We Who Wrestle with God: On the Border of Things
After Jordan Peterson’s wife, Tammy, joined the Catholic Church, EWTN’s Colin Flynn asked Jordan in an interview whether Tammy’s conversion was “good” for their marriage. “No,” he responded, “it has been great, . . . ridiculously good.” But when pressed on whether he would “embrace the faith of his wife,” he replied, “everybody’s got their own destiny. . . . I exist on the border of things.”
This is the great paradox in Peterson’s latest tome, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine. Peterson rightly extols the Bible as calling us all to heroic adventure and self-sacrifice and to boldly speak the truth. He explains how it is the logos, the Word, that will save and redeem the world, and how the spoken word, in particular, transforms chaos into being. Yet Peterson—and, as a consequence, his book—“exists on the border of things”: this work is a forceful defense of the richness, beauty, and truth of a tradition that he does not fully embrace. And it is a call to an adventure that he has not fully embarked on. As a modern-day prophet, Peterson has primed many for faith—myself included—but he remains, like Moses, gazing at the Promised Land but unable to enter.
Biblical Tradition, Past and Present
Peterson’s book primarily follows his lecture series on the books of Genesis and Exodus, but he also incorporates extensive reflections on the Gospels (his latest Daily Wire project), as well as Numbers, Leviticus, and Jonah. The amount of material Peterson covers is impressive, and the book is packed with standard (for Peterson) appeals to obscure scientific and psychological studies, such as a lengthy analysis of large language models and chimpanzee strategies for maintaining hierarchies. It contains valuable insights both for believers well versed in scripture and those discovering it for the first time. Peterson surveys the wealth of the biblical tradition with fresh and excited eyes. Yet, despite its nearly 500 pages, the book feels oddly empty.
Though Peterson dives into the biblical tradition, it feels like he has barely skimmed the surface. I was first introduced to Peterson’s body of work as an agnostic, and his study of Genesis was eye-opening and riveting. It prepared me to receive the grace of conversion, introducing me to the Church’s deep and multi-faceted understanding of the Bible. But the more closely I read the works of the Church Fathers and delved into the richness of Church teaching, the more I realized how much Peterson was missing.
For example, a whole chapter of his book is devoted to how the story of Noah points to an understanding of “God as a call to preparation.” His analysis is not wrong, but it is odd that he fails to mention that this tradition of preparation is lived out by millions of practicing Jews and Christians to this day. The liturgical year is, in many ways, a study in preparation and feast. And even within the Mass (and the traditional Latin Mass, in particular), each section begins with preparation: preparation to approach the altar, preparation to read from the Gospels, and preparation to consecrate and then receive the Eucharist. The call to preparation exemplified in Noah is part of our lived tradition. Understanding the biblical roots of the tradition of preparation is valuable, and there is much to learn from Peterson’s work in that respect. But Peterson’s omission reminds me of Steve Ray’s joke: “Catholics know their Bible. They just don’t know it’s in the Bible.”
History, Allegory, and Saints
Similarly, the theme of We Who Wrestle with God is our struggle with ultimate reality, and how we have to contend with it and strive for the highest good, sacrificing anything and everything to that end. This is, of course, exemplified by the Cross. But Christ’s crucifixion (and resurrection) is not merely a story that illustrates a fundamental feature of reality. Peterson’s focus on the moral and psychological interpretation of Scripture does follow in the tradition of the Church Fathers, but he errs by reading it solely through that lens. The claims of Judaism and Christianity are not just moral but historical. The Bible refers to the Assyrian and Babylonian empires; the Gospels discuss Pontius Pilate and other historical figures. The Nicene Creed is centered on historical claims about Jesus’s life. The biblical authors did not write merely in allegory and metaphor (though they often did); they made claims about historical figures and historical events. Peterson does not address the historicity of the Bible, which would have enhanced the moral and psychological reading he prefers. Yes, fiction can be true if it points to deep, eternal realities—but it is still fiction. The Bible arguably claims something more difficult to wrap one’s mind around: that it is metaphorically, anagogically, morally, and historically true. We worship a God who shapes the very nature of reality to prove a deep moral point.
