Calling all UK church leaders, are you feeling overwhelmed trying to lead your congregation in evangelism? Do you find yourself struggling to keep up with the fast-paced digital conversation? What would it look like if you and your congregation were energized and equipped to share Christ with your community authentically in both digital and physical spaces? At Speak Life, we understand the unique challenges church leaders face today. That's why we're excited to invite you to the January 2025 Intensive. Three days of transformative, hands-on training in our Eastbourne studio. From the 23rd to the 25th of January, join us for an experience that's designed to inspire, empower, and equip you with cutting-edge tools and strategies for ministry in the digital age. During the intensive, you'll be surrounded by a community of like-minded leaders getting stuck into practical digital workshops, creative mission strategies, and solid Christ-centered theology. With limited spaces, the January Intensive is your exclusive chance to experience this reimagined approach to evangelism training. Early bird tickets start at just £125 and are available until the 25th of November. Hurry! Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Visit speaklife.org.uk forward slash intensives now to secure your spot and get ready to transform how you lead your congregation.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever thought about how your bank uses your savings? What if I told you there's a fully regulated Christian bank that aligns your money with your faith? When you open a Kingdom Bank savings account, you help to provide vital mortgages for churches, Christian ministries, and gospel workers who might struggle to secure one elsewhere. Whether saving for yourself or on behalf of your church, your savings will support Christian ministries across the UK. And when you're ready to take your money out, you get it back with interest. If your spending and giving reflect your faith, shouldn't your savings as well? Open a savings account with Kingdom Bank today and put your money where your heart is. Visit kingdom.bankslash speaklife. Kingdom Bank is a member of the FSCS and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Now Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Peugeot have sat down to have a conversation after Jordan Peterson dialogued with Richard Dawkins earlier this month. And Jonathan Peugeot puts his finger on a really interesting moment in that conversation. Here's what he said. Sorry to bring back the Dawkins conversation.
SPEAKER_02It just happened because I it's still fresh in my mind. You know, Dawkins at some point said something like, I don't care about these stories. I care about the kind of science and the kind of prediction that can help us land uh, you know, a spaceship on the moon.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I was like, oh, I missed an opportunity.
SPEAKER_01He didn't miss saying a lot of things, Jun Peterson, let's be honest. I think he probably spoke for about 75% of the runtime of that particular movie. He didn't miss a lot of things. Yeah, but I think that Jonathan Peugeot has the right attitude here. It's about the motivation to put the rocket onto the onto the moon that's really important.
SPEAKER_02Why the hell would we want to land a spaceship on the moon? Like why would humans do that? That's more interesting to me or more important than the fact that we're capable of doing it.
SPEAKER_01Now, to be fair, both things are very impressive. If you've seen Elon Musk's kind of rocket return back to its launch pad uh to within an inch of of where it launched from, that's incredibly impressive. And we have a saying, it's not rocket science, because we kind of recognize that rocket science is incredibly impressive. So it is impressive to be able to get to the moon. But also the kind of motivation that makes you want to get to the moon is very worth pressing into because without that motivation, you don't get the rocket science. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_03There's two things there that are interesting. The first is, well, we landed on the moon, and for Dawkins, the fact that that's remarkable is self-evident. It's like for a psychologist, it's like that's not self-evident, buddy. There's lots of things we could have done and had been doing for a very long period of time before we landed on the moon.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell That's really interesting. A psychologist is interested in motivation, and why is our attention only focused on mechanics? Why is it not also focused on minds?
SPEAKER_03So it's something like Star Trek, right? To boldly go where no one has gone before.
SPEAKER_02It's the mariner's journey. It's the mariner's story. Yeah. You know, you have all these stories, ancient stories, the story of Ulysses or the story of St. Brendan, who goes out into the ocean and you know goes in a land that nobody has been before.
