Before I begin, I want to say that I admire Jordan Peterson and that he’s been an inspiration to me. He’s courageous in the fight for free speech, he’s authentic as he searches for truth while in the public eye, and he’s brilliant. He’s inspired a generation to see responsibility as an adventure. I’ve lost count of how many times I listened to his “At a Crossroads” 2022 Hillsdale Commencement Address. 

But we need to remain critical. Peterson has many Christian followers, but is not himself a Christian. His perspective towards Christianity has evolved over the past few years, but one issue remains the same—Peterson focuses on the Cross, while ignoring the Resurrection. A worldview that preaches the symbolic Cross without the physical Resurrection can’t actually provide a foundation for a meaningful life. It also sets the foundation for a sexual ethic that is inadequate in the face of modern gender ideology. 

Over the past several years, Jordan Peterson has filled two roles. First, as a sort of motivational speaker. He reminds us that speaking the truth is the way to life’s adventure, that faith is a form of courage, and that we can’t find meaning without suffering. Second, after his battles over forced speech in Canada, Peterson emerged as the philosopher of the anti-woke movement. This seems confirmed by his joining the Daily Wire’s media empire. He speaks about free speech, the importance of Western civilization, and pushes back against transgender ideology. 

The crux of Jordan Peterson’s self-help philosophy is in his rule “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).” When Peterson tries to describe the meaning of life, his usually-concrete thought sinks into a page of metaphors like: “Meaning is what manifests itself when the many levels of Being arrange themselves into a perfectly functioning harmony . . .  the lotus striving upward through the dark lake depths through the ever-clearing water . . . ” (12 Rules for Life, 201). 

The description is beautiful, but vague. Peterson tells people to take aim and work towards that aim. But what are we supposed to aim at? The lotus growing out of the riverbottom? Cutting through metaphors, what I get from Peterson is that meaning is the really great thing that happens when you try to live intentionally and delay gratification. A meaningful life comes when you try to live meaningfully. 

But, as St. Paul wrote, you can do all the right things, sacrifice, do good works, and still lose your soul (1 Corinthians 13). Because Peterson doesn’t look ahead to an afterlife where our search for meaning is fulfilled in communion with God, his meaning is a dog chasing its own tail. It gives the dog something to do and it distracts him from the kennel where he’s trapped, but it’s ultimately just circular movements. 

Peterson’s worldview, then, is not just incomplete—it’s problematic.

Without the resurrection of the body, there is ultimately no purpose in pushing through suffering (see Romans 6 and 8). Goodness becomes a matter of willpower encapsulated in 12 Rules for Life, gym regimens, and self-authoring programs. 

In his interview with philosopher Peter Kreeft (a Catholic convert from Calvinism), Peterson was unable to respond to Kreeft’s critique that his worldview is essentially the same as Norse mythology. Without the Resurrection, taking up the Cross is just a perpetual cycle of death and rebirth with no ultimate purpose. 

But Kreeft explains the truth in his own book The Three Philosophies of Life, “…the ultimate purpose of life … [is] the meeting and marriage between ourselves and God. This is the highest and holiest and happiest hope of the human heart” (Kreeft 99). We’re created for communion, not responsibility. That sounds like a false dichotomy since you can’t enter into communion with someone else without taking responsibility for your own actions. But the responsibility is the means to the end, not the end itself. We should be wary of something that demotes Christianity to self-help or spiritual strength-training. 

Our ultimate destination isn’t the foot of the Cross, it’s God’s banquet table. 

Peterson’s lack of belief in the Resurrection is most obviously a problem for his sexual ethics. Peterson preaches traditional gender roles, speaks against the transgender movement’s pressure on confused children, and criticizes modern gender psychiatry. But the philosophical basis for his beliefs is murky. He either focuses on biological reality to the exclusion of the spiritual, or symbol to the exclusion of biology. When discussing the sexual revolution, he argues that a culture saturated in pornography and feminism isn’t biologically sustainable. That’s not a sexual ethic. That’s sexual pragmatism. 

Peterson emphasizes the importance of biological reality and the importance of living out symbols and stories. But he doesn’t unite the two in sacrament. Without a spiritual rudder, biology can be overcome by technology. Men and women have different biological functions, but these become insignificant in a society with birth control and surrogate pregnancy. 

On the other hand, lacking a biological anchor, symbols dissolve into stereotypes and social constructs. As Peterson and Rubin discussed in his interview on gay parenting, some men are unusually nurturing and some women are exceptionally strong leaders. Peterson acknowledged the necessity of “masculine” and “feminine” roles in a family, but not the necessity of male and female parents. This is the problem with his worldview–archetype without incarnation. Symbol without substance.

This is concerning because Peterson is a sort of Gandalf-figure to the young conservative movement. The most important social issues we face are abortion, marriage, and sexuality. 

If he takes the general pro-family conclusions and rhetoric of the “conservative right” and speaks against the “woke left” without the “whys” of Christian morality, his message can only crumble. 

Jordan Peterson may do the best a modern non-Christian can do, but Christians need to make sure that our “philosophy of life” is founded on the Incarnation. The logos, the archetype, Ultimate Meaning—whatever word Peterson uses—became flesh, took up the Cross, died, then rose again in glory. Without this, there is no meaning.

In his essay “Myth Became Fact” C.S Lewis writes that the Incarnation is when symbol and story (myth) became real in the physical world. 

“For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: perfect myth and perfect fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher.”

We need to understand both the myths and the facts (or, in Peterson’s terms, the symbols and the biology) in order to appreciate their union. And Peterson can help us understand each individually. He makes helpful arguments based in biology, and he reminds us of the important myths and stories. But only Christianity unites physical and spiritual reality in sacrament.  

I’m not suggesting Christians swear off Peterson. But we shouldn’t treat him like a saint or a theologian. Peterson has inspired a massive amount of energy in the culture. We need to engage that energy and root it in orthodoxy. Peterson is good at teaching people to fast. Christians teach them when to feast. Peterson encourages people to think. The Church reminds us to worship. Peterson can help us critique modern gender theory. But without being rooted in the Incarnation, we’ll just fall back on stereotypes of alpha males and 1950s housewives. 

We have to provide an alternate vision. St. Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body teaches that the body expresses the spirit. Christians need a sexual ethic where rules are integrated with a vision of the human person created in God’s image and marriage as a sacrament mirroring the relationship between Christ and the Church. Without this, defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, condemning cohabitation, affirming biological sex, and similar “conservative” positions become arbitrary and legalistic. Without belief in the historical Incarnation and bodily resurrection, Peterson can help us fight the culture, but he can’t lead us in redeeming it.