Jordan Peterson offered some eye-opening words about the Bible during his marathon interview on Tuesday’s episode of the “The Joe Rogan Experience,” telling the host that the Good Book not only is like no other book, but also far beyond simply true.
What are the details?
Peterson — a world-renowned author and speaker who recently resigned as a tenured University of Toronto professor while calling academia a “stunningly corrupt enterprise” — told Rogan that the Bible is at the very core of our cultural “bedrock of agreement.”
Noting that he had just “walked through” the “very cool” Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., Peterson explained that in terms of “fundamental texts” in Western civilization — those upon which just about all others depend — writings by the likes of William Shakespeare and John Milton are in that category. But the Bible, he said, is the very foundation of them all.
But Peterson said the Bible goes way beyond that.
“It isn’t that the Bible is true,” he said. “It’s that the Bible is the precondition for the manifestation of truth — which makes it way more true than just ‘true.’ It’s a whole different kind of true. And I think that this is not only literally the case — factually — I think it can’t be any other way. It’s the only way we can solve the problem of perception.”
Here’s the clip:
Jordan Peterson’s Realization About the Bible youtu.be
Anything else?
Last year Peterson got quite emotional during a podcast interview discussing Jesus, God, and the notions of faith and spiritual beliefs.
“What you have in the figure of Christ is an actual person who actually lived, plus a myth, and, in some sense, Christ is the union of those two things,” he said. “The problem is I probably believe that, but I’m amazed at my own belief, and I don’t understand it.”
Peterson added that “it’s too terrifying a reality to fully believe. I don’t even know what would happen to you if you fully believed it.”
He also said that in the past when he was asked if he believed in God, “I’ve answered in various ways, ‘No, but I’m afraid he probably exists'” — after which Peterson added, “There’s no limit to what would happen if you acted like God existed.”
And during a 2019 Liberty University panel discussion featuring Peterson, then-campus pastor David Nasser prayed with a man who had rushed the stage and asked for help. Afterward Nasser asked Peterson how he could pray for him, too — and Peterson again got emotional, replying that he wanted to avoid paying undue prices for mistakes he would make in his life. But in his prayer Nasser also asked God that Peterson would one day find him and make his kingdom his home.