SPEAKER_01So they've got me at this point. Uh you know, if you want to get off the islands, um then it's one thing to gather together all the different ingredients to make a raft. It's another thing to sit around the campfire to tell stories of the land across the sea. Okay. Both things are very important. And so, okay, you got me, Jordan. Yeah, we need the mythological as well as the logical. Okay, you got me so far. And what's interesting in this video is that both Jordan and Jonathan are going to talk about the why question and keep drilling down into the whys. You know, you want to get to the moon. Why, why, why, why, until you get to the the greatest cause, the final cause of all things? And for Jonathan Peugeot, he will call that God. For Jordan Peterson, he will kind of call that God at times. And what I want to do in this video is just press into is that a good way of approaching the reality of God? Is this kind of excavating of final causes all the way down to the bottom, is that going to deliver to you the kind of God that's revealed from on high in the Bible? Because it seems to me that it's a different kind of a thing to excavate down to all the wise than to receive from on high the God who surprises us with what he's like. And I guess that the Christian really goes for that revelation kind of idea. And I just want to ask the question: is it possible to do the reason thing and to end up with the God of the Bible? That's really the purpose of this video. So here let's look at Jordan Peterson as he digs down to ultimate values. It's it's fascinating.
SPEAKER_03I mean, one of the things I've learned, not least through analysis of the biblical narratives, which is partly what we who wrestle with God does, is that the ethos that upon which a society is founded is the prime natural resource. And so there was a reason it was the Americans that got to the moon. And part of the reason for that was the nature of the American social contract. Then the question is, well, what's that social contract predicated on? It's like, well, we hold these truths to be self-evident, right? And what constitutes the self-evidence and what's underneath that? Well, the entire Judeo-Christian landscape is underneath that. And what's underneath that? Well, it's something like the social structure itself and the biological reality underneath that and the patterns in the material world. And while God only knows what that's ultimately reflective of.
SPEAKER_01God only knows what that's ultimately reflective of. Do you see the journey? So we get to the moon. Why do we get to the moon? Because of our concept of what a human person is, and the Declaration of Independence in 1776 kind of points towards that. We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. It's free individuals who want to get to the moon. And they've got rights and and they want happiness and they want liberty, right? So you've got these individuals that are oriented towards the great exploration, the great adventure. It's a mere I can, not a mere I can't. You know, it's it's that kind of it's it's that land of the free that produces people who want to get to the moon. Fine. Okay, so what's underneath that? And he says it's the Judeo-Christian heritage, the Bible, let's say. What's underneath that? There are social structures that uh are kind of ultimate for him. And then Jordan Peterson says, and what's underneath that God only knows, right? Well, Jonathan Peugeot knows what's under that, right? Um, the God of the Bible is underneath all that, and and the Bible has had such an effect because it correctly names the ultimate reality in this universe. And that's why we have a culture that writes the Declaration of Independence, and that's why we have people who go to the moon. Um, there is the the living God, the God of Jesus Christ, who is underneath all that. That's what Jonathan Beijo thinks. But is it a way to get to the God of Jesus Christ to dig down from the moon landing to 1776, from 1776 to the Bible, from the Bible to the social and biological structures underneath, and then you'll discover God underneath. That's my big question. I I doubt it, actually. I actually doubt it. Jordan Peterson sees in the scriptures this pattern of sacrifice, and he relates that to the biological and social structures that are underneath. And he sees that in the Bible it is presenting back to us what we already know from biology and from social structures. Peterson gets to the idea of sacrifice through the idea of motivation. Why do you want to do something? Well, because of this. Well, why do you want that thing? Because of this. Why do you want that thing? Because of this. And there are these layers of motivation that go down and down and down. And at every layer, when you make a decision in favor of one course of action and not another, you're making a sacrifice. You're saying no to this and yes to this. Here's how he lays it out at the 44-minute mark.
SPEAKER_03I used to ask my students why they were why why they were in a why they would do a given piece of work, why they were taking an exam. Well, like I'm taking the exam because I need to pass the course. Well, why? Well, I'm taking I'm passing the course because I have to finish the year, because I need to get a degree, because the degree is means to a job, because and then after that, they often got kind of incoherents. Like, well, why bother with the job? But you know, there are answers to questions like that. It's like, well, to take up my responsible citizenship so that I can establish a family, so that I can build something lasting for the future, so that I can be a credit to myself, so that I can be a credit to other people. That's the covenant, by the way, that Abraham, that God offers Abraham. Right. And so there is this participation in higher and higher purposes. And one of the things that's so cool about that is that if you're participating in the highest possible aim, say towards the ineffable that caps this pyramidal structure, then the power of the divine ineffable saturates all the microactivities that you engage in because it's imbued with rich purpose. And you can say that that's makes everything glow.
