter in the meantime has become a Christian, I believe. And he has come to the point where he's no longer an atheist. Yeah, for them, you know, and is sort of, I guess you'd say agnostic. Ish. Maybe a little bit more kind of like maybe even theist. And so, yeah, there's been. He's had serious life changes since he wrote that book.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And so hospital in Moscow or Serbia for a while and like an eight day coma and I mean he's had serious issues, health issues, I've seen. So I, you know, I don't, again, I don't listen to podcast, but I see little clips here and there. I think Caleb actually forwarded some to us. But I, what I see what you guys see. I also, if I like, what do I know. But I see a man who's sort of on his own terms, whether we like that or not, kind of getting a little inching ever so close or closer to trying to understand Christianity objectively, but he just can't get past that Jungian psychology and all that other stuff he brings to the task.
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A
Would you think it, I think it's accurate to say not only can he not get past it, but it serves as the basis through which he filters all propositions?
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C
I think, yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, I don't know about the most recent stuff. And that's like to Caleb's point, that's the thing is this is like a moving target. It's hard to talk about.
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A
Well, it's funny the clip that you sent us to listen to Adam on Moses in the wilderness and the snake lifted up and Christ was all filtered through psychology.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And that was pretty fairly recent.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was, that was off the Rogan podcast.
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B
Okay, so.
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C
So there's.
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B
Yeah, I would say from like a perspective that the thinking fellows can chime in. There's two things going on. Everyone is his general comments about belief in God, agnosticism, nonness, his family, partial family, conversion to Christianity, his wrestling with Christian doctrine and then to these comments on the nature of scripture and the Bible and sort of what that will probably what that could mean for just the way that the Bible is referenced in certain groups in the next couple months.
- [18:23]
A
I hadn't thought of that. That's interesting. Wouldn't that be just like an interesting sort of phenomenon that if a sort of admitted non Christian's view of scripture as proposed on a popular, very, very, very popular po past changed the way Christians started talking about the Bible.
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B
Some, I think some obviously not creed. I don't think creedal Christians will move unfortunately.
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A
But interesting.
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C
But I. So to that point, I know people who go to church who would call themselves Christians. They go to like typically, you know, non denominational type of churches and they assume Peterson's a Christian. Well, that was because the terminology. And he's, he's, he's kind of a moral, you know, thinker.
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A
Yeah. That was the basis of the critique I wrote in Jagged Word is that the issue is that people, the Christians, when they hear him, assume he's a Christian and there's really no. There's no gospel.
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B
Well, let's just say why. Yeah, it's because what he's saying is some somewhat consistent with the law, if not like. If not always mostly consistent. And actually getting ever more consistent since 12 rules came out. He's getting more and more consistent with it. And even this conversation about the Bible is about the moral change and collapse of our society and the way that the Bible helped establish morality in Western society and how objective morality relies on the existence of a Bible.
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A
Yeah. There's three things I think we should talk about in our final 20 some odd minutes here. One, his view of the Bible. Two, what he said about being a Christian as in relation to Jesus.
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B
Right.
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A
Like, basically the statement that I think the only Christian, if there is Christianity, the only Christian that ever was was Jesus. I think we should address that. And three, I think the clip that Adam sent with sort of the snake lifted up is interesting because I think he. He completely misses the point. But he misses the point because he's filtering it through psychology rather than talking to a good pastor.
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B
Okay.
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C
So let's.
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A
I mean, he's talking to Joe Rogan.
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B
Yeah, he's talking to Joe Rogan.
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C
Yeah.
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B
So let's just create some context for his. The Bible is not just true, it's beyond truth. It's the most true. Kind of.
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A
It sounded like. To me. And I mean, I don't. Is it Spotify? I get all these services mixed up.
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B
It was. Well, he. Joe Rogan's podcast is now on Spotify.
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A
So I do not subscribe to Spotify. So I'm not able to listen to the entire four hours or whatever.
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B
I sent you guys the relevant clips.
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A
Yeah. So I listened to the clips. So I just want to admit that, like, I could be missing something right there. Having not listened to the whole thing. I could be taking him out of context. So that's my caveat. But what it sounded like to me, there were parts. I call it. I remember calling my first Adam or Caleb and saying, this is really interesting. This guy thinks he's thought up a position that the Neo Orthodox fleshed out in the 20th century pretty good. And he's like, the way he presented it was kind of fun to me because he's like, I just thought of this last night. And having thought of it last night. I think it's the only way you can look at the Bible. And I'm like, that is some sheer, I'm not going to cuss on this show, but that's some sheer frickin hubris right there.
