Posted on 02/06/2018 11:39:12 AM PST by pastorbillrandles
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.(I Timothy 6:20-21)
As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.( I Timothy 1:3-4)
I love the internet because of the open exchange of viewpoints, and the democratization of knowledge that it affords. For the time being at least, the gatekeepers can no longer control and dominate the public square, enforcing their sneering, leftist orthodoxy as the proscribed ‘prevailing wisdom’ of the day.
In place of the Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Katy Couric types foisted upon us for decades by the Northeastern Liberal Media establishment, refreshing voices from a wide perspective of view are available.
The internet has it’s own ‘stars’; some of them were already well known, and some come seemingly out of nowhere; Matt Drudge, Stefan Molyneux, Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, Sultan Knish (Daniel Greenfield), Jim Robinson, David Horowitz, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, the late Andrew Beitbart, James O’Keefe, Laura Southern, are among them. They come from the right, the left, Libertarianism, and even Anarchist perspectives .
One of the latest popular internet personalities is Jordan Peterson, a Professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and popular author, his latests book is named, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” (Jan 2018, Penguin Books).
Peterson is well known for his now classic book, “Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief”, which offers ,”a revolutionary take on the psychology of religion”. All of Peterson’s lectures on the subject are available on Peterson’s Youtube channel, which features 300 videos of his lectures, and has 550,000 subscribers, and 30 million views.
Peterson is an excellent communicator. Part of his popularity is that he takes on Political Correctness, to the point of running afoul of leftist groups on Campuses such as Antifa, who have rioted at campuses where Peterson was asked to speak.
According to the Guardian, in an article called “Jordan Peterson: The Pursuit of Happiness is a Pointless Goal”
Peterson, 55, is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto who shot into the headlines in 2016 after refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns at the university which new legislation, Bill C-16, compelled him legally to. Following this he was either hailed as a free-speech martyr or castigated as a transphobe. Demonstrations broke out on campus, and he has been the subject of a campaign of protest by trans activists. More controversy followed when he publicly defended James Damore, the sacked Google employee who suggested there were innate gender differences, as being no more than the scientific consensus.
Of interest to me, (and my readers) is that Peterson teaches about the Bible. Quite a bit about the Bible actually. He is very popular for his series on the Bible, Maps of Meaning , which features lectures on some of the more famous Bible Stories. This subject has turned out to be compelling in this postmodern environment, and at the Universities.
(Who knew that secularism doesn’t satisfy, and leaves a Nihilistic void? Hmmmmm!)
The problem is that Jordan is teaching the Bible from a Jungian perspective.
The Atheistic father of ‘psychology’ Sigmund Freud, once had a protege, named Carl Gustav Jung. They were the pioneers of the modern ‘science’ of psychology.Freud would develop Jung and they would develop this new knowledge.
The two eventually had a parting of the ways, because Freud was a materialist, and Jung was very spiritual in his outlook. This son of a Swiss Reformed Pastor, was raised in a home in which his mother believed ‘spirits’ visited her in the night, eventually having a nervous breakdown.
Jung believed that we (Humanity) all partake of a “collective consciousness”, a continuity of deep but repressed memories stretching back into the ‘millions of years” of human evolution.
Out of that consciousness come our various myths and religious stories, whose characters are called “archetypes”. These archetypes recur in our legends, stories, myths, literature, because they are spiritual realities, and they are universal because humanity all draws from the same well of repressed, distant memory.
The Archetypes consist of “the Hero”, “The Caregiver”,”The Ruler”,”Everyman”,”The Jester”, “Creator”, “Lover”, “the Explorer”,”The Magician”, “The Outlaw”, “Innocent”, and tree are yet others no doubt, which Jungians will ‘discover’. To Jung, (and his disciples such as Peterson) all of these figures are spiritual realities which reside in all of our subconsciousness.
