Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

WE WHO WRESTLE WITH GOD  by JORDAN B. PETERSON (Published by Penguin-Random House. Price in New Zealand $35) 

 

Even to mention the name of Jordan Peterson is to raise some people’s hackles. To tell you what you probably already know, he has a wide readership, often lectures, is frequently interviewed on television and other platforms, and has written about the way people should be able to grow up, take responsibility and mature. A Canadian, he was for years a professor of psychology and taught in many universities. So why did he become a person wrapped in controversy? It began when he ran up against the transgender movement. Peterson loudly protested against “compelled speech”  - that is, people had to accept and use the new transgender movement’s jargon or be sanctioned. Later, under pressure, the society of Canadian psychologists ordered him to be sanctioned… but they had to admit that it had nothing to do with what he had taught or what he had done as a therapist. They were basically saying that he was lowering the standard of psychology by writing and giving talks in theatres in a popular way. One can’t help thinking that there was much envy about his success and (as is also true) that he earned a great amount by his writing and appearances. After going through his “punishment” he decamped from Canada and he now lives in the U. S. A .

Peterson has not yet declared that he is a Christian, but he appears to be well on his way to becoming one. He believes that many ancient texts are still relevant to us and worthwhile when it comes to matters of ethics and morality. It is foolish to assume  - as too many modernists do -  that only texts of the modern age are worth considering. To regard only what is currently fashionable is to miss out what is essential in the making of human beings. He begins quoting Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Carrion Comfort” which suggests how difficult it is to deal with God, but how ultimately the struggle is rewarding. Hence the title We Who Wrestle With God, with the added words Perceptions of the Divine. His preface called “Foreshadowing: The Still, Small Voice” tells in detail the story of Elijah wherein the still small voice [of God] leads to consciousness and an awareness of a moral order. It is “what is the appropriate hierarchy of value through which the world most productively, generously and sustainably reveals itself”. He also asserts in his preface that “The Bible is the library of stories on which the most productive, freest, and most stable and peaceful societies the world has ever known are predicated – the foundation of the West, plain and simple.”

To make his case, what follows is presented to us over about 500 pages. We Who Wrestle With God is what is best called a commentary on the first five books of the Bible (the Torah – the Law), but also referring to some later Hebrew texts; and every so often Peterson quotes from the New Testament. He is exploring the importance of a universal ethical code. Tiresome though it is, to explain this long and detailed text the best thing I can do is to summarise each chapter. Thus…

1 In the Beginning

God passes to us consciousness and being aware of the goodness of nature around us. God gives us nurture and guides us. Man needs woman as woman needs man [Adam and Eve]. They complement each other. And “The world cannot survive if it is ruled by sex and power. Those forces degenerate into tyranny and chaos intertwined, intermingled and married when they are raised to the highest place. The world of the proper sovereign order is and must be ruled instead by the pattern of encounter with chaos, upward striving, truth, and voluntary sacrifice precisely in the manner that is most deeply and comprehensively encoded in the biblical corpus.” (p. 20) Further “Eve corresponds to Adam precisely as the Taoist yin does to yang. It is her job to bring to her partner’s attention all the concerns that Adam may have overlooked, involved as he is in his enterprise of responsible stewardship. He is called upon in that work to extend, expand, and update his naming and subduing in keeping with the new and even novel needs of the time, without too radically, pridefully, or presumptuously restructuring the entire tradition. Eve’s role is on keeping with the well-known personality differences between men and women, evident cross-culturally, and more pronounced in more egalitarian societies….” (pp. 23-24) Hear we have the idea that there is a core of behaviour, from primeval times, that is still relevant. Peterson makes a good case for God and the necessity of individuals needing society.

2 Adam, Eve, Pride, Self-Consciousness and the Fall

Here Peterson asks how much we can be ‘made in the image of God’. The Garden of Eden is the testing ground for humanity. Eve’s sin [the forbidden tree etc.] is hubris in thinking she embraces all peoples [as she carries all in her womb]. Adam’s hubris is to think that he is lord and master of all things as he surveys his world. As for the serpent, this is the temptation that leads to evil. Relating this to the present day, Peterson the psychologist says “The fact of the emergence of sophisticated self-realization with maturity implies that some of the fall is a mere consequence of growth. People abandon their childish naivete – not without pain – as they come to confront the bedrock realities of life: the harshness of the natural world; the tyranny of the social world; the sinful impulsive and hedonistic proclivities of the tempted individual. It is by no means obvious, in addition, that our descent into the cynicism that is so often the replacement for childhood trust and wonder is not an improvement, in some dark and necessary manner… the fall from childhood naivety is a prerequisite to maturity… To become self-conscious is to know nakedness, limitation, and mortality…” p.68

