Jordan Peterson and Christianity (Part II): Culture and Immortality

“In our lifetimes, many populations in Europe will age and shrink drastically due to their lack of belief in the possibility of transcending death, a belief that undergirds culture.”

In my last essay on Jordan Peterson and Christianity, I laid out the issues I have with his take on Christian doctrine and his conception of truth—and what this could mean for man’s place in the world. In this essay, I’m going to consider what this all means for Peterson’s views on culture, particularly in the West. Again, I’m aware that criticism of Peterson has often been unhelpful to downright dishonest, and I endeavor to stay away from that because it’s dishonest, wrong, and doesn’t bring anything helpful to our societal discussion. Again, I’m going to be writing from more of a Christian point of view, while using non-Christian philosophy to gain a deeper perspective on the relationship between religion, specifically Christianity, and culture.

Crystallization

The disquiet I have over Peterson’s interpretation of Christianity and its link to culture was crystallized for me in a blog post Peterson put out on November 16. In it, he writes of his marvel and emotion when seeing the chapel at King’s College, Cambridge. He writes that the chapel is:

“…a building properly regarded as one of the most beautiful in the United Kingdom, with vast vaulted walls and miraculously filigreed solid stone ceiling, suspended, impossibly, hundreds of feet in the air, extended above like trees in some cathedral grove, light filtering through the ancient stained glass like dappled sunlight through trees. Europe constantly brings me to the edge of tears with its visionary beauty.”