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C
Well, no, it's bs meaning it's before scholarship. Like he hasn't done the appropriate amount of research.
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B
Yeah, his 24 hour old idea makes, he does this in, I think all sort of like popular philosophers do this, right? If your idea is internally consistent, it must be true. His ideas are internally consistent.
- [22:25]
A
That's sort of the number one critique, right. Is that this is, this is a, we'd call it sort of a deductive, rationally constructed argument, top down argument based on a center, you know, one central point and then extrapolating from there. And then if he can construct this argument coherently, right, all the pieces of meat within the argument, he's good and it's true. And this is the only way you can possibly look at it, which is how sort of just purely rationalistic arguments sort of work out. There be any other way. The problem with this type of argument is if it doesn't match with the evidence, the actually available observable evidence, or.
- [23:03]
B
If it can be both that and something else, or if one of the.
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A
Premises of your internally constructed argument can be shown to be untrue.
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B
So like what he essentially says is he develops a history of the handing down of knowledge in the Western world. And he claims that this history starts with the Bible because the Bible is the first book. And by book he means bound page book.
- [23:26]
A
Well, he acknowledges it's not a book, it's a library. He actually uses that phrase, it's not a book, it's a library.
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B
And, but, and then he's, and he says, he also acknowledges that scrolls and other ways of passing down information exist before, but that they're more specialized, they're accessed by only specific groups and that the Bible really becomes the first household book or library of books.
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A
True.
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B
And that from there every book written or old scroll or story constructed afterwards and turned into a book is thus borrowing from the words that the Bible uses and the meaning that the Bible gives to those words. So if you write a piece of literature after everybody has a Bible in their house, the meanings that you ascribe to words and phrases have to relate in some way to the meanings people understand from Scripture. And he basically says, and here we are, we have a 2000 year history of this all building and our society. This for the transmission of knowledge Ideas, ethics and everything else has to recognize that the fundamental definitions and meanings of words, concepts, phrases, ethics, start with the Bible. And so it's beyond truth because you couldn't write anything true without first referencing it.
- [24:40]
A
Right?
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B
In the west, right.
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A
And where you get into trouble, and Adam cut me off at any point where you get into trouble with that is that when you don't deal with whether or not it's actually true or false, that is the information therein contained is actually true or false. When people can come along and point out that this, this thing here is actually, let's take the most important thing, this thing here, the resurrection of Christ, isn't actually true. It didn't actually happen. And yet the Bible says that it is true and that it really did happen. And how do you deal with that? And when you say that doesn't matter, what matters is the meaning of the resurrection for you, for life, for society, for all other meaning, you erode confidence in the actual authority of the thing itself that's supposed to be providing meaning. Now this, this is a move that neo orthodox theologians made in the 20th century. I always argue that they made it as a move against liberalism, which was, you know, a decent step. Liberalism's just saying, you know, nothing's true, it's all garbage. The orthodox come along, said, no, there's still a lot of value to this. It provides meaning. And I think many of them would even say much the same thing. Jordan Peterson said that it provides meaning to all other things, right? You get these phrases from neodor, neo orthodox theologians that, I mean, I'm paraphrasing here, but it doesn't matter if the resurrection actually happened. The resurrection is meaningful. And you go, I'm kind of, I'm kind of betting everything on the resurrection, on my resurrection. And so I'd like to know that the first one actually happened, because I'd like to know that mine is actually going to happen. And not just that the idea of mine possibly happening or Christ possibly happening provides meaning, right?
- [26:31]
B
It's everything is an idea and it's a lens, and those don't have to actually have happened. The lens can provide a framework by which you operate in the world. And so the resurrection can provide a framework by which you operate in the world and then sometimes only in religion, right? This can operate, give you a framework how church should work and how religion.
- [26:51]
A
Should work, even go to moral precepts in the Bible, right? So it's not so hard for a person that doesn't want to live by the moral Precepts of the Bible. Like I believe Jordan Peterson wants people to live by the moral precepts of the Bible. It's not hard for a person who doesn't want to to, well, if this.
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B
Isn'T true, why would the moral.