3 Cain, Abel and Sacrifice

From the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are therefore expelled and, hitting harsh reality, they have to toil. While Adam and Eve were made directly by God, their offspring are  made in part by human beings. The essence of rivalry and warfare is the desire to destroy what others have achieved, and this is the meaning of the story of Cain and Abel. Abel gives a real sacrifice to God, giving up something that was valuable to him. Cain does not give a real sacrifice, giving up something that was not valuable to him. Cain gives a mere token. This, says Peterson, betrays not only God but himself. As I see it, Peterson is now explaining how flawed human beings are and how there is a deep tendency in us to be tempted to harm others. Cain kills his brother… and thenceforth there are always those who are violent and destructive. This is often a struggle within us. Thus “humility and faith versus pride, despair and vengeful anger”. When referring to the legacy of Cain in us, Peterson often mentions Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, the murderer in Crime and Punishment  who thinks that he is superior than other people and above the law. [ Dostoyevsky is clearly one of Peterson’s favourite writers – he often mentions him.]

4 Noah: God as the Call to Prepare

Cain’s spirit has come to rule the world. Resentment at higher groups leads to murder on a massive scale. There is “a pattern of degeneration” i.e. human behaviour gradually degenerates. Hence the Deluge and the saving of only the righteous few [in the Ark]. In case you read this as a ridiculous fable, Peterson reminds us that “ cultures who concentrate too much on what passes for present wisdom (“we can dispense with the superstitious foolishness of the past”) will lose the vertical traditional orientation that protects them against mere fads of consensus.” (Pg. 161) In other words, there is much wisdom in this passage.

5 The Tower of Babel: God Versus Tyranny

As Peterson says, before Babylon and prior to the Tower of Babel, there were many tales in the Middle East of gods punishing those who attempted to take over the role of heaven. The story of the Tower of Babel was not new, but it emphasises the human attempt to usurp God. What was more important was the Bible’s critique of the moral decline of Babylon. There is in scripture reference to a “brutish form”. Peterson relates it to the present day thus: “The ‘brutish form’ referred to is the true identity lurking behind the mask of shallow sexual attractiveness monetized in the present world as often, and in so many diverse forms – all produced, distributed, and purchased by the technological sons of Cain… This is certainly the technologically-mediated subjugation of the feminine to the hedonistic and narrowly economic and, more deeply, the alliance of the prostitute (or her virtual equivalents) with the terrible spirit of arrogant irresponsibility characterizing the builders of the eternal Babylon.” (pp 200 -201) On his way, considering the denigration of morals, he quotes Milton and Revelation, depicting Hell as the loss of morality on a larger scale with the dominance of elites scorning moral sense. When he discusses the tyrants in the Bible, he sees them made in the pattern of Cain. In the modern world, he sees in Cain narcissists who want to always be the centre of attention lacking all empathy, and authoritarian regimes (Fascist, Communist etc.) who revel in controlling whole nations.

6 Abraham: God as Spirited Call to Adventure

Abraham [formerly Abram] has many flaws [as we all have]. He is given a covenant with God and in effect he is being told to dare to go beyond the comforts he is used to. In this case, he dares to go on a long journey, with all its perils [including the challenging degeneration of Sodom and Gomorrah]. Peterson interprets this as an existential problem that is still with us – the big price you have to pay if you follow the necessary call and the problems you will meet. Thus “If the cost of reality is death, how might reality manifest itself, to justify that price? That is the ultimate question, with the paradisal dream providing the impossible answer. God provides an intimation, with the initial call. If the requirement to strive forward in the world is accepted, the reward is limitless: a life well-lived, the establishment of a genuine and stellar reputation, the founding of a nation, and a blessing on the entire world. Is that sufficient to pay for death? There is no a priori answer. That is the curse of the true existential dilemma. Is it worth it? You are fated to find out along the way.” (pp. 249 – 250)  And in this existential context, God tests us, which is where we struggle with God. God tests Abraham’s wife Sarah [previously Sarai] by making her barren when she wants a child. She prays and prays. Only when she is very old, she gives birth to Isaac. God has tested her faith. God tests Abraham by telling him to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham prepares to do so. God stays his hand. Abraham’s faith was tested. [This story is often quoted by atheists as proof that God must be some sort of sadist toying with human beings. In fact this story says quite the opposite. God says that real sacrifice is a very hard thing.]

