In a soon-to-be-published piece at The Steam, I reflect on my recent experience at a Dr. Jordan Peterson lecture in St. Loius, Missouri. Among the many questions I had after the lecture (I like experiences that leave me with more questions than answers) was whether or not Dr. Peterson is a Christian. And does it matter?

As to Peterson’s faith, well, during his lecture, he never raised the issue. In interviews and public comments, Peterson has been circumspect about the question, though it is clear that he has been flirting with the Christian faith for years. His wife Tammy, who started the evening by introducing herself and then her husband, has recently been very open about her conversion to Catholicism but has said nothing about her husband. In 2022, Peterson spoke at an event with Bishop Barron and Father Mike Schmitz in which, when asked about how he “relates his conception of Christ” to that of Christ as God incarnate, Dr. Peterson responded that “It seems right,” to him that Christ embodied what he claimed to be, namely, that he was “the King of Kings.” This is encouraging, but it is hardly a confession of faith.

But does it matter if Peterson is a Christian? To quote Dr. Peterson, “Well, that depends” on what direction he ultimately takes in his work. Dr. Peterson spends much time discussing the importance of Judeo-Christain “stories” and what he says we should draw from them. If, like Joseph Campbell, who built a career on telling us what Christian stories did and did not mean but then quipped that the Judeo-Christian belief in bodily resurrection was “a clown act, really,” Peterson someday asserts that Jesus was nothing more than a historical figure upon whom we collectively placed our need to believe in a hero, then, well, that’s a problem. If, however, Dr. Peterson comes to a place where, like C.S. Lewis, he finds that “I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ,” that would signal a very different chapter in Peterson’s public story.

That is not to say that anyone who is not a Christian cannot speak about the figure of Jesus. I believe that Jesus was the Christ, the “God-Man,” and as such, He can take care of himself. But anyone who builds a career on biblical exegesis, like Dr. Peterson is doing, but flatty dismisses events like the resurrection, which Peterson has yet to do, does injury to the historical understanding of Jesus, both within HIs time and ours. People in the ancient world knew very well the difference between a dead man and a live one. They were also not in the habit of saying that a beloved leader, Julius Caesar, for example, had returned from the dead because they wanted to follow him.

Much about about the contemporary reaction to Jesus was utterly unique to, well, Jesus. Without full consideration of the historical response to Jesus Christ, no one, no matter how much we like them (and I really enjoy Dr. Peterson’s work), can be said to have full command of the truth of what Judeo-Christian texts ought to mean to we moderns.