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A
I. E. The resurrection. Why would the moral precepts be true or meaningful in any particular way at all? And what he doesn't realize, I don't think, is that the move that these theologians of the past made that are the same move that he's making is exactly what's eroded all confidence in the Bible. When they started to say things like it doesn't matter if it actually happened or not. It's meaningful. You do have people that come along that prefer that it wouldn't be meaningful to them because they find it offensive in some way. Think of a homosexual who reads Romans 1 through 3, right? You would prefer that to not be meaningful. Paul's, Paul's admonitions about such behaviors being unnatural and whatnot. If you prefer that to be not meaningful, it's pretty easy to attack the parts of the Bible that present themselves as factual happening or not happening and saying, I don't think these happen. And if you don't think it matters why they happen, I don't know why. Needs to matter to me. Anything else in here needs to matter to me. And that's how we. That's how all of this got eroded in the first place.
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B
Or like in the case of homosexuality, you could say, well, I'm appealing to a different law that's in the Bible. I'm appealing to the law of love and that, you know, that love is powerful.
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A
That's what provides me meaning.
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B
Yeah, that's from the Bible.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And so you can start.
- [28:32]
A
What provides me meaning in the Bible is giving to the poor. What provides me meaning in the Bible is take anything except for why the Bible itself says is it exists, which is to testify to Christ, his actual life, his actual death, his actual resurrection, and then the actual meaning that that actual resurrection has for the rest of us, you know. So the problem is when you skip the actual factual portions of this whole argument, you're skipping why it. It provides meaning at all. And you can run around saying the meaning is in the meaning all you want, but that existential point that you're trying to make is going to offend some people and they're going to find flaws in the rest of it.
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B
He, I will say I think his. His speaking for him. I think his response to this would be that his outlook on this isn't about individual meaning, but meaning to society or institutions.
- [29:27]
A
The fact that, the fact that the truth of the Bible has been assailed for more than a century now is what has led. I mean, it's the cracks in the dam, right? The little Dutch boy only had a couple fingers to plug the holes in the dam. And once we allowed everything else to go, the societal meaning went too. I mean, at the end of the day, I think his end goal is laudable on the sort of left hand kingdom front by saying that having this thing be meaningful to you will actually help the meaning in all other parts of your life and help you sort of sort through sort of the wild stuff we have going on now is great, but people that already object to that sort of constriction in their life out and about. Yeah.
- [30:17]
B
I also don't think, you know, like when he, he's trying to go past postmodernism in this, he says this in this interview. He's trying to say that it's really.
- [30:29]
A
Not his way back to the worst of modernism.
- [30:32]
B
But I also don't think if you listen to him, what he would need for this to work. This has a universal cultural meaning. And your, let's say personal sort of value is not how you judge. It's universal means you would need a top down authoritarian system which tells you exactly what it means.
- [30:48]
A
The question is, and then we gotta let Adam in. The question is, who's the arbiter? Yeah, right, the arbiter.
- [30:54]
C
The church.
- [30:55]
A
The church, Right. If you've, if you've destroyed sort of all objective truth, historical fact from the Bible or whatever, you've, you've taken it away as the arbiter because you can find flaws in it now. And now, now. So let me say one more thing, Adam. Maybe there are flaws in it, right? But that needs to be dealt with evidentially, not just as we'll overlook them and just find the meaning. That's the point. All right, go ahead, Adam.
- [31:25]
C
Well, can I just say I hear, hear. I agree, but can I also add.
- [31:32]
B
To that.
- [31:35]
C
Is it possible we're being a little too hard on Jordan Peterson?
- [31:38]
A
Yes.
- [31:40]
C
I mean, you know, because there are.
- [31:44]
A
People just, just ask the listeners.
- [31:48]
C
Well, you talked about the, the Neo Orthodox school. I mean, Christian existentialism, right. Is a thing even in our own camps or camps we associate with.
- [32:01]
A
So part of me throws that into the whole, not, not like rigidly, but into the whole sort of time era of the Neo Orthodox and the attempts to sort of find meaning in the Bible without finding truth in the Bible, though.
- [32:16]
C
Yeah, no, I can see that. But I was just thinking, like. So I think of some. You know, there's one particular author who's now deceased that we. We're quite fond of, Gerhard Verdi, who does some really awesome stuff when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel. But. And I. I've not read them nearly as much as you, but you get a sense that there's an existentialism there where he really does believe the resurrection happens, but whether it's, like, factual or not is not really a concern. And maybe that's just because it's not a concern of his.
