We Who Wrestle With Reading 500 Pages Of Meandering Nonsense

*We Who Wrestle With God* By Jordan Peterson: A Review

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When Jordan Peterson was hyping the release of his new book on the Bible, We Who Wrestle With God, he declared, “I think I can demolish the atheistic argument permanently.”

Having read it nearly to the end, I’m reminded of a school assembly I had to go to — titled “Why God Is Real”, or something equivalent — where the priest spent the whole talk arguing, not that God exists, but that Anglican Bishops should remain in the UK House of Lords.

To repeat what every reviewer is saying, even the fans, We Who Wrestle With God is not a well-written book. It’s chock full of words that shouldn’t be there, some squeezed in so as to strain for some simply superfluous sibilance (“[w]e are not the submissive receivers of simply self-evident truths”), others for no reason at all. A few representative snippets, taken from Chapter One:

• “[T]yranny and slavery are also inevitably allied with the domination of hedonistic whim and the short-term, immature, and narrowly self-centred gratification of desire that does not and cannot make for either a sustainable self-realization or a productive, generous, and harmonious polity.”

• “This inversion of value enables not so much the stewardship of the earth as the exploitation of those deemed no more worthy than the lowest forms of life—exploitation by exactly the sorts of people who eternally step forward to abuse such advantage.” [Context: Peterson is shitting on a 1967 essay by Lynn White called “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis”. According to Peterson, White claims that “whatever constitutes the ill-defined term nature, or worse, the environment, should be put first and foremost, instead of man and woman, society, or human well-being.” I read White’s essay, and it didn’t say that. All White rejects — as far as I can tell — is the idea that “nature has no reason for existence save to serve man [my italics]”¹ and the attitude that “[w]e are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim”².]

• “Man and woman both incarnate the Logos, at least in potential. The pattern of being that should characterize each individual is a reflection, an imitation (and by no means a pale imitation) of what is both most real and ultimately sacred. It is on that fundamental supposition—that axiomatic belief (a claim of immense and still-unrealized magnitude and significance)—that man and woman rest their dignity, intrinsically, outside the purview of self, sovereign, state, and nature.”

If Peterson’s prose is purplier than a potted periwinkle (😑), his attributions of symbolism are as strained as herbal tea. The moral of the David and Goliath story, for example, isn’t primarily about placing trust in God over trust in oneself, or courage, or divine providence; the moral, in particular, is that “[t]he true hero is he who defeats the giant tyrant of the state.”

Channelling Ayn Rand, Peterson frequently drops nuclear grade philosophical and theological bangers, and then declines to defend or explain himself:

• “Adam subdues and names. These are the actions or even the essence of human consciousness. And there is more. Given the dependence of Being on that consciousness (as Being without consciousness is literally inconceivable and perhaps also impossible), consciousness is the essence of that which undergirds Being itself.”³

• “What does “created in the image of God” mean? [!!!] It means [Oh boy…] that the human spirit exists, in its essence, on the border between order and chaos; that it serves as the mediator of becoming and being; that it shapes the manner in which new reality manifests itself when what is old and outdated reality is crying out for redemption and renovation.”

• “But if we accept the proposition that there is no real down, no real hell, no real and final moral transgression, then we also must accept the proposition that there is no real up, no real heaven, no real goal, and no hope—and in that acceptance itself there is no shortage of confusion, disorientation, abandonment in the desert, faithlessness, and despair.” [Implication: if you’re a theological universalist who thinks there is no Hell and that everyone goes to Heaven, you must… accept the proposition that there is no Heaven.]

There were plenty of things I liked about the book. I liked Peterson’s sassiness (“to say nothing of the French postmodernist Michel Foucault, by some measures the world’s most cited (shudder) scholar”); I liked his liberal prefixing of the word “idiot” to every single thing he dislikes: “idiot hedonism”, “their own idiot-savant testimony”, “the idiot puppet of his own desires”; I liked that his go-to fiction references were Harry Potter and The Lion King. I have no doubt, either, that Peterson sunk a lot of work into this book. And if the Labour Theory of Value is true, it’s a terrific theological accomplishment.

Many people say they’ve been helped by Jordan Peterson. If that’s you, I think you should keep listening to him. If hearing Peterson free-associate about the Book of Genesis has tangibly improved your life, put that voice on repeat.⁴ But I can’t recommend the book: as disorganised as Peterson is when he lectures, We Who Wrestle With God is even more so. Plus, the hardback cost me more than the retail price of a live North American lobster. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

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1. White, L. (1967). The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis. Science, 155(3767), p. 1207.

2. Ibid., p. 1206.

3. For an argument that a world without consciousness is conceivable, check out

Philip Goff

’s recent lecture, “A Conceivability Argument For Atheism”.

4. In this connection, the best read on Peterson is probably

Michael Huemer

’s essay, “Jordan Peterson: The Helpful Rambler”.