SPEAKER_02Like it makes things glow, not in a physical way, but it makes things, you know, it it also infuses a kind of joy and a kind of peace. Right?
SPEAKER_03Because it's why Christ says that his burden is light, which is very weird thing.
SPEAKER_02Because you you realize that, you know, whatever it is that I'm paying for here, because I know it's embedded in a in the highest good or aiming towards the higher good, then I'm happy to do it. Right? Everybody's gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because well, because by definition, there isn't anything better you could do. Yeah. That's I mean, that's that's that's the ineffable, transcendent unity that Jacob swears to serve, and he identifies that with the God of his ancestors, which is with the with the one true God of his ancestors.
SPEAKER_01Can we trace back that chain of causes um till we find the ultimate why, the ineffable why, as Jordan Peterson calls it? And and Jordan Peterson kind of presents this as an argument for the existence of the God of Abraham. And what we see in the Bible is people sacrificing towards this highest aim in life. And Peterson connects that with Abraham, he connects it with Jacob, but of course they're going to connect it with Christ himself, who is the embodiment of the hero who sacrifices everything for the sake of the highest cause of all. And uh at the 48-minute mark, this is where they talk about Christ.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so we could we could continue expanding this hierarchy of upward aim. So you want to be a good father, you want to be a good husband, you want to be a good person, well then that's nested inside the hero myth by definition, fundamentally. And so if you want to embody the hero myth, then the question is because you can keep expanding the terrain. What's the ultimate hero myth? And I think this will be the next book. I really do think that that's laid out properly in the story of the Christian Passion. And I think that the classical Christian insistence that that pattern is implicit in the Old Testament writings is right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So this is really the nub of is it my disagreement with Jordan Peterson here? I I think it probably is. Um I wonder whether he sees the hero myth as something that is biologically, socially, primordially real, and Jesus comes along as the best expression of that thing which is really real. This is my this is my big question, and and perhaps you can help me out in the comments. Is Jordan Peterson saying that sacrifice and the hero's myth is what's really real and given to us by biological reality, and Jesus is the best expression of that thing that is the most real? Or here's what I say as a Christian, um, the lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. Uh that's in Revelation chapter 13. The lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The thing that is most real about everything is Jesus. And of course, Jesus is going to give himself for the world, and of course, he is the logos, the logic for all reality. And therefore, reality unfolds itself in the way that it unfolds itself. And so naturally we start to notice heroes' myths, and naturally we start to have different layers of causation, and naturally we sacrifice in order to get to the highest ideal, because this is Jesus' universe. Is Jesus the priority? Is Jesus the primordial reality? Or is a pattern the primordial reality, and Jesus happens to be the best expression of it? As a Christian, I say the former, I hear Peterson is saying the latter. What do you think? Anyway, we'll we'll keep going with what Peugeot says.
SPEAKER_02But it's also like we we actually say it's even crazier because we say that it's implicit in the structure of being itself. Right, right, right. That is something that uh people don't you tend to think of that that that's what we're saying. Well, when we say that the logos created the world, yeah, right, that that the the per the the the logos that was incarnate in Christ is the origin of the world. Right, right.
SPEAKER_03That's John's presumption, strange idea.
SPEAKER_01Right there. Fascinating. Peugeot the Christian is saying, okay, the logos of all reality is Jesus who will sacrifice himself for the world. And Peterson says, right, that's the John I thing, and it's a very strange thing. Well, is the John I thing the strange thing, or is the John chapter one thing the explanation for everything else? And without that, everything else becomes strange. Peterson kind of thinks that, but then kind of backs away from that. This is what I'm trying to get my head around.
SPEAKER_02So we are intimating that this story is at the origin of the world in the sense that it contains the pattern of the highest form of being that yields all the other ones. Yeah. Right? That kind of makes it possible for all the other ones.