- [32:46]
A
But I totally agree. It's. My greatest criticism of Ferdi is that he's way too existential in this. He finds too much meaning and meaning sans the historical fact of the Resurrection, which is actually why I think sort of getting sort of Ferdian theology through somebody like Paulson is a much cleaner affair because Paulson will say, if this didn't happen, none of this matters.
- [33:12]
C
Yeah, well, I'm just trying to be. Only, you know, I agree with you 99.99%. You have a better chance of. I agree more with you than you do have a chance of getting really sick from COVID Let's just put it that way. I'm just trying to be. I'm trying to be the yin to your yang.
- [33:35]
B
You did.
- [33:36]
C
Yeah. I think it. I. What I find fascinating, and Peterson's. If. Can I use the word evolution here is how he's arriving at these. He's not close to classic orthodox Christianity, but he's certainly closer than Joe Rogan or.
- [33:57]
A
Well, and so were the new orthodox.
- [33:59]
C
Yeah, he's.
- [34:00]
A
To be real with you, but he's.
- [34:01]
C
Closer than some clergyman, John Shelby, sponge, you know, so I'm just trying to.
- [34:11]
A
Let me. Let's say the good and the bad to this. The good is he's close. And if somebody could actually sit down and have a couple beers with him and actually talk to him about the availability of historical evidence in favor of the authority of the scriptures and the scriptural account, especially in the Gospels of the life and times of Christ, I think he wouldn't have to talk this way anymore. I think there's nobody providing him with this, the information he needs to close the loop. And I find that really deplorable.
- [34:41]
C
I'm not disagreeing with you, Scott, at all. I mean, I'm just trying to. I'm thinking about our. I'm just trying to put a. As my mother would Teach me to put the best construction on things.
- [34:51]
A
Well, Lutheran response.
- [34:52]
B
I actually think that there's a step before this. If somebody were to have Peterson in.
- [34:59]
A
The room to let the Jungian psychology.
- [35:01]
B
Go for five minutes and I would say if I had Peterson in the room, I actually would not be worried. I would not be primarily concerned with his view of the Bible.
- [35:11]
A
I wouldn't either. That wasn't the question, though. The question was on his view of Scripture. That's true. You're getting into point point two now. Yeah.
- [35:19]
B
And I'm trying to make the transition here.
- [35:20]
A
Yeah. Okay.
- [35:21]
B
I'm trying to make the transition.
- [35:22]
C
Yeah. Away from that question.
- [35:24]
A
I want to say to too. If you're going to. This guy needs to be evangelized to the actual gospel. I'm 100 with you.
- [35:31]
B
Just let me do the transition. And you can see where this is going. The transition here is that he, the framework that he's created this. And we, we could say it's similar to neo Orthodoxy. It's not quite creedal Christianity.
- [35:45]
A
On the Scriptures.
- [35:46]
B
Yeah, on the Scriptures. It's not Catholic, it's not Protestant. It's something in. But the number one problem with it really, outside of this other portion, is that he's developed this to work within the system, that what Christianity is, is the law. It's the way to order your life.
- [36:03]
A
Correct.
- [36:04]
B
And so we'd actually have to get to what Christianity is before we get to is it true? Because he's not actually. That's the biggest unorthodox part of his life.
- [36:11]
A
I tried to allude to that by saying, what does Jesus actually say about himself? What does the Bible actually say about Jesus? What does the Bible actually say about itself and its purpose? Because, yeah, I think he's missing outside of just the scriptural authority section of this discussion, he's missing nobody, apparently nobody has preached to this guy the actual gospel of Jesus Christ.
- [36:33]
B
I would guess the church his wife goes to is probably all about ordering your life in a Christian way.
- [36:39]
A
He says things like, if there are Christians, Jesus Christ was the only one. The answer to that needs to be amen. You're right. He was the only Christian. Good thing. He shares his Christianity then with you too. If you mean by that that he was the only one that lived the perfect life in accordance with God's will. Yes, you're right. He. He's it. And he's the only one there will ever be. Let's talk about what Jesus has done for you in his life, death and resurrection and how he Hands over to you all those things that you obviously know you are not. You say he's the only Christian because you know you're failing in this. Jordan Peterson.
