The New Gnosticism of Jordan Peterson & John Vervaeke

welcome back to the vitals are in this video I want to look at the new gnosticism of figures like Jordan Peterson and John dravaki let me start out by saying that I am a fan of Jordan Peterson I am willing to fly that flag I love what he's doing but I think there are some things a pattern I see amongst hin and other figures like John vervaky that I think is sort of sneaking in kind of unnoticed and that thing is the belief that you can have meaning without metaphysics that is you can get objective meaning in the world without reality here's what I mean when people ask Jordan Peterson about his belief in God or whether he's a Christian they're sort of endless deferral of the question and he says things like it's a very complex question what do you mean by this that is at very least there's a sort of brackening or putting aside of the question of the metaphysics the reality autology of God and his ontological commitments what you actually believe to be the case about these things similarly in his thought about the Bible you have similar deferrals that is deferrals about like whether this stuff actually happened similarly with John vervaki although there are many things in his work that I do appreciate but once again he shares a similar proposition with with Jordan Peterson and that is his focus on practices the belief that the question of ontology of meaning can be extracted from the practices themselves and the thought that you can have everything you had before as long as you take these practices and do that that is your commitments towards this metaphysic this story this ontology are not very important if important at all now there's an important thing to know about this stream of thought and that is it's not new this is just old liberal historical criticism like Bolton mod that is they think that even though you've thrown away much of the sort of historicity of these stories the ontology the metaphysics of it it doesn't matter because either the story itself or the practices of the community can still provide you with everything that was provided before with the story itself now of course this didn't start with boltman or any of the other liberals it goes back to Khan who separated the phenomena and the numina that is what appears to us and the reality the thing in itself and Khan thought that oh you know reality itself got filtered through these categories in our heads of substance quantity all of these things like that so it's nothing new but Peter said and John verakee share that same fundamental proposition that you can have meaning without metaphysics and I think this happens because when you explain a story or practice in a fascinating or interesting ways when you unfold these things like these two gentlemen do in compelling ways you sort of can paper over the question of the foundations of these things and you can sort of implicitly convince people that oh the reality is no longer necessary but this is obviously false now this new gnosticism that's not entirely new is very out of step with Western thought because one of the features of Western thought is that in the Christian faith coheres both the beautiful and the true and that you cannot have one without the other and if you rip them apart you lose them both and this is sort of an obvious proposition what is obvious well the reality that you need to have both the practices the surface the aesthetic structure the symbolism and the truth of it this is literally a presupposition of the entirety of our lives every single practice we partake in in life let me give you an example marriage you cannot have the story of marriage or the practices of marriage without marriage you don't exchange rings have the ritual of a ceremony the Liturgy of words and not actually marry someone and that's because practices only have their meaning within a true context the rituals the practices of marriage only make sense within marriage and it sounds silly even to say that because it's so obviously true the same is true with your job you don't do the practices of your vocation without being employed if you work at a big Law Firm you can't just show up sit at a desk take lunch breaks and not actually be employed there in reality in being ontologically employed we actually have developed names and vocabulary for when you do the practices but don't actually participate in the reality we either call it a play or theater or pretend we're at worst hypocrisy I think one of the reasons why Jordan Peterson has become such a compelling figure and I think that's true is because he is recovering and carrying on important parts of the western philosophical and Theological tradition but only some parts of that that is he carries on the moral rhetoric where he is commanding people to do things when largely moral imperative has fallen out of pedagogical discourse that is your professors don't typically tell you that you should do things and a sort of Western psychological tradition where you have virtues and vices that goes back to the biblical text through Augustine and Aquinas but what is left out is the grounding for those things like the main thing and so in the end what these men are offering is they are saying Hey I want you to put on a play that is do these practices or tell yourself these stories it's like putting on a play of marriage but never actually getting married now this might seem like a strange video for me to make and a channel that's devoted to the literary Artistry of the Bible where so much of my time is focused on the aesthetic the surface art of this text but this foundational principle of the Bible being a literary artwork is undergirded by a much more fundamental belief that I have and that is is that the world is Art and that the biblical text is a mirror it is an interpretation of what is actually true in reality the biblical text is training our eyes to be able to interpret the world correctly in reality and that's because meaning and metaphysics form and substance are one in the biblical world view meaning is recovered not simply through retelling and understanding the stories the surface the structure of it or by participating in the practices but participating in the actual story that is the answer to phenomenology and fundamentalism is to say that the Bible is both true and beautiful that reality is both true and beautiful that the story of the Bible and the story of Jesus is the hero's journey because it is the hero's journey in real life okay but you might say well what about stories what about fiction that's important right and yes that is absolutely important but the only reason that stories that fiction exist and are effective both in their aesthetic and educational import is because they live inside a larger story that is true in real life here's what I mean fictional stories that have been written and that Purdue throughout Humanity not silly ones that fizzle out but true ones that exist for long periods of time do so and are effective because they presuppose a certain structure to the world a certain moral structure and psychological structure they presuppose that and that structure that they presuppose about moral virtue use advices about God and man that is true it's metaphysically true it's ontologically true so when you're writing stories you are permutating you're imagining scenarios within this ontology within this world and so fictional stories work they can work and be effective in transformation only if they exist within the true story in the words of C.S Lewis the one true myth so while I appreciate these gentlemen very much there is a giant hole in the middle of their work that cannot be ignored that is reality thank you so much for checking out this video I very much appreciate it please leave your questions or comments below and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: The Bible is Art

Views: 4,555

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, John Vervaeke

Id: SsmA9FkJZfc

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 08 2023