In the Jungian model of the human psyche, any and all of these figures reside on our unconsciousness. This is bothersome to me as a Christian, because I believe in the biblical concept of Demonization and in some cases Demon Possession. Jungianism would give a ‘scientific ‘explanation, for the phenomenon, lending it respectability.
Is this persona a demon or an archetype?
According to Jungians, archetypes are why literature and ‘religion’ feature pretty much the same ‘stories’, which recur over centuries with different names and faces but the same basic features.
In Jungian thought, there are in literature, a thousand forms of the poem Odyssey, or the Iliad, Because man is always on a joinery into the unknown, and man can never return home. There will always be a self sacrificing hero, because ‘the Hero’ is merely an archetype, a figure who exists in our “collective unconsciousness” and constantly re-emerges in human experience.
Jordan Peterson is positive about Christianity. He believes that Judeo/ Christianity gave us western civilization, and he is an ardent opponent of Postmodernism. He even confesses to be a Christian, and his interest in the Bible, and opposition to the godless left, has made him quite popular with Christian young people.
But to Peterson the Bible is Myth, and the characters of the Bible are valuable archetypes, not historical figures. He considers it perhaps the greatest of all myths, but a myth nonetheless.
Christianity and Judaism (in the true sense) are historical religions. We believe that God entered into time/space history and intervened. The Resurrection is a historical event, and of historical consequence. There really was a tomb, as Christian apologist Josh MacDowell once said, “…if the stone that covered the mouth of the tomb had rolled over your foot, you would be in a cast!”
Our current mainstream churches are testament to what happens when one mythologizes Christianity. One hundred fifty years ago, had you showed up at nearly any Protestant Church, you were likely to hear some form of the gospel.
Now you are as likely to be greeted by a female Bishop, and could hear a sermon denying the resurrection, the teaching of Christ about marriage and gender, and calling for ‘social justice’,( whatever that is).
What happened? Liberal Theologians began saying, that it wouldn’t matter whether or not there was really a Paul or a Jesus, or a resurrection, (After all, how can we really believe in all of that in the day of the electric light bulb?) all that matters is the ideas and goodwill that they promoted.
I worry about the popularity of Jordan Peterson by many an unsuspecting millennial, as well as a good many other people. I see why he is popular, I celebrate his calls for free speech, and his standing up to the gay nazis and other forms of political correctness.
Jordan Peterson is not a teacher sent by God to expound on the Gospel, once and for all delivered, He doesn’t believe in it’a historicity, therefore in a tue biblical sense, he doesn’t believe at all!
Bkmrk.
Ps- I agree with you that Mary was only a virgin until Jesus was born. Jesus had half brothers and sisters.
pps i too appreciate Jordan’s teaching for what it is...but it is not a true, spiritual approach to the Bible
Are you saying you once were a “Bible Worshipper”?
The bible is simply not what so many people think it is. And often the “contradictions” people see are not contradictions in what the bible says but, rather, contradictions in interpretations.
But how do you know what the actual message of Christ is, without the Bible?
Most of the early believers did not have bibles, nor could they read.
Why would He who is the incarnate Word of God, have to say “It is written...”?
It would be like arguing politics with someone today and saying, “it said so here [insert written source here].”
By Jesus saying “it is written”, and the reader knowing what writing he was talking about, gives what was written credibility. He is actually amplifying what He said was written in a way that only He could, since He is God in flesh.
pps i too appreciate Jordan’s teaching for what it is...but it is not a true, spiritual approach to the Bible
Have you heard him describe his dream about a cemetary? Fascinating.
The earliest believers in Jesus were Jews and heir Bible was the Tanak, they were almost all literate as that was a priority with Jewish people to read and understand scripture.It is simply not true that they were illiterate, and wherever the gospel has gone throughout the pagan world, so also has literacy!
Just because there is an ignorant subculture which holds to a shallow and inadequate view of the Bible, it doesn’t mean that the Bible is not the Word of God.
Few had a new testament. :)
Some people were literate and some were illiterate. This was before the invention of the printing press, and all that that implies.
ust because there is an ignorant subculture which holds to a shallow and inadequate view of the Bible, it doesn’t mean that the Bible is not the Word of God.
