March 26, 2020 Show with Ron Dart on “Myth & Meaning in Jordan Peterson: A Christian Perspective”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 26th day of March, 2020, and I'm delighted to have for the very first time on the program

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Ron Dart to discuss an issue that has created a lot of controversy in the body of Christ, in fact, even in the secular world.

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This is going to be included in his book that we are addressing,

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Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, A Christian Perspective, and Ron Dart, who teaches in the

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Department of Political Science, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at the University of the

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Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia, has authored or co -authored 35 books that deal with the interface between literature, spirituality, and politics, including the

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North American High Tory Tradition, published by American Anglican Press, and Christianity and Pluralism, published by Lexham Press, who also publish

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Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, A Christian Perspective, Ron's latest book that he has edited, along with a number of other contributing authors, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Ron Dart.

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Well, it's a privilege to be with you. Well, this is a subject that is quite fascinating to me because I know people on both sides of the

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Jordan Peterson controversy within Christianity, within evangelical

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Christianity. When I say both sides, I mean those that admire him so much.

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They believe that Christians should readily make much use of his material and watch his videos and take him very seriously as a knowledgeable expert in many areas, and then you have others who warn people to stay away from him because they think that he will mislead many in the body of Christ, since he is not an evangelical

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Christian who believes in the inerrancy of scripture and so on. But if you could, give us, in summary, a description of who

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Jordan Peterson is. Well, I think probably, I mean there's various ways or portals into your very good question, is that he's been very active since the 1990s and into the first decade and more of the 21st century in raising some big questions, particularly in a culture in which

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Christendom has vanished and Christianity does not have the public strength it once does, and secularism has come to dominate.

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And with the coming to be of a certain type of secularism, there's a moral vacuum has set in, and as a result of that, there's been almost a division culturally between a political correctness on the liberal left, which has formed its own orthodoxy in that sense, and then there's been a form of conservatism reacting to the lack of any sort of ethical or religious center.

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And Peterson, unlike many who will critique from the stands, he's entered the eye of the hurricane on this, and so there's a variety of reactions to Peterson, as I think you rightly mentioned, is there are some who uncritically sort of genuflect towards him, and say he's sort of the best thing since motherhood and apple pie, and he's, even a book has come out, he's going to, you know, save Western civilization, which perhaps is certainly a bit extreme.

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And then there are others who are very wary of him, in that he does not reflect, embody, historic, creedal, confessional

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Christianity in any sense. And so there's very diverse reactions, both within the broader

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Christian community, but also within the much bigger cultural, secular community itself, in regards to Peterson.

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So, as I mentioned, and as you have alluded to, there are those who fawn on him, without asking critical questions, and then there are those cannon -loaded who just keep firing and firing at him, both from within the religious community and also the broader liberal or progressive community in that sense.

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Well, I know that he is a Jungian clinical psychologist, and can you summarize what the difference would be between a

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Jungian and a Freudian psychologist, and what would be the main emphasis of a Jungian -influenced psychologist?

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Well, in the 19th century, what began to emerge intellectually in Western civilization was, broadly speaking, a critique of Christianity and religion itself.

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From within philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche, I did my PhD, one of my comprehensives on Nietzsche, he played a very important role philosophically in economics.

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Marx played a very important role, claiming religion was an opiate. Freud came along and pointed out that all religion is was a projection of either the best or the worst of us under the canvas of some notion that there is a god out there, but there really is nothing, it's just us projecting those things.

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And so that itself was a great suspicion of religion. Now, Carl Jung and the tensions between Freud and Jung hinge on this.

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Jung argued as a psychologist that, in fact, religion was foundational to what it means to be human, and there are basic archetypes or genetic codes in the human soul that, if we don't heed them, or if we ignore them or are deaf to them, leads to a cliff's edge for both soul and society.

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So one of the crossroads between Freud and Jung is a certain understanding of the importance of spirituality and certain mythic archetypes almost built right into what it means to be human, which

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Freud would deny, because he would argue that we are just conditioned beings with certain impulses and passions and ego, superego, ed, all of this.

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But basically it was a weakening from Freud's perspective of the religious impulse that Jung came along and said, no, no, no, be careful when you do this, because in doing so you're going to negate some of the deepest elements of what it means to be human in terms of knowing the psyche and knowing the spirit or the pneuma, and there are certain truths or structures built right into the human soul that we ignore to our peril, and in that sense

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Jordan Peterson dips his bucket to some degree into Jung, but he draws from many other sources as well other than Jung.

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And I'm going to take this time to invite our listeners to join us on the air with questions of your own.

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Our email address to do so is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please, as always, give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you disagree with your own pastor over the use of Jordan Peterson's works.

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Perhaps you're a pastor and you even disagree with your own fellow elders or your denomination over this, or some kind of a reason why you would not want to draw attention to your identity or reveal your identity.

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I understand that that would be a reason to remain anonymous. But other than that, if it's just a general question, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. What was the most compelling factor that led you to edit this book, Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, A Christian Perspective?

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Well, I think probably the subtitle, A Christian Perspective, might be a pointer into why

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I did this, in that there has been no... Well, first of all, Peterson has been very interested and committed to interpreting the

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Bible, and he would pack out audiences in Toronto and elsewhere when he would do lectures on Genesis and Exodus, and particularly also books versus chapters of the

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New Testament itself. So there has been no reflective commentary on Peterson's interest in the biblical tradition, and more significantly, the

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Christian perspective itself. And so one of the reasons we did that is, one, there's nothing out, two,

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Peterson has been addressing this again and again, and he's received a lot of criticism for more secularism, that why would someone trained as a scientist in psychology with a

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PhD in the area, why are you dabbling in things such as Christianity, which is dated, it's outmoded, it's of a previous age?

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But he's dared to challenge that dominant ideology, arguing, in fact, that Christianity, when understood aright, has perennial themes that will continually speak to the human condition, and the

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Bible itself, when understood in a certain way, has a perennial ring that can engage people in their all -too -human journey.

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So the subtitle, A Christian Perspective, was an attempt to say, okay, we're going to take the leads provided by Peterson in his various YouTube, the book he did,

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Twelve Rules, his earlier book, Maps of Meaning, in which he's hinting, he's pointing, there's breadcrumbs on the trail, that as it were, if you follow them, he's leading you to the mansion of Christianity, but you have to know how to pick up those breadcrumbs and follow them on the pathway.

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And so, since there's nothing been out on it, Peterson had pointed, I thought it would be an excellent idea to say, okay, let's bring together a bunch of essays from a variety of angles that reflect his diverse approach to honoring the

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Christian tradition, rather than as some form of hard secularism or aggressive secularism, for example, like the

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New Atheists, which want to see it as the problem, and say, how is he trying to rethink, re -establish, and convince people of the eternal validity of great truths of Christianity via the

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Bible. And you've already touched on the subtitle, but if you can explain in more detail the actual title of the book, especially in regard to myth and meaning, when it comes to Jordan Peterson.

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Okay, so really in the last three or four hundred years, there's been two dominant worldviews which have come to take front stage, one even more than another.

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One is very much a scientific, rationalist, objective information.

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Empiricism is the only way to know anything, and if you can't verify things through the senses, that they may be subjectively interesting, but objectively irrelevant in that sense.

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And in that sense, myth and the subjective and eternal truths have been banished from elements of that scientific, objectivist approach, and Peterson was trained in that.

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He sees himself as a scientist, not a scientist in terms of the natural sciences, like physics, biology, but the science of the soul.

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And of course, large elements coming from the Freudian tradition in that world, again, just negate the spiritual, the religious element.

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The other wing, which is really a complement to that rational scientific, has been the notion that there are great eternal truths, there is a structure to the human soul and society, and those truths are revealed to us through myths.

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And it's those myths that point out that it is this structure of the human soul, when we forget it, that there are consequences to soul and society.

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So what Peterson starts with, because most people, as I mentioned earlier, in a post -Christendom, post -Christian society, and my chapter deals with this, where people have lost their memory.

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Probably one of the greatest problems we have in our day, and I find with my students, is that you ask them what they know of Western history or the

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Bible, there's just nothing there, there's no memory. And we all know, for example, if we go to bed at night and we wake up in the morning with no memory, it's very hard to navigate, because we are part memory.

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And it's the same with the culture or religion or economics or literature, where there is no memory, people find it hard to orient.

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So what Peterson does is he starts, because most people don't have the

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Biblical story, in many ways, who've grown up in a secular ethos, and I teach at a public university, and I'll raise issues with the

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Bible or tell stories that nobody's ever heard of them. In fact, last year I had a student who'd never heard of the

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Bible itself. Really? Somebody who has never heard of the

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Bible? Yes. That's how far we've gone down a Memoricide route, in terms of a certain type of multiculturalism, in which in trying to be tolerant and open to all, we know nothing about the substance of anything.

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And so it becomes a dilemma. And so what Peterson does, he starts with, because most people are not grounded in the great myth, the great stories of Christendom or Western civilization, so what would they have grown up on?

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Say, Walt Disney. So he'll start with things like Peter Pan and the little boys who never grow up, and he looks like the dilemma of men today.

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Many who are passive, many feel impotent, many are cynical and suspicious.

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And what happens when a person goes down that road and does not engage real issues? Or he'll look at the

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Pinocchio theme, in terms of people can be dangled on strings, and what does it mean to grow up?

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Well, in Pinocchio he becomes a real person when he's willing to die for his father, Geppetto. Or Beauty and the

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Beast. The prince who is supposed to be a prince is really a beast inside, he's turned into a beast externally, and he's only redeemed through beauty itself.

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So these are myths, which of course are not historically true, no more than the great movies of the 20th century, which has drawn many people like C .S.

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Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, or Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or any of these things. They're not historically true, but the great themes in them cross over history in that sense.

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And the nature of what it means to live a meaningful human life, and know yourself at a deep level, and interact with friendships and family and society and religious communities.

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These are stories that are really myths. Myth is not an untruth in that sense.

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Some people at a popular level think, well, it's a myth, it's an illusion, it's a falsehood. A myth is an eternal truth wrapped in the garments of a story.

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And so there are these two traditions in the West which have competed. One's called the rationalist wing, and the other's called the romantic wing.

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And one has held myth very, very high in that there are truths, and we ignore those truths to our peril.

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And for Peterson as a psychologist who works with the breakdown of the human soul, he has worked,

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I mean, he has a very pastoral side to him. He's seen what happens when people are internally disoriented and don't know how to order their desires and their longings properly.

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What happens to themselves and human relationships and work and religious communities and all these things.

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So he tries to retrieve or find the old trails where there are the great eternal truths.

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And those are embodied, he would argue, not only via Jung, but many other people through myths themselves.

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And so he's trying as a psychologist to say, okay, see, what's the truth of the rational, empirical way?

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And of course he's published hundreds of articles from this approach. But he also argues there's something deeply empirical about ignoring the deep structure that has been put in the human soul in terms of the stories.

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And if we ignore those stories or don't know them, we end up making decisions that hurt ourselves, we harm ourselves, and we harm others in the process.

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And so, hence the title. So myth gives meaning. Without myth, we either create our own myth, which leads to meaninglessness, or we come to root ourselves in the greater truth.

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And he would argue in the Bible you have those eternal truths that we ignore to our peril.

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And a certain form of secularism itself, which is itself a myth, arguing that humans,

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Promethean style, can make their own meaning. They can bring into the world the best, the utopian world.

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And yet, of course, we see the implications of that in terms of sheer nihilism and fragmentation.

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So is the whole turn to myth, he argues, meaning in the deepest sense? And humans long for meaning.

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They long for purpose. They long to be oriented towards something meaningful, toward a north star, the ship to sail properly across the water of time, and not go all over the place in the water and finally wreak itself, and the people on the ship, other the church or society.

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So the myth in meaning is Peterson's attempt to say, be wary of ignoring the great truth or you'll wreak havoc for yourself.

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And here are the stories. So I'll start with what you know in an age of memoiricide, with Walt Disney stories.

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But then he wants to take people back to the great epic stories of Western civilization, which is certainly embedded and embodied in the

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Bible itself. You used an interesting word there, memoiricide. I know that that's a destruction of memory.

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And I have a listener question that I'm going to address momentarily, who asked about that very thing.

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But before that, how would you summarize, and this would be primarily for the sake of those who may be apprehensive about either your affirmations and defenses of Jordan Peterson or your critiques of Jordan Peterson.

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But how would you summarize a description of your own personal Christian worldview, your disciplines, theology, and perspectives?

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Well, I come from an Anglican background, which would be Episcopal in the United States, Church of England, obviously, in England.

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And within that, you mentioned earlier one of the books I did was Christianian Pluralism.

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That's an earlier book I did with Jim Packer, who I'm sure you know. Oh, of course. Yes, so I studied with Jim Packer in the 1970s at Regent College in Vancouver.

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Jim had just come to Regent in 1979 full -time, and then I was studying there.

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And so Jim and I were very involved in the 1990s as the Anglican Church of Canada, the

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Episcopal Church, was going through some crisis tensions, which led to a fragment in terms of the states that led the

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Anglican Church in North America. Within the Anglican tradition, broadly speaking, there are three heritages.

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One is very high Church Catholic, grounded in the Bible as interpreted by the mothers and fathers of what we call the patristic era from the 2nd to the 7th centuries, and that rich Catholic heritage of 1 ,500 years.

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Then there is the Reformed tradition, of which, for example, Jim Packer would continue to embody.

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And then there's the broad Church, or Latitudinarian tradition. So my background is

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Anglican. Obviously, working with Jim, my background is more Catholic Anglicanism, thoroughly grounded in the

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Bible as interpreted by the mothers and fathers of the Church and the great creeds of the Church and the seven major creeds and the confessions which emerge in the 16th century.

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So that's where I come from in terms of now to get into the full theology of the fathers of the

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Church, the mothers of the Church. I think probably to sum up, it would be the major creeds and councils, and certainly with many of the significant confessions of the 16th century that Anglicanism has tried to grapple with in its varied history.