- [37:17]
B
I think the laws worked on him, right? Because he'll. In other clips, in other places, you can hear him talk about being afraid of the idea that God is real, being afraid of Christian God.
- [37:27]
A
He should be terrified.
- [37:28]
B
That was the context of that. That when you keep saying where he's talking about, like he's a. He doesn't want Christ. Christ is the only Christian because he knows he hasn't fulfilled the law, even though he's apparently an arbiter of it. He knows that other Christians haven't.
- [37:46]
A
What somebody, when he's saying this over a couple beers and he says, I'm terrified that if this is actually true, I'm terrified about the outcome. What if somebody laid their hand on his head and said, Dr. Peterson, in the name of Jesus Christ, I forgive you of all your sins.
- [38:00]
C
This is what I'm thinking over on my side of the United States, we still have some time, but I, I think that the law is really working on this guy. That it's just, it's fascinating. And when he's reduced to tears, talking all this stuff, not that that's necessarily a sign of, of contrition or anything like that, but I think he, like you said, Scott, or was it you, Caleb? He needs a really good preacher. He needs a preacher and, you know.
- [38:28]
A
He'S a preacher of the gospel.
- [38:30]
C
I don't want to sound too sappy, but he needs to be in our prayers as well because he is so influential. He's a broken man, it seems.
- [38:41]
A
I mean, the invitation, I have an extra house he can stay in. The invitation to come to Big Bear and go to the brewery over some beers and I'll even bring a pastor friend along with me to hear the gospel, to have his sins forgiven, to ask some of these questions of people that aren't going to tell him the exact same thing or be as offended at his questions regarding the Bible as other people are. I'm not offended. Like I said in the earlier one, you know, if it's wrong, we need to deal with those, but they need to be dealt with. Those, those perceived errors need to be dealt with. They can't just be overlooked for the sake of meaning. And at the same, at the same time, you know, he's right. His exposition of the law is correct. Right. There are righteous requirements given to believers in the text. And not a single believer that he has ever met or will ever meet, including himself, if he becomes a believer, including his wife, including his daughter are living up to them. And this is why Christians, too, need to hear the forgiveness of sins on account of Christ on a regular basis. And this is why non Christians need, you know, it's not apologetics and evangelism. It's evangelism. Answer questions. Evangelism. Answer questions, preach the gospel. Answer questions, Preach the gospel. Gospel. Answer questions, Preach the gospel. Yeah, that's how that goes.
- [40:04]
B
Yeah. It would be, I mean, like, would it be amazing for Christians in America if tomorrow Peterson went back on Joe Rogan and gave, like, an amazing, perfectly orthodox, shall we say, evidentialist Lutheran view of the scriptures on the Joe Rogan podcast? Would that be a big win for Con, you know, confessional Christianity America? Yes, it would be a bigger win for Jordan Peterson if somebody actually preached the gospel to him and forgave his sins.
- [40:34]
A
You know, the angels in heaven would rejoice more at Jordan Peterson himself coming to the faith, kneeling at the foot of the cross and saying, lord, I believe helped out my unbelief. Then they would over him presenting a Lutheran view of whatever on Toro. Now, if that in itself led other people to believe, that's a whole different story, which it might.
- [41:00]
B
Yeah.
- [41:01]
A
But the angels would rejoice, and the church should rejoice along with them if he were to come to the faith. Yeah.
- [41:10]
B
And I honestly, if, you know, he's had some interactions with some Christians online and on person, and I've never heard anybody, like, really try to hand over the goods to him before, too. So if you're listening to the show and you have the opportunity to hand over the goods to Jordan Peterson, you see him in airport.
- [41:30]
A
It was an invitation to come on thinking, fellows. I like I've said before on this show, I heard that he. If you paid him $5,000, he used to come on your podcast. I'm sure that number has gone up a little bit, but I'd consider it.
- [41:41]
B
Yeah, that would be funny.
- [41:43]
C
Is that the. Is that what you. You all pay?
- [41:47]
A
That's what we pay you?
- [41:48]
B
Yeah.
- [41:50]
A
Adam's can you know how many podcasts he's been on? Wait a minute. Seven.
- [41:59]
B
Funny guys. Well, this is kind of fun.
- [42:02]
A
We have one more, and that's the snake lifted up comment.