I agree, but you would be amazed how literate the Jewish world was. Mastery of scripture for every man was a requirement of their religion.
That is true.
Yes. I think they were quite literate, the gentiles, less so. And I believe Paul’s Ministry was to the Gentiles. With his vast knowledge of the old covenant, that would make sense.
What I believe this viewpoint totally misses is that there actually is TRUTH behind the accounts in Scripture and that the demonic forces opposed to this truth have been at work counterfeiting that truth (before and after) so that it causes doubt among those who would seek to know it. Those who deny the resurrection, for example, don't or won't consider that the disciples of Jesus Christ chose to die horrible deaths rather than deny what they had seen with their own eyes. Now, I know some people will die for a lie (i.e., Islamists), but NO ONE dies for something they know is a lie.
God promised that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, that He WILL be found when we search for Him with all our hearts. The light of the truth dawns on all those who sincerely want to know it - I can testify that it happened in my own life.
Well stated.
Is arguing over this man, the most productive use of your time?
But by the end of the first century A.D., they had a group of writings that made up what we know today as the New Testament. They were LIVING the creation of the New Testament and their local congregations received the writings from the Apostles and disciples as they were written, copied and distributed throughout the region and then the world.
A good exposition of this is The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament.
Yes. Good, insightful post. You quote Paul, as he is mentoring Timothy regarding the leadership, polity, and deportment of the church at Ephesus, noting that eventually the main person of influence was sliding into apostasy (Rev. 2:4) even though Timothy had been one of the Pauline mentors of its elders.
Paul's first canonical epistle to Timothy is all about godliness--that is, deportment--of the church and of its constituents. Godliness is the manifestation of a mystery unperceived in pre-Christian times, but now revealed at the time God opened the gates of access to Him through the Blood of Christ (1 Tim. 3:16).
The two prominent facets of godliness are manifested in orthodoxy (conforming to established doctrine), and piety (devoutness).
In chapter 4, Paul sums up for Timothy all that he has taught him, and it is from this that we can begin to categorize both aspects, as Timothy would have indoctrinated the Ephesian church.
What has happened to us today is a slide bit by bit from the orthodoxy of the first churches (Acts 2:42) and piety (Acts 2:43), first into unorthodox Romanism and Byzantine practices that became a redefined orthodoxy, that of the statist church, the religious organ of the emperor/king; and subsequently through the ages until now, until we have experienced such a plethora of unorthodoxy that it has become standard, and the Way of The Cross has been lost.
What you describe of Jordan Peterson is just another outbreak of irregularity that would not have been tolerated for centuries, but in the last fifty years now is. But applying Paul's counsel to Timothy in this instance, with the rule--the measuring stick--being the Bible alone and the behavior of the apostles and churches described in it (Php. 3:16-19), we see that one should not be yoked with this philosophizer who cannot be exercising spiritual discernment, and to walk away from his kind of thinking, for it is contaminating whatever it touches and influences (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1). Touch not the unclean thing(s): Gods, idols, archetypes, atavars, movie stars, Allahs-who-have-no-sons, Andrew Carnegies, etc. They are illusions that produce delusions. But they are sly edgewise approachers, apparently like this Jordan Peterson.
This is a time of soul-warning, Pastor, that goes beyond soul-winning; and thank you for sounding the klaxon on this!
"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come" (2Ti_3:1 AV).
"Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith,
giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; . . . " (1 Tim 4:1-2 AV)
". . . Having a form of godliness(orthodoxy and piety), but denying the power thereof:
from such turn away" (2Ti 3:5 AV).
Preach/post it, Brother! Amen! (Especially about the unorthodoxy that has become the current standard in the present concept of "orthodoxy" throughout Christendom.)
“While my brother is a Freudian, I am a strict Jungian. So there’ll be no blaming mommy today.”
Niles Crane filling in on brother Frasier’s radio show.
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