Peterson sometimes claims it is impossible for people to imagine what true belief in God or radical commitment to the highest good and ultimate sacrifice would look like. Indeed, most of us have failed to walk that narrow path—but the saints have. In another omission, Peterson overlooks the many revered men and women who lived in radical commitment to the highest good, often to the point of martyrdom.
What Is Real?
We Who Wrestle with God is Peterson’s turn toward theology, but I wish he had spent more time on psychology, since this is his area of true expertise. His perspective is unique because it links deep psychological insights to biblical truths. In doing so, Peterson presents a compelling argument for God’s existence. Like the physicists and philosophers who study the nature of reality and discover that it points to God, Peterson, as a psychologist, can reveal that the essential truths of human flourishing confirm biblical teachings. This, in turn, indicates that the Bible’s claims on divinity may also be true. But in this work, Peterson is not willing to explore this connection.
At an important point in the book, Peterson questions the profound moral and psychological truths in the biblical stories: “Does that make the divine real?” He further explains that it depends on the meaning of real, so the answer to the question is “a matter of definition, in the final analysis—and, therefore, o[f] faith.” I agree that it requires faith to answer “yes,” but it is not a matter of definition. Faith is not the practice of defining terms, but of “assent to belief,” as St. John Henry Newman put it. Peterson posits that the reality of the divine is a “matter of definition” because he is unwilling to claim that God is actually real. For Christians, however, the “unseen world” is more real than the visible, and God is not only real but the foundation and source of all reality.
So, what does it mean to have faith and to believe? Peterson often replies that he acts as if he believes—and, to be fair, that is a fundamental part of faith. Faith is often misunderstood as an emotion or feeling; it is much more abiding than that. Faith, like love, is an act of will, directed toward ultimate truth. Though we may not always feel that we believe, we act as though we do, and we should. Yet emotional and intellectual assent is also important. It is a “both/and.” But what is the “and”? The “and” is arguably the most important piece of our journey to salvation—the acceptance of the unmerited, incomprehensible gift of grace.
The book ends with a rejection of the Nietzschean proclamation that “God is dead.” Instead, Peterson concludes, “Is God dead? No. Deus Renatus Est.” God is reborn. But God is not reborn. He has been here all along, as has the faith in him that Peterson extols. It has been borne forth for thousands of years by faithful Christians celebrating the mysteries of the liturgy, preparing season after season, and embracing the call to sainthood. While Peterson would probably not deny any of that, the book also does not acknowledge it. Peterson is not just rediscovering the tremendous wisdom of the past; he is encountering the wisdom of the present. But this doesn’t sound quite as intellectually interesting.
“Help My Unbelief.”
We Who Wrestle with God remains a fascinating but ultimately unsatisfactory book. As a culmination of years of research and discussion, the book still feels incomplete. Relying on the great biblical tradition, Peterson calls for self-sacrifice, for courage, for responsibility—all noble and Christian virtues, to be sure. Yet the author is himself unwilling to step fully into the journey. Christ calls us, like the wealthy young man, to forsake what is hardest for us to forsake (Mark 10:17–22), to give up anything competing with the “pearl of great price” (Matthew 13:45–46). Peterson is unwilling to take the hardest step of all by relinquishing his self-identity as someone “on the borders,” embracing God’s mercy, and accepting a new identity as His child.
As Christians, we must accept that our faith is broken and imperfect, and yet trust that God’s unmerited and unending grace will enable us to “merit to be co-heirs to eternal life.” We Who Wrestle with God leads us to the door of the Church, but we must take the step our guide is unwilling to take and enter inside. Once inside, we will continue to “wrestle” with our Lord, praying, “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). We pray for Peterson to join us, not because we need an ally—the Truth will fend for itself, as Saint Augustine put it—but because we hope he can embrace the “ridiculously good” gift of grace, cross the border, and become a brother united in Christ.
Image by Gage Skidmore and available on Wikimedia Commons.