- [42:05]
B
Oh, yeah. So once you.
- [42:06]
A
So Adam sent this clip, and he's basically talking about, you know, Moses and the Israelites in the desert. And he actually had a good point. He's like, you know, God gets them out of Egypt. And does he send, you know, do they go right to the promised land? And his. His answer was no. God makes him walk around on the DES for 40 years. And, you know, that's not. It's not entirely accurate how that all goes down, but I thought it was funny nonetheless. And anytime I read that story, I always think about how ironic it is too. It just has a sort of metaphor for life, right? But he's talking about the time when the Israelites are in the wilderness. And of course, they're being Israelites. So God sends a bunch of snakes, and they're getting bit up by snakes, and they're like, moses, Moses, go talk to God. We got to do something about these snakes. And God's answer is for Moses to fashion a stick, right? Which in order, kind of for the snake to be draped upon it, seemed like that stick would have to sort of have the shape of a cross, right? So he fashions a staff, he takes one of the snakes, he drapes the snake upon the staff, he holds the snake up. And if an Israelite were to look on, the snake lifted up, the Israelite would be healed if they were a bit, right? And he's like Jordan says, Peterson says, well, why does this happen? And he goes right to Jungian psychology, which is you have to look at what you're afraid of. You have to face. You have to face your fear. And I'm like, that's an interesting interpretation, but perhaps, perhaps you have to understand that your salvation comes from the outside, right? And that the snake lifted up is in so many ways a precursor to your salvation in Christ. The symbol people who are familiar with it's kind of medical science called caduceus, which is the medical sign of the snake lifted up. And it means healing, right? That healing comes to you from the outside, in this case, in a way.
- [44:16]
B
You wouldn't expect, right? So why. It's the thing that, in this case with the snake, it's the thing that's harming you anyways. How is God. God is using a snake to curse you, and now he's using a snake to bless you, right?
- [44:28]
A
All mankind is cursed through Adam and his relation to the tree, right? All mankind is blessed through Jesus and his relation to the tree. And as the scriptures say, how much more than. So greater than the curse is the cure, right? How much greater is the cure than the. Than the curses? So much more that it saves everybody who ever has lived, everybody that's living now and everybody that will live simply by looking at the Christ lifted up Just as the Israelites were saved by looking at the snake lifted up. That's. That's the story there. It's. It's not a. You got to muster up some strength from within you and face your own fears. And look at it. It's. Salvation comes to you through the unexpected outside, and it might even look like the thing that's hurting you.
- [45:20]
B
And I think one of the things about unexpected is it's a way you. You would have never accomplished.
- [45:25]
A
Yeah. You would have never thought of that. Yeah.
- [45:27]
B
Is it? Yes. You would think of facing your fears.
- [45:30]
A
Yes.
- [45:30]
B
You. You would never think about using the same.
- [45:34]
A
Because the scriptures say man's heart is inclined towards the law.
- [45:37]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Well, guys, kind of a fun episode. We don't do this very often, so, you know, I. Maybe one of the other reasons we don't do social commentary is because it's a 45 minute show. Like, I think if you're gonna do this, no wonder these shows go on for two hours.
- [45:55]
A
I thought it was you were gonna say because I get so worked up about it and I'm uncharitable.
- [45:59]
B
Well, that too. But no, no wonder people have to have two hour podcasts to talk about, like, things going on. So.
- [46:07]
A
Yeah, but I think this is. You can listen to this and absorb this and go learn more if you.
- [46:14]
B
Want to learn more. Yeah.
- [46:15]
A
Cool.
- [46:17]
B
All right, guys, next episode will be a Q and A. I already have those questions sorted out. I know for some listeners, these have not been frequent enough lately.
- [46:28]
A
We were wrapped up in Narnia.
- [46:29]
B
Yeah, we. We were. Well, you know, the thing is, some years we've done like no Q and A episodes. Some years we've done a lot. It really has to do with how much a series grabs our attention and we want to keep doing those. And those tend to become uninterrupted if we're really enthused about them. So, you know, you can continue to submit questions through the website. I will, you know, answer ones that can't be answered on air via email. I'll try to include ones in Future Q&As. This year, 2022 might not be super Q and A heavy, but there will be more than the one coming up next episode. Thank you for listening. We will catch you next time. By.
- [47:19]
A
Sam.