In Defense of Jordan Peterson’s Religious Beliefs

“However, [Peterson’s] general statements about God do, or would, find a home in Catholic and Orthodox theological dogma and tradition.”

Henry George has written a critique of Jordan Peterson’s claimed Christianity and views on Christianity. Peterson is undeniably a heterodox thinker—few people would argue otherwise—but his views on Christianity are not as Gnostic and Pelagian as George’s criticism makes them out to be.

Several of Peterson’s claims about God would square well with the Catholic Church and are in line with the Patristic Fathers, especially Saint Augustine. The identification of Christ, who is fully God, with the Logos is not only made by St. John in the opening prologue of his gospel; it is also done by St. Justin Martyr, St. Augustine, St. Athanasius, St. John Chrysostom, and all the orthodox early Church Fathers. It is true that Gnostics and other heretical sects did as well, and they denied the fully human aspect of the incarnation of the Logos. But Christ, as the Logos, is universally shared among the Church Fathers. More recently, Pope Benedict XVI spoke on the role of Christ as the Logos and the implications for rational theology since Reason became incarnate and was a person in orthodox Christology.

In his spiritual autobiographical and theological masterpiece, Confessions, Augustine took the time to confront those who denied that the Logos was responsible for creation and bringing order to the void of the nascent creation. “In the beginning,” Augustine argued in his books on time and creation, meant “In the Word.” As Augustine explained, “On the basis of all these axioms, a view may be urged to this effect: ‘In the beginning God made heaven and earth’ means that by his Word coeternal with himself God made the intelligible and sensible (or spiritual and corporeal) worlds.” Seven of Augustine’s surviving homilies on John 1 link the Logos, who is Christ, with the act of creation back in Genesis 1.