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So for those who are interested, I've written a variety of works on all of that. For those who are interested more in my personal

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Christian worldview, which is part of really the unholy Catholic and apostolic Church as we find in the creeds itself.

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Now, I understand your fellow co -authors who have contributed to your book come from a fairly wide spectrum of theological thought and disciplines within Christendom.

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Can you summarize the spectrum of differences and why these authors were invited to participate on this project?

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Well, first of all, the authors who were chosen to participate or write various chapters in the book, they had all done some work on Jordan Peterson.

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I mean, they all come from a Christian background, so that's, first of all, important to note.

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But they had all, in their different ways, expressed an interest written on and had been influenced by Jordan Peterson.

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Depending on their journeys and the questions they were asking, they asked if they could address certain things, whether it was cultural

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Marxism or post -modernism or secularism or free speech, a variety of things like this.

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So, some chapters we didn't accept, not only because people didn't understand the

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Christian tradition properly to articulate what they were writing, and some articles just were not of the quality we wanted.

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Also, they were a little too reactionary in terms of what was being presented. Ecclesially and theologically, so the first point is these people were interested.

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There was a commitment, a critical commitment. Again, we didn't want genuflecting or demonization.

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I mean, that doesn't help us understand anything in a meaningful way, reactionary, too far one way or the other.

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Because Peterson is contributing an immense amount, probably, he's probably, I mean, he has been the last three or four years, probably the most prominent intellectual in the lion's den at the present time.

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And very few people, I mean, they can talk about these things, they can go to conferences and write books, but very few people actually go right into the arena and engage the issues in some of the people that would oppose you the most intensely via the media in a variety of ways.

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And he's obviously felt the pain and the struggle of doing so. People who did contribute to the book, variety, again, from the

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Anglican background, but a variety of people also from different ecclesial, theological, confessional traditions.

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Our criteria was that, first of all, what's your understanding of Christianity, broadly speaking?

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Two, do you understand Peterson? Do you know how to evaluate Peterson thoughtfully?

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And pick a particular theme that interests you. And as I said, people have different dominating questions in their lives on their faith journey, and Peterson, in his different ways, speaks to people.

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He draws them, he evokes within them longing, and he offers cairns or markings on the journey in which they then move past those markings.

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He's a portal thinker in that sense. He's certainly not an end destination. He's someone who points, and then you either follow those signs on the roadway of life to go further and explore deeper than Peterson himself has gone at this point in his life.

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Well, I'm sure that a lot of folks in my audience specifically would want to know, is there a representation of confessionally

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Reformed Calvinistic authors that have contributed to the book? Yeah, there'd be people who lean in that direction, and they're interested in how you would make sense of Peterson within a

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Reformed or variations of Calvinist tradition. But that doesn't dominate, because we recognize that Christianity itself and its breadth has many different approaches in that sense.

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So the book is not a Reformed or Calvinist read of...

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I mean, I've done interviews, for example, with... I don't know if you know Paul Vanderclay.

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He does interviews from California coming from a Reformed background, and that's one version of a

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Reformed background, and there's obvious variations within the Reformed tradition itself. But Peterson himself,

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I don't think you could say he was Reformed in that sense. Peterson is very much feeling his way into faith, and he's not...

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Right. Is he a theist? Well, he would definitely... Oh yes, I don't think one could deny...

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I mean, this is his critique of secularism as an ideology, is to say, to take an atheist perspective, he would argue that's ridiculous.

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To take that position, you'd have to have all the information in the world over all time to make a dogmatic atheist perspective.

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Right, you'd have to be omniscient to be certain that God doesn't exist. Absolutely, and he has the humility, and he also has the openness to...

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And of course, the great myths in the world are very much about an openness to the transcendent.

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But asking the question, this is where the myth comes in, and this is where his real question is, okay, if you're open to the ultimate, to God, to the transcendent, what does that look like when translated into your personal journey, in terms of the eminence of God in the soul, in the church, in society?

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And often people, as I'm sure you're acutely aware, can have all their ducks in order, theologically, exegetically, confessionally, but they can still, in their private lives, be disoriented.

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They can say and do things which are inappropriate. Hurt and harm can come in families which seem to be good people, elders of churches.

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And so as a psychologist, his interest is always, okay, you see

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God as your North Star, as the lighthouse as you cross the water of time, but what difference does that make in your soul, in terms of you becoming a deeper, a more caring person in that sense?

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And what are the, what Jung would call the shadow within what Christians would call sin, what are those sinful areas that, you know, we have not looked at and that have an impact on how we relate to people in speech and thought and word and deed, and how we relate to community, and so that we're not victims of our own misguided desires or disoriented desires, or our own drivenness in that sense.

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And his concern, then, is very much theology exegesis, yes, and that's very important.

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It's necessary, but he would argue it's not fully sufficient, because to be fully sufficient, his concern is always an anthropological question, is what does this mean for us, knowing ourselves and living the lives of much greater integrity in the world that we live in.

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And as a psychologist and as a counselor, he works with a lot of people, many who claim to be religious, and yet their lives are shipwrecked, lives are shipwrecked.

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And so he's always trying to thread together on the loom of time the relationship of theology to spirituality, or theology to the pastoral life, or theology to care for human souls.

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And in that sense, he's a shepherd of souls, and the stories of myth he sees as very helpful when people have lost their way, and I think most of us who are aware of what's happening in our world know there's a lot of people, you know, going down all sorts of trails which lead to hurt and harm to themselves and to others.

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Well, we have to go to our first break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Ron Dart, we do have several people waiting in line to have their questions asked and answered by Ron.

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But if you'd like to join those folks and get in line, send in an email to chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com, and please, as always, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

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USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

32:24

We'll be right back with Ron Dart and more of our discussion on Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson.

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36:42

I also want to congratulate Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham for their recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,

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Pastor Christopher McDowell. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

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That's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

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Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com Iron Sharpens Iron Radio depends upon the financial support of fine

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Christian organizations to remain on the air, like the Historical Bible Society. The Historical Bible Society maintains a collection of Christian books, manuscripts, and Bibles of historical significance spanning nearly a thousand years.

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The mission of HBS is the preservation and public display of ancient scripture, dissemination of scripture, to provide tools equipping believers in Christian apologetics with evidence for the

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today. Thank you, Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, for your faithful support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in to our show today, our guest is

41:34

Ron Dart. He is on the Department of Political Science, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at the

41:42

University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia, and the author and co -author of approximately 35 books.

41:53

We are discussing his latest book, Myth and Meaning, and Jordan Peterson, A Christian Perspective.

41:59

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. If you have a question, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

42:07

And can you tell us, before I go to any listener questions, why is it that conservatives, above anybody else, tend to be more drawn to Jordan Peterson and view him as an ally?

42:19

I think there's probably two reasons for that, culturally. Liberalism has tended, at a cultural level, to split in two directions.

42:32

One is what we would call a post -structuralist, in that there is no right, there is no wrong, there's just perspectives.

42:44

There's just different ways of looking at reality from our own subjectivity, in that sense.

42:51

And that particular approach leads to an ethical vacuum, in terms of people making decisions, important religious decisions, ethical decisions, economic, political, literary decisions, where all is just perspective.