7 Moses 1: God as Dreadful Spirit of Freedom

 

Moses is the archetype of the child who was cast away [the baby in the bullrushes etc.] but who became a leader and liberator, both leading the Hebrews who were fleeing from Egypt and presenting them with a God-given ethical code. The burning bush was his moment of being confronted by God, the “dreadful spirit of freedom”. Peterson has in this section a heading called “The Commandments as Explicit Revelation of Custom” explaining how a good society has to be coherent. 

 

8 Moses 2: Hedonism and Infantile Temptation

 

As well as having coherence a society must have laws… but who makes the laws? Says Peterson, referring to our present age: “It is not at all that the Israelites are insisting, with the fervour of authoritarian believers that the God they worship must be the One True God; it is that the true followers of Yahweh – those who wrestle with God – are always those seeking to discover what constitutes the genuine highest and uniting principle and then you live in accordance with that revelation. This is very different than the power-mad insistence that a given ideology or principle of power must rule; it is instead submission to the divine order, accompanied by willingness to make the painful, genuine, and personally costly sacrifices that are the eternally valid markers of true belief.”….    “The legitimate followers of the God of Abraham do not create their own values, as the philosopher Nietzsche insisted so wrongly that we must do, in the aftermath of the hypothetical demise of the divine.” [pp.351 -352]…. And finally…

 

9: Jonah and the Eternal Abyss

 

Jonah was called by God to go to the people of Nineveh and preach against their wickedness. Jonah tried to avoid God’s summon and ran away. Through many events (the story of the big fish etc.) Jonah submitted to fulfil God’s call. Wrestling with God often means you know the call is right even if you are loath to do what you should do [to put it horribly simplified].

 

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In certain passages, while dealing with the concept of human beings “made in the image of God”, Peterson challenges the notion that human beings are made for no purpose but are merely the result of random procreation – the “selfish gene” idea popularised by Richard Dawkins.  “Even the biologists who should know better, are mainly onboard with this: the famous “selfish gene” cares for nothing, for example, but replication at any cost – or so goes the story. Could it not be possible, however and instead, that the interest of the individual, truly pursuing his or her great adventure, do and must align perfectly with the demands of procreation, all things considered and wisely understood? This would mean a harmony from instinct to heaven, so to speak, instead of any inevitable and necessary opposition between biological impulse, motivation or drive (all inadequate conceptualizations) and the social order – no Hobbesian war of all against all or Rousseauian antithesis of society and noble savage.” [p.270]

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Peterson’s Conclusion is eleven pages reiterating his main ideas, the greatest being first that the Bible is not a fairy tale but it holds much wisdom relevant to the present day; second, that life has a purpose – and that purpose will require us to face challenges in our life, hence the wrestling with either God or some other force or barrier; third, human behaviour is constant – we homo sapiens are essentially the same creatures now as our distant ancestors were in primeval times. Yes, we might have advanced with science, but there is still virtue, goodness, compassion AND as much anger, contempt, violence, jealousy, war, dishonesty etc.; fourth, societies crash when they are without real laws, and tyrants and determined idealogues [Fascists, Communists, Extreme Nationalists etc.] are always with us; five, there has to be a force [God] to remind us of what is essentially ethical and moral – the small voice; and six men and women are made what they are for a reason, so men cannot be women and women cannot be men. Men and women complement each other - not only theory but biology says so.

How do I assess We Who Wrestle With God ? In his prose, Peterson can be verbose. He often over-explains quotations from the Bible. On pp. 258-262 he tells us God knows that being human you have the capacity to take risks and therefore you can be an adventurer. He illustrates this by telling us the story of his sister. Some of his prose involves long and contorted sentences.

In spite of all this, whether you are agnostic, atheist, Christian, Jewish or any other religion, you will find much intelligence in this book, especially if you appreciate the value of wisdom coming from an ancient source. And if you don’t go along with everything Peterson writes, you can amuse yourself by picking holes in his reasoning… as I did when I read my way through Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion.