The Burden of Jordan Peterson’s Gospel
God Is Not Great, The God Delusion, The End of Faith. For months on end in the mid-2000s, these titles graced the New York Times best-seller list.
Written in the wake of the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks, these books – authored by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris respectively – became the sacred texts of a movement known as New Atheism, which vehemently attacked religion, including Christianity, for being not just mistaken, but stupid, hateful, and dangerous. New Atheism had significant appeal among young people, particularly young men, who could now use the internet to share their contempt for religion. By arguing and ridiculing faith out of existence, New Atheism hoped to usher in a future of unprecedented scientific and moral progress.
If Nietzsche had prematurely written in 1882 that “God is dead...and we have killed him,” the New Atheists were determined to finish the job.
However, twenty years later, it appears as if it is New Atheism that has bitten the dust. In 2023, Christianity Today proclaimed, “New Atheism is Dead,” noting that “far fewer British people agree with vitriolic assertions about religion.” That same year, Justin Brierley published his book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again.
What accounts for this “vibe shift,” this movement away from God Is Not Great to, if not quite orthodox faith, an appreciation, even pining, for traditional religion?
Well, as anyone who has read Augustine may have guessed, New Atheism left a lot of restless hearts in its wake. As Brierley put it in his book, “atheism was shown to be a very thin worldview, not one that could provide a reason for living.” In an interview with Brierley, the popular YouTube atheist Alex O’Connor, himself an admirer of Richard Dawkins, spoke of “the chasm of meaning” left by New Atheism. This chasm has been especially difficult for young men, who, in a world increasingly wary of traditional masculinity, no longer knew what they should be aiming for.
But then, something happened that no one could have predicted. In 2017, a secular psychologist from the University of Toronto named Jordan Peterson, who had recently come to public prominence by challenging a Canadian speech law regarding preferred pronouns, began a series of public lectures on the psychological significance of the book of Genesis. Through his Jungian analysis, Peterson unpacked the archetypal nature of the stories in Genesis, arguing that they are not only a source of timeless, practical wisdom but are the foundation of Western Civilization. To his surprise, his Genesis lectures began to sell out the theater and garner millions of views on YouTube. Obviously, Peterson had struck a nerve, and Christians and non-Christians alike began to take notice.
When Paul Vander Klay, a pastor from Sacramento, California, discovered that a Canadian psychologist was selling out lectures on Genesis, he couldn’t believe it: “Some of my good friends, who are really wonderful preachers in Toronto, are preaching to half-empty buildings. And here’s this psychologist who people are paying 30, 40 bucks a seat, traveling from all over the world to hear...not some little 20-30 minute homily on the Bible, but two plus hours of rambling thoughts. So, I began listening to him and thought, ‘Oh, this is like nothing I ever really heard before...What really fascinated me was the response he was eliciting...I began noticing people who were fans of Sam Harris or New Atheists or...New Age...becoming [through Peterson] interested again in church. That fascinated me. I thought, ‘What is happening with this?’”
Young men, in particular, resonated with the injunctions Peterson was drawing from Scripture: the need to bring order out of chaos like God in Genesis 1, the need to make the proper sacrifices like Abel in Genesis 4, the need to be prepared for the storm like Noah in Genesis 6, and the need to answer the call to adventure like Abraham in Genesis 12. These lessons appealed not only to those outside the church but to many inside the church who craved a more robust, demanding faith.
Since the Genesis series, Peterson has continued to draw many young people into the Bible. His mini-series, Exodus, premiered on DailyWire+ in November 2022. His book, We Who Wrestle With God, hit shelves in November 2024. And DailyWire+ started releasing his mini-series, The Gospels, in December 2024.
In the final episode of The Gospels, one of the show’s contributors, Jonathan Pageau, an Eastern Orthodox artist, expressed his heartfelt appreciation for all Peterson had done for the reputation of Christianity, particularly after the vitriolic attacks of the New Atheists: “In the past six, or seven years that you’ve been speaking, the capacity for people to simply dismiss these [Bible] stories has been reduced dramatically. And the very people who were mocking and making fun of these stories, many of them, are either silent or slowly recognizing the value of these stories to help inform our reality. And I’m extremely grateful to God for you for doing that.”
But for one so credited with defending Christianity from the New Atheists, Peterson still said this about Richard Dawkins during an episode of The Gospels: “I think Richard Dawkins is actually a pretty good follower of Christ…He’s obviously perplexed beyond belief by the miraculous element. And he’s contemptuous of what he regards as the superstitious element. But in so far as he’s served as a scientist who’s generally seeking after the truth, and as someone who is courageous in his speech, he’s at least a partial embodiment, as we all are, of the Logos.”
Richard Dawkins, a “pretty good follower of Christ”? Yes, Dawkins made headlines recently when he identified himself as a “cultural Christian.” But he has also made it abundantly clear that his contempt for traditional Christian doctrines has not abated in the least.
So, how can Peterson claim that Dawkins is “a pretty good follower of Christ?” Well, Peterson interprets Scripture under the presupposition that God (and Christ) is an “ideal,” not a person. God is a metaphor for “the highest good” (i.e., that which maximally facilitates human flourishing). And Jesus epitomizes the idea of Logos (i.e., the courageous pursuit of truth). So, if Dawkins courageously pursues truth in his scientific endeavors, he is, according to Peterson, following the Logos and therefore following Christ.
Here, we see one of the reasons why some non-believers gravitate so strongly to Peterson’s biblical analysis: it doesn’t require that they give up their skepticism of the supernatural. One can agree with Peterson that God and Christ are beneficial ideals while simultaneously rejecting God’s personhood and Jesus’ incarnation, atoning death, and bodily resurrection. In other words, one can still reject Christianity.
Now, Peterson, to his credit, doesn’t rule out the traditional, supernaturalist interpretations of Scripture. The problem is that Peterson’s moral/symbolic interpretations can sometimes overwhelm or distort the text’s literal meaning, especially when the text is explicitly about who God is and what He has done.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Peterson’s description of the gospels’ message, in which he turns the good news into a terrible burden: “The gospels call to you to bear the weight of tragedy and malevolence on your shoulders, along with the Divine Spirit that guides you, there is nothing more terrifying and no greater field of opportunity than that.”
Because the god of Peterson’s interpretative framework can’t actually love us and save us, Peterson turns the gospel into a call for personal responsibility. His Christ doesn't expiate sins; he only gives us a cross to bear, a burden we must carry whether or not God actually exists. As Peterson said in a 2024 interview with Matt Fradd on Pints with Aquinas, “Does God exist? That’s not the right question. The right question is, ‘Are you going to take your cross and struggle uphill?’”
This sounds more like The Myth of Sisyphus than the gospel.
And yet, it is undeniable that Peterson’s engagement with Christianity has borne remarkable fruit for the kingdom. His work has acted as a sort of pre-evangelism, bringing people (including New Atheists) into a greater appreciation of the Bible, with some then moving on to actual saving faith. As Glen Scrivener puts it, “Many are leap-frogging Jordan Peterson into the kingdom.”
Let us pray that Peterson will soon leap into the freedom of the gospel and experience God not as an unfeeling ideal but as his loving, heavenly Father, the one who sent His Son into the world to bear the burden none of us could bear ourselves.
Sign up for our newsletter
Resources for the formation of wisdom on the last Saturday of each month. Try it out.