43:08

And that leads to, it's like Yeats said, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. So on the one hand, conservatives historically have stood for positions in that there is things that are good, better, best, right, wrong.

43:26

The other side of liberalism, which is a reaction to its fragmentary one, is the political correct side, in which these are the issues, in terms of how you have to line up, in terms of gender issues, identity issues,

43:40

LGBTQ issues, immigration issues. And if you don't sort of goose step along those areas, you're probably someone from the

43:50

Catskills. And so that form of liberalism, with its political correctness, tends to silence people who don't genuflect to a fairly simplistic and reactionary understanding to difficult ethical issues.

44:11

And so conservatives take, one of the reasons why they're drawn to Peterson is one, he'll argue very strongly through myth, and as a psychologist himself, and what happens if people have no orientation in which there is no center, he sees the sheer catastrophe in people's lives when they have no sense of even knowing how to make decisions in a meaningful way.

44:37

But he's also very concerned, and this is who he encounters a lot in his public debates, is those who reduce difficult ethical issues to very simple, formulaic, what's called cultural

44:51

Marxism, in which there is the oppressor, there is the oppressed. The oppressed is the victim, and if you've been a victim, therefore no one can question the decisions you make about identity, about gender, about a whole range of things.

45:05

And conservatives tend to find that simplistic understanding of ethical issues distorts reality.

45:19

And Peterson is quick to critique these two sides of liberalism, and in that sense conservatism, at a larger cultural level, tend to find him an important cultural intellectual who articulates, in a very difficult and often acrimonious context in which he has gone, an ally in the larger culture wars in which, on the one hand, the social justice warriors turn on him viciously, the post -structuralists say, well, there is no right or wrong, and his argument, yeah, see where that leads you, and look at where the great myths, what they can tell us, that anyone who thinks that way, well, it's going to take you into a witch's cauldron if you're not careful.

46:09

So I think conservatives, in that sense, rightly so, find in Peterson an ethical, cultural, religious ally who allows them to sail through the still and the charybdis, on the one hand of relativism, and on the other hand of a simplistic and highly ideologically driven approach to the hot -button issues in the culture wars.

46:36

And so I think this is why conservatives are drawn to him, and the two types of liberals turn on him with all guns loaded in the major public debates.

46:51

We have a question from someone who is no stranger to the

46:56

Iron Sharpens Iron radio audience. We have Dr. Jeffrey C.

47:02

Waddington listening in today. He is the pastor -elect of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, and he's also a

47:13

Jonathan Edwards scholar that we have had on this program as a guest, and he's listening today and has a question.

47:22

In fact, he has two questions, and we'll probably have to wait until we return from our midway break before we get to the second.

47:29

I'm just guessing on that. But how do we as Christians benefit from Peterson's videos and work while avoiding the pitfalls of his secular viewpoint?

47:44

Well, they're two good questions, yes, very, very important. I think where Peterson can be an ally, in one hand, arguing very insightfully that to be open to the transcendent is to be more fully human than to ignore the transcendent.

48:06

To return to the great truth of the Bible is a way forward rather than a way backward.

48:14

I think he's offering to a Memoricide culture a return to the map that can orient people in their quest for meaning, give them landmarks, give them cairns.

48:32

In Canada, we call them anukshuks, so they don't get lost on the pathway of life.

48:39

So broadly speaking, he gives the big metanarrative in an age which wants to negate metanarratives, structure, order, and in that sense, he's very important.

48:55

When it comes to the secular, I mean, there's three types of secularism, and in that sense,

49:02

Peterson would be of the third type of secularism. The first type of secularism, as I mentioned earlier, is what began to emerge in the 19th century with people like Freud and Weber and Durkheim and Nietzsche and Marx and many others.

49:21

It's a very hard or aggressive form of secularism in which religion is the problem, the divisions within religion, the denominations, the religious wars.

49:31

So we're better off without religion. That's what we call hard or aggressive secularism, which negates religion.

49:37

Now, Peterson would be very critical of that. The second is what we would call soft or passive secularism, is that, yeah, religion will continue in that sense, but it has to be kept private, and when it gets in the public realm, religious people can say and do nasty things, they can be aggressive in worst -case scenario, they become violent in wars.

50:05

So Peterson would also argue against that type of the privatization of spirituality in the religion.

50:11

The third type of secularism is what we would call pluralist secularism, in which why shouldn't religious people have as much right to participate in the public square as anyone else?

50:25

And so what Peterson's trying to do is honor the sacred, the historic sacred, and how at the deepest level it brings the most meaningful journey to life.

50:38

And when we negate the sacred, then the secular becomes the sacred, and it's what T .S.

50:44

Eliot would call strange gods. And so I don't think in any way...

50:50

So Peterson, of the three types of secularism I have articulated, he would be close to the third, and he's very open.

50:58

His attempt, though, is existentially to discern, so what does this look like in people's personal lives, the sacred, as it penetrates the secular, impersonal, church, public, educational lives, in that sense.

51:17

And so Peterson is no ideological secularist in the first two types

51:23

I've mentioned. He's deeply committed to a recovery of the sacred and a re -enchanting, in that sense, of the world, given a certain type of scientific secularism.

51:33

And this is where he's often engaged the new atheists and many other secularists who say, what's

51:39

Peterson up to? He's bringing religion and spirituality and myth back into public discourse.

51:44

And his answer is, why shouldn't I? Because when we negate that, then the secular just becomes a new sacred and we're into a form of idolatry, in that sense, which shuts off for humans their deepest human longings for God and participation in what that means, both personally, communally, and then publicly.

52:07

So I don't know if that's an adequate answer to two very good and insightful questions.

52:16

And we will read to you, in fact, I'll read it to you now, and then you'll answer it when we return from the midway break.

52:23

Dr. Waddington wants to know, what role does evolution play in Peterson's psychology?

52:29

And we'll have you answer that when we return. By the way, folks, just to remind you, this is the longer than normal break that we have every day in the middle of the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

52:42

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show so they can air their own public service announcements, localizing

52:52

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City, Florida, which is a requirement of the FCC. So please be patient with us as we take this longer than normal break.

53:01

And use this time wisely, write down information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them, because that's the way you're going to further ensure that our advertisers stick around and remain our advertisers, because we depend on them to exist.

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And you're also ensuring a longer future for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when you keep our advertisers happy and they keep sponsoring the show.

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Write down the information provided by our advertisers, and also write down a question for Ron Dart about Jordan Peterson, and send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Ron Dart and more of Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, a

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Christian perspective, after these messages from our sponsors. O Hail the

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

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Just have a few announcements to make before we return to our guest today,

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Ron Dart, author of the book Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, a

01:07:24

Christian perspective. He's the editor of that book and contributor to the book with multiple authors who have contributed as well.

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First of all, folks, if you are a man in ministry leadership, a pastor, an elder, a deacon, parachurch leader, you are welcome to the free

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Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon, the Spring Luncheon, which is scheduled to be held,

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God willing, barring any further complications from the coronavirus scandal, or should

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I say scare? I'm sorry. The coronavirus scare. We are marching forward and planning to have this event unless we are forbidden to do so.

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It is going to be held Friday, May 29th from 11 a .m.

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to 2 p .m. And that's going to be held for the very first time at the

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I've known Dr. Mbewe since 1995 and have considered him a dear friend all these years, and he is extraordinary.

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If you'd like to attend, just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put luncheon in the subject line.

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Not only will you be hearing Dr. Mbewe preach for free, and not only will you be dining on a sumptuous meal provided by Bongiorno Conference Center for free, but every person attending is also going to be leaving that event with a heavy sack of free brand new books selected by me personally that have been donated by major Christian publishers all over the

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to 2 p .m. at the Bongiorno Conference Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania for the

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Spring Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon featuring Dr. Conrad Mbewe.

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Remember, this is for men and leadership only. Folks, as you hear me do every day,

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I have reached the point of the show where I am very uncomfortable because I hate doing this, but it's something that has to be done if Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is going to survive and remain on the air.

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01:14:08

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chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Ron Dart regarding the book.

01:15:23

We are addressing his new book, Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, a

01:15:28

Christian Perspective, published by Lexham Press. And our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:15:35

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And Ron, you may recall prior to the break that Dr.

01:15:42

Jeffrey C. Waddington, who is an author and Jonathan Edwards scholar and pastor in the

01:15:50

Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination, he had a third question that said,

01:15:57

What role does evolution play in Jordan Peterson's teaching?

01:16:05

A couple of ways of approaching that answer. You've probably heard of Francis Schaefer in L 'Abri.

01:16:11

Oh, of course. Yeah, I lived there in 1973 and 1974. I was the only person ever baptized in Dr.

01:16:19

Schaefer's bathtub. Wow, by him? Yes, by him. Oh, wow, praise God.

01:16:24

He had the whole community, Edith and Francis and Os Guinness and his new wife and a whole bunch of them came up for that evening.

01:16:33

So I was there in 1973 and 1974 when L 'Abri in many ways was at its high point historically in the 60s, 70s, and then, of course,

01:16:43

Dr. Schaefer died in the early 80s. Dr. Schaefer did a book,

01:16:48

Genesis and Time and Space. I don't know if you've read that, but it was very important when it came out, along with Pollution and the

01:16:55

Death of Man as well. Now, Francis Schaefer took a position that the genesis, you tracked it within time and space, whether he wasn't overly committed to a young earth theory.

01:17:09

He tended to be open to different perspectives on things like that without buying into a long earth history in that sense.

01:17:21

And so it was very interesting, the many conversations we had in Farrell House in Waymo, which they lived.

01:17:28

They finally moved up to Villar, two communities there in Villar and Waymo.

01:17:36

This issue came up quite a bit. But I will mention in terms of the book I added, without going into detail, there are two articles that address that question.

01:17:46

One was a former student of mine, Lawrence Brown. He's now doing graduate studies. It's called the

01:17:54

Jordan Peterson Genesis Lectures, Interpreting the Bible Between Rationalism and Nihilism.

01:18:02

And so Lawrence's very intricate analysis and approach to Jordan Peterson in dealing with that genesis area, particularly the first few chapters of Genesis in which people turn to it and interpret it differently.

01:18:15

The other was an author from England, Eskrid Sicklehall, who's Jordan Peterson, What is

01:18:21

Your View on Science and Religion? So for Dr. Waddington, interesting to know, he's a

01:18:28

Jonathan Edwards scholar. Both Francis Schaefer and Jim Packer were real keeners on Jonathan Edwards.

01:18:36

So good companions on the journey with Jonathan Edwards, anyway. Now for Jordan Peterson, so those two articles

01:18:43

I would recommend reading. And then if he ever wanted to contact me, we could have a further conversation.

01:18:49

If he had questions about those particular articles in the book on myth and meaning by Lawrence Brown and Eskrid Sicklehall, who's from England, he's contributed to that.

01:19:00

Now Jordan Peterson, obviously in the broader scientific community, there's a debate between young earth, old earth, old earth, how old.

01:19:12

For Jordan Peterson, this debate is important. It's significant.

01:19:18

But as a psychologist, he's interested in what is the history and development of humankind?

01:19:25

What are the truths they have given us through their experiences, both good experiences that lead to a healthy community, a healthy family, healthy soul, and what are those choices that people make that lead to the deterioration of the self and society?

01:19:45

So obviously the Genesis story of Eden, Adam, Eve, East of Eden, Cain and Abel, there's story after story,

01:19:54

Noah, flood. So what Peterson will do, his interest is less in dating the earth as what is the moral and ethical meaning of those stories for us today?

01:20:08

Because as a psychologist and as a counselor, there are those obviously who want to get into what does

01:20:15

Genesis mean, young earth, old earth, how old earth? But his interest is no, there are even deeper meanings in those texts themselves that have perennial relevance for the healing of the human condition, imperfectly of course.

01:20:29

And so for him, let's probe the choices Adam and Eve made. Evil appearing as an angel of light, what do you do when it appears, how do you discern that it is evil if it doesn't come with horns and tails?

01:20:41

What does it mean to live East of Eden? Decisions of Cain to kill

01:20:47

Abel, obviously the flood, the Noah experience, the story up to Genesis 1 to 12, stories like that.

01:20:53

So as a clinical psychologist, his interest is mining the text for the healing balm it can give people in their often confused and disoriented journeys, or for those seeking guidance.

01:21:12

What can the mother load of the Bible offer the hungry and the thirsty in terms of orienting them?

01:21:20

So there's different approaches to how people come to Genesis and the evolution, creation, evolutionary creation.

01:21:32

But as a clinical psychologist, his primary concern is how do these stories, when understood properly as delivering health and healing to the human soul and society, what do they do in terms of doing that and bringing the nutrients to the soul that is needed?

01:21:57

To some degree, if people get caught too much in the religion, science, dating, he would say that that can lead you away from the deeper spiritual, psychological meaning of the text.

01:22:09

And in that sense, I did a presentation two or three years ago. I've done four videos on Peterson.

01:22:15

But one, I looked at the relationship between mythical exegesis and mystical exegesis that is found in the fathers of the

01:22:24

Church from the 2nd to the 6th century, particularly the fathers of the

01:22:30

East, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianz in Basel, Chrysostom, and I'm teaching this semester for my better students.

01:22:38

We're going through St. Augustine's great work, The City of God, and in various chapters and various books, you see

01:22:44

Augustine looking at layered approaches to Genesis. And so, fourfold ways of reading the text is find it in his confessions as well, for that matter.

01:22:56

So this is Peterson. When it comes to evolution, his question is, well, be wary of going too far, just on an intellectual debate about young Earth, old

01:23:08

Earth, but be asking what the gifts of these great stories bring to the human condition and how they illuminate and enlighten us on choices we should not make and the consequences of making them and choices that we can make that open up the pathway of life.

01:23:26

Very similar to Psalm 1 in that, you know, the two paths you take. Well, thank you so much,

01:23:32

Dr. Waddington, and whenever I have a pastor write in, especially when I know the pastor is the undershepherd of a congregation that I can wholeheartedly support and promote,

01:23:45

I like to give information where our listeners can contact these pastors and perhaps even visit these churches.

01:23:53

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington is pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, and the website is faithopc, which stands for Orthodox Presbyterian Church, faithopc .net.

01:24:06

Thank you, Dr. Waddington, for your insightful questions. We have Kathleen in San Diego, California, and she says,

01:24:17

It seems Jordan Peterson is on the very precipice of becoming a believer in Christ.

01:24:26

As he says, he acts as if God exists, which he says is belief.

01:24:32

Has his recent bout with severe illness changed his awareness of relationship to God?

01:24:40

First of all, would you agree with her assessment that Jordan Peterson is on the very precipice of believing in Christ?

01:24:48

Well, certainly Jordan Peterson, from his early years where he turned against Christianity, which he thought was flaccid and weak and did not speak to the human condition in a meaningful way, was good for Sunday school people at an infantile level of human development.

01:25:06

When you grow up intellectually, it's completely inappropriate. And, of course, his journey away from Christianity at that point and going on to do his studies,

01:25:17

MA in Political Science, and then further studies in Psychology. So it took him further away.

01:25:24

Certainly she is absolutely right in that there has been an arcing of Peterson from his leaving

01:25:31

Christianity, of his upbringing in Alberta. He grew up in a small little town in northern

01:25:36

Alberta in Canada, in which Christianity just made no sense to him whatsoever.

01:25:42

It was superstitious. It was irrational. It certainly was not appropriate for a thoughtful, grown -up human being to coming to see that, in fact, it is the only answer to the big questions of the human journey.

01:25:56

And certainly in the last few years, as he has articulated his, well, certainly his lectures on Genesis and Exodus, his work,

01:26:09

Twelve Rules for Life, he certainly records again and again the importance of the Christian faith for his journey, the recent bout he has had, which really brought him quite low.

01:26:22

There is no doubt that his hunger is taking him to the table of life.

01:26:30

And so I think the question that's asked, she is spot on in terms of sensing and seeing that Peterson is finding his way to Christianity.

01:26:41

The question, of course, is what form of Christianity is he finding his way to, which is a legitimate question many are asking.

01:26:50

So from a secularism, sort of a hard secularism, in which Christianity and religion itself was something that was to be left behind, to his realizing that, in fact, it is in Christianity there are deep wells, and for the human thirst for meaning, you take the bucket of your soul and deep them, dip into those wells, and the thirst of your soul is quenched and slaked in doing so.

01:27:22

So there is no doubt that, explicitly so, Peterson is moving.

01:27:28

And I know many friends who know the Peterson family and his daughter

01:27:33

Michaela fairly well, and certainly this is, he's inching from an implicit interest in Christianity versus hard secularism to an explicit interest in Christianity.

01:27:52

And the question, as I mentioned, is what form of Christianity will, in the end, draw, evoke, and then hold him.

01:28:01

Given his temperament, he lives in the tension as a human being. He's like a doubting Thomas. And I think this is part of the appeal.

01:28:07

I've had more students come to Christianity through Jordan Peterson than any other thinker

01:28:19

I've dealt with. And it's been amazing to see some who have chucked

01:28:24

Christianity when they're young and have, like a prodigal son or daughter, wandered all over the place and through Peterson have returned home.

01:28:34

I've had many secular people who the notion of the Bible, why would anyone read that? That's something only for infants.

01:28:41

We've grown up through Peterson. They've come to see that, in fact, not only his turn to myth but his understanding of myth and Christianity speak to them at a very deep level.

01:28:54

And so Peterson has become probably an apologist for Christianity in a way very few apologists have reached in quite the same way.

01:29:04

So I think the question is spot -on and appropriate, and I hope in some small way that brought some clarification or clearing to it.

01:29:15

Can you give us an update on his health since our listener Kathleen brought it up? Yeah, he's back from Russia.

01:29:23

As you probably know, the family went... I mean, he's grappled personally. Also, this is why ideas are important to him.

01:29:31

But what's the relationship when you're... I mean, one of the chapters in the book is on Peterson and Soren Kierkegaard.

01:29:40

Peterson, in terms of his life, has struggled deeply with how one lives a good life.

01:29:48

Who are the women and men worth reading who can assist in that journey? And he lives with great tensions in his soul, and there's an integrity in that struggle, but there's also a painfulness.

01:29:59

I think there's another thing that a lot of modern or post -modern people relate to, the agony, the struggle, to know themselves, to live meaningfully, and how is that done well at a psychological, spiritual, not just assenting to ideas, but saying, what do those mean in terms of self -understanding?

01:30:19

So part of his long decade's journey is grappling with a whole range of interior shadows, dark sides, demons, as it were, and the exercising, metaphorically, of those.

01:30:34

He's going through a period of rest, rightly so, legitimately so, convalescence.

01:30:40

He's slowly mending. When a person goes deep down, you have to be gracious. Sadly so,

01:30:47

I've seen a lot of people left have just turned on him viciously and really are going after him.

01:30:54

To me, when a person is down, that's the time you put your arms around them and say, what can you do to be a kindly shepherd for them on the journey?

01:31:03

He's a tender soul, and so no one seems to have rock -hard skin. On the other hand, he's deeply tender at the core.

01:31:11

Sometimes people are, who project an image of toughness, confrontation. There's often a tender place deep down where they can be hurt deeply by the wasps of time that want to sting them.

01:31:25

He's had a period of time when, he rightly so, and I think those who surround him rightly so, have encouraged him to stop taking all the invitations because he was on a treadmill of hyper -business in that sense.

01:31:40

So this severe illness that Kathleen mentions is more exhaustion and depression? Is that what it is?

01:31:46

It's a combination of many things. I don't think it can be reduced to any one thing. It would definitely be a combination of exhaustion, depression,

01:31:54

I think mild addictions to certain drugs which were meant to assist him with certain issues, and then he became mildly addictive, and so he's had to grapple with that.

01:32:07

And so at a personal level, he's legitimately recovering, and I think dear friends around him are assisting in that process.

01:32:19

And I think as he moves out into the blue sky again from perhaps some dark clouds in the soul,

01:32:28

I think he will be cautioned to move at a much slower pace because the danger when you become popular is you can get on a treadmill and you're going faster and faster.

01:32:38

And he's been superstar number one for many people for a few years. He's given a lot of life to people.

01:32:45

I've had students who said, you know, I was ready to commit suicide and Peterson gave me life and made me not do it.

01:32:52

And others, of course, who turn on him, turn on him viciously. That wears a person down, and I think many sense in him a person who is grappling personally with very important personal issues but cultural, intellectual, political, literary, identity questions, and they come in through different doors into Peterson and they find him helpful in different ways.

01:33:17

But there's a price. There's a price you pay for being too popular and in particular for being put in the ring where you're punched at from all sides.

01:33:26

And I think anybody, at a certain point, it begins to wear them down. And I think this phase of his life,

01:33:33

I suspect as he turns a corner, there'll be a slowing down, a deepening, a maturing, and hopefully his yes and no is much more judicious and discerning.

01:33:45

Okay. Well, thank you, Kathleen. And by the way, I forgot to mention, both

01:33:50

Dr. Waddington and Kathleen have won a free copy of the book that we have been discussing,

01:33:57

Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, A Christian Perspective, by our guest today, which was edited by our guest today,

01:34:04

Ron Dart. And another winner is the individual who has a question

01:34:10

I'm about to read. And what I'm going to do, Ron, is I'm going to read the question and then have you answer it when we return from our final break, which will be a lot shorter than the last one.

01:34:21

We have Johnny in Queens, New York. What would Jordan Peterson's view on ecumenical religion, which claims all expressions of spirituality, ultimately leads to the same higher power?

01:34:37

And he has a second question that I'll read to you when we return. But you could start with answering that. Don't go away, folks.

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01:41:27

As you may remember, Ron, before the break, Johnny in Queens, New York, asked what would be

01:41:35

Jordan Peterson's view on ecumenical religion, which claims all expressions of spirituality ultimately leads to the same higher power.

01:41:43

And then he has a follow -up question that I'll ask in a minute. Okay, lovely question from Johnny. Thank you so much for sending it your way.

01:41:52

First of all, I would say, if you want to follow that question a little further, the book I did,

01:41:57

Lexham, that I did with Jim Packer, was initially published in 1998. We were critiquing our bishop's mentions of the spirit book, and then it came out as Christianian pluralism.

01:42:08

We look at four different models, the inclusive, exclusive, pluralist, and syncretist, and how, in one sense, they are all exclusive at the end of the day.

01:42:18

So there's nothing wrong with exclusivism, provided it's not just a crude simplistic, but there's subtle ones also.

01:42:25

But to come a little to Johnny's question, I don't know if he's confusing ecumenical with interfaith.

01:42:32

Because ecumenical tends to be churches coming together for the greater good, given the fragmentary nature of Protestantism since the

01:42:43

Reformation forward. But I think he's asking more an interfaith question. Peterson, in terms of two major principles he looks at in life, one is hierarchy, and the other is egalitarianism, he's very suspicious of where a certain notion of egalitarianism leads in terms of, all things are equal, both in beginning and end, and there's neither good nor right, best, it's just people have, people are all equal in perspectives, and so hence the end product of that is there are just different world views.

01:43:17

So he, Peterson tends to think hierarchy, which means there is good, better, best, perfect, there is bad, worse, worse.

01:43:25

In my chapter in the book, in which I looked at Amoricide, this is an area which I really, hopefully kindly and graciously raise questions about Peterson, because as he's opening himself to elements of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, the myths in all these traditions, then my question in terms of these great myths, is there some myths or stories or theologies or exegesis that are truer than others in the hierarchy of being, or of religions?

01:43:55

And I think, given Peterson's commitment to hierarchy, in opposition to what he sees as the dangers of egalitarianism, that there, he, and if he is inching towards Christianity, there's going to come a point where he's going to have to argue that if he presupposes hierarchy as foundation to everything, whether it's hierarchy of merit, hierarchy of skill, hierarchy of ability, you name it, hierarchy of a variety of issues, then you have to, at a certain point, reflect and are there some religions truer than others?

01:44:34

Are there some religions deeper than others? Are there some religions more profound than others? And in my article on Amoricide, this is a question, it's one thing to compare mythologies, are all mythologies equal?

01:44:47

Is the myth of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikh, Taoism, are they all equal?

01:44:54

Or is there good, better, best? And I think, as the previous question was, is

01:45:00

Peterson inching towards Christianity, and at a certain point, is he going to, as he comes kicking and struggling, as C .S.

01:45:09

Lewis did, into Christianity, he eventually is going to have to, depending on how he tries to make sense of that, say, okay, is one of these religions truer than another?

01:45:22

And that's where his notion of hierarchy is going to have to, you're going to have to start feeding these religions into that hierarchy, and if it's

01:45:30

Christianity, then he's going to have to say Christianity is truer, and they're not all saying the same thing, there's not many paths to God, they're not all different instruments in one great symphony, it's not a great rainbow coalition.

01:45:44

In fact, there's one color truer and brighter, the sun is more brilliant than the moon and the stars, and it lights up the world in a way that moon and stars cannot do.

01:45:54

And so, I think that's going to be the challenge for Peterson, as he applies hierarchy, not only at an ethical, an economic, a political, an identity, a gender question, as he is challenged to apply it to the bigger religious question.

01:46:13

And Johnny's follow -up question, you were starting to take the words right out of his mouth earlier, he wants to know what

01:46:20

Jordan Peterson's reaction to the exclusive Protestant view of Jesus Christ as the only way to the true

01:46:30

God. Well, I think that takes you, and I've taught world religions for many years, I mean,

01:46:35

I did my PhD at McMaster and Hamilton, which was the biggest university in Canada, and one of the biggest in North America on interfaith issues, so I've had to study

01:46:45

Judaism and Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism and Taoism, and we have a large

01:46:51

Sikh community where I live. It's a big question that's being asked, and to break that question down, you then have to begin to ask the question, what are the claims the

01:47:02

Jewish prophets are making? And how would they compare to Jesus' claims?

01:47:09

And how is Christianity different in terms of the incarnation of Christ? You don't get anything like that in Judaism.

01:47:15

When Jesus was tried by the Sanhedrin, the notion that somehow God becomes human, this was foreign to a certain exegetical read.

01:47:24

Islam is Muhammad, how is Muhammad different from Jesus? Very, very different, very, very different in that sense.

01:47:30

Islam is closer to Judaism in terms of a prophetic tradition, but Christianity, with its notion of God becoming human, is very, very different.

01:47:40

And then, of course, within Hinduism, the avatars, what's the difference between an avatar and the incarnation, or Buddhism, or bodhisattva?

01:47:52

So the question that's being asked is a very big question, which I can't answer in two minutes. It would be unfair to the great major and minor religions of the world.

01:48:02

But important to note, perhaps by the way of concluding, that all religions exclude at a certain point and so whether we do the pluralist, well, pluralism excludes other traditions from making absolute claims in that sense.

01:48:17

Pluralism becomes an absolute. Syncretism excludes different religions from making absolute claims and it becomes its own absolute, so it excludes.

01:48:28

Inclusivism seems to include, but at a certain point, it excludes claims from the other traditions.

01:48:35

And so, sadly so in our culture, exclusivism has become a boogeyman word without realizing all traditions at the end of the day subtly or obviously exclude something else.

01:48:49

And there's nothing wrong with exclusivism because all traditions in that sense, whether liberalism as a tradition, or Marxism as a tradition, or leftist traditions or right, they exclude.

01:49:02

And so at a certain point there has to be a rethinking at a more meaningful level that exclusivism is not the nasty word people think it is because it's practiced all the time.

01:49:14

Two and two equals four. It excludes two and two equals five. These are basic truths that often a sentimental approach to reality or truth does not want to face into and then what it does, it makes intellectual discussion misty rather than clear -headed and thoughtful.

01:49:36

Right, and even the leftists who are believers that all religions lead to God, they would typically exclude from that exclusivist

01:49:49

Christian identity. Absolutely, absolutely, sure. We have a question about the

01:49:56

Memoricide that you have been mentioning throughout, well at least several times during the broadcast. Somebody who has also been a guest on this program,

01:50:05

Dr. Latane C. Scott. She's a former Mormon who came to Christ and she's a prolific writer and poet and scholar.

01:50:15

And Dr. Latane C. Scott asks, what is

01:50:21

Memoricide and what is Peterson's relationship to Memoricide and what is a

01:50:29

Christian response to Memoricide? Well, Memoricide essentially, you define it as a loss of memory.

01:50:40

People who have forgotten, I mean at a personal level, people are just losing their memory. But at a cultural, historic level, it's people who know no more of the story of their history.

01:50:54

Kind of like Fahrenheit 451, perhaps? I mean, you can look at it that way. I mean, say popular films, you can get something like the

01:51:03

Arnold Schwarzenegger film. What's that one? It was very popular. He lost his, he's reconditioned.

01:51:11

Total Recall, or Born Identity, or stuff like that. They lose their memory and the process of recovering their memory is actually the recovery of themselves, of who they actually were.

01:51:24

So Memoricide is, you know, if I ask many of my students today in classes, tell me what your understanding is of Plato or Aristotle or Cicero or Seneca or the

01:51:35

Bible or different ways of approaching the great themes of the Bible or patristic thought or medieval.

01:51:41

What's Bonaventure or Aquinas? You know, Charlemagne, if you read your Luther, your Calvin, do you know your

01:51:47

Thomas Morey, your Erasmus, your Jonathan Edwards? It's like there's a blank, there's nothing there. And when we have no memory, then we become vulnerable to whatever people tell us.

01:51:59

Memory in history is a form of intellectual self -defense in that sense. And without memory, people are vulnerable to whatever they're told.

01:52:09

And then there's a whole form of leftist thinking that wants to trash the history as a bunch of dead white men, you know?

01:52:17

And so conservatism at its best is about retrieving memory, retrieving the old paths, the old trails.

01:52:25

For Peterson himself, his turn to myth is an attempt to say these old stories will give you memory, which will give you a means of oriented, they're a map of the soul and society and civilization.

01:52:40

And this is why he turns again and again to myth as the map of meaning. Like his first great work, it's quite a hefty tome.

01:52:48

Many don't read it because it's quite demanding. It came out in the late 90s.

01:52:53

But he argues that myth is the map to meaning and to memory. And with memory, we learn to orient again properly.

01:53:02

But when you have people that have no memory of anything, which dominates significant elements of our culture, they're very vulnerable to the media pundits who hawk all sorts of messages of meaning.

01:53:16

I would say with Peterson then, he is trying to give people via myth, initially myths they know through popular movies, but he wants to take them far beyond that, back to the great stories of the

01:53:31

Bible, Western civilization, and other civilizations. And as the previous, as Johnny asked the question, then his big issue,

01:53:40

I think as he moves into the future, is on the hierarchy of goods or of virtues, and more significantly of religions, which is the best of the good, better, best, and what are dangerous ones as well in terms of bad, worse, worse.

01:53:57

They're not all equal. They do point to different places. Important to know where they're pointing and where you end up if you follow those trails.

01:54:06

And her final question was about what should a Christian response be? Obviously, if Christians adhere to a book that, if you're including the

01:54:17

Old Testament, dates back over 3 ,000 years, obviously against, enforced, memoricide anyway.

01:54:27

Oh, absolutely, yes. I mean, one of the dilemmas is sort of a dialectical progressivism and of the

01:54:38

Enlightenment itself. There's the notion the past is the dark ages. They're not as enlightened as us.

01:54:44

The level of thinking was not as substantive, but we enlightened liberals who are progressing ever forward,

01:54:50

Hegelian -like, into the future. We really know and we really understand. It's sort of a secularized form of perverted

01:54:58

Puritanism, where the pure ones who really know.

01:55:04

And that secular liberalism becomes its own fundamentalism by which the past is seen as problematic, but the future is rosy.

01:55:14

And that distorts then the wisdom of the past and how in standing on the shoulders of those who've gone before us, we see further.

01:55:24

But if we have no shoulders we're standing on, if we have no map, if we have no history, then we're very vulnerable to it as ever -trendy in culture, and we don't know how to respond to the challenges because we have no story by which to respond to it.

01:55:37

And finally, I'd like to ask you, how do you believe, and what is the consensus of the authors in your book, about how pastorally undershepherds of Christ's church should be responding to Jordan Peterson and counseling their congregants?

01:56:00

Well, I think with anybody who takes front stage on the large cultural issues of time, a good pastor who's theologically and biblically grounded, and I think first of all, when people come to them with an interest in Peterson, they should welcome it, and say, yes, let's form groups, host groups or public discussions so the pastor should be informed about someone that's prominent on stage in which younger people, adults, older people are coming to them.

01:56:38

So there should be a welcoming, a hospitable side given the presence of Peterson publicly.

01:56:44

Secondly, and equally important, there should be the hospitable side, but there should also be raising the critical questions.

01:56:51

So what is the good he is contributing? What's his appeal? What, in terms of the larger issues he's addressing, perhaps the church itself is not addressed, and he's doing a work of apologetics in the way some apologists have not had the same appeal as Peterson, but also critical reflecting.

01:57:12

That's the nature of any judicious, discerning human being. Pro contra, what is the good?

01:57:17

Sic et non, the yes and no. So a good theological pastor, grounded in the biblical sources and the

01:57:24

Christian tradition, what they can do is see this as an opening for themselves and then for their congregation, their church or their parishes as a chance to begin to think more deeply about how they understand their faith, how they apply it, and then how they engage their culture.

01:57:42

And Peterson, in that sense, being a means of a deeper way of growing into faith, judiciously understanding faith, and then engaging the broader culture with their faith.

01:57:53

Well, I want to thank you so much for being such a superb guest today. I look forward to your return to this program, and I just want our listeners to know that Lexham Press, their website is lexhampress .com,

01:58:09

L -E -X -H -A -M. You can also purchase this book, Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, A Christian Perspective, from cvbbs .com,

01:58:19

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who sponsored this program, cvbbs .com. And, Ron, did you care to provide our listeners with any contact information for you personally?

01:58:31

Well, I mean, people, if they want to continue the conversation, they could always email me at home.

01:58:37

It's just rdart, rdart at shaw, S -H -A -W dot

01:58:43

C -A. If anyone wants to continue the conversation, I'd be delighted to continue the conversation with those who perhaps want to go further down the pathway.

01:58:55

Two hours, you can only cover so much terrain as we ramble across sort of the mountain of Peterson himself.

01:59:02

But I want to thank you very much for at least opening up the possibilities to discuss, obviously, a very significant figure in the last four or five years in North America and Europe.

01:59:15

And his presence has been felt, and people have responded, and hopefully the book will take wings and fly.

01:59:22

Amen. Well, as I said, it's been a very rich pleasure for me to interview you. I look forward to return visits from you.

01:59:30

And I want our listeners to always remember, for the rest of your lives, that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.