SPEAKER_03So let's let's walk that through because I think it's possible to make a strictly conceptual case for that.
SPEAKER_01So it's fascinating. Jonathan Peugeot says, okay, here is this reality that's revealed in John chapter 1. Okay, here's scripture from on high telling us that Christ is the foundation for all reality. And here's Peterson trying to say, oh, I can make a conceptual argument for that. I I can kind of argue towards John chapter 1 from first principles. And here's my big question in this video: can that be done? Or must you begin with the revelation and then go out into the world and see things? Have you ever thought about how your bank uses your savings? What if I told you there's a fully regulated Christian bank that aligns your money with your faith? When you open a Kingdom Bank savings account, you help to provide vital mortgages for churches, Christian ministries, and gospel workers who might struggle to secure one elsewhere. Whether saving for yourself or on behalf of your church, your savings will support Christian ministries across the UK. And when you're ready to take your money out, you get it back with interest. If your spending and giving reflect your faith, shouldn't your savings as well? Open a savings account with Kingdom Bank today and put your money where your heart is. Visit Kingdom.bankslash speaklife. Kingdom Bank is a member of the FSCS and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. I think what Peterson is attempting is to do the bottom-up thing towards the John Chapter 1 reality. And I'm not sure it can be done. Let's let's see as he as he attempts it.
SPEAKER_03Well, so one of the things that I read in Jung's work that really struck me when he was talking about archetypes, he talked about the passion story. And he was speaking, you could say technically, looking for patterns. He said, Well, what you have to understand about the Christian passion is that it's the archetypal tragedy. Okay, so let's think that through. Okay, so now we know that there's a category of story that c constitutes a tragedy.
SPEAKER_01See what he's doing? There is a thing called a tragedy, and Christ comes along and summarizes it in the in the best possible way and epitomizes it in the best possible way, and perhaps embodies this thing, but it's Christ embodying the thing that is the most real. What is most primordial? The tragedy or Christ? And actually Peugeot is going to push back and say, actually, it's not just a tragedy, is it? It's a comedy, right? Here we go.
SPEAKER_03Now I'm not saying it's only a tragedy, no, it's not a way. Because there is a resurrection. Yeah, there is a comedy.
SPEAKER_02But it does include tragedy in it, for sure.
SPEAKER_01Yes, Jonathan Peugeot absolutely did the right thing and and bring out okay, the scriptures are telling us a comedy. I think Jordan Peterson is a tragedian, okay? He absolutely has the tragic view of life. You you climb yourself up in the world, and biologically speaking, what happens except that you might enjoy a brief moment in the sun and then you'll tumble down into death, okay? The pattern of the Bible, and Peterson is aware of this, the pattern of the Bible is actually a comedy. You start on high in the Garden of Eden, we we fall down into death, but then Christ, the great hero, takes on himself our tragedy. Yes, the the comedy includes the tragedy in it, it includes that great suffering. But the hero takes that tragedy on himself and rises again to invite us into his comedy. So Peugeot's word here that we need to think in terms of comedy is absolutely right, and Peterson absolutely needs to think of of comedy a lot more than he currently does.
SPEAKER_03Yes, it actually it subsumes the tragedy within a comedy. Exactly. But let's start with the tragic element, because it's easy I think it's easier to un it is easier to understand.
SPEAKER_01Well, tragedy is more natural, according to the flesh. That is the path of the flesh. The way of all flesh is up and then down. The issue is that the comedy comes from outside the system in order to raise us up. And does Peterson have room in his system for that which is beyond the system to come in and raise us up in that supernatural sense? We'll see.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so now imagine there's something in common among all narrative forms that we recognize as tragedy. So there's there's an ideal, there's a staff around which all tragedies circulate. And they're better or worse examples of the ideal Platonic tragedy. Okay, so what how do you interpret the Christian passion in that regard? Well, obviously, the most tragic possible outcome is the worst possible demise of the least deserving person, right? By definition. Okay, well, that's clearly played out in the Christian story because Christ is represented as sinless and ideal, and also as univers, really universally regarded as good even by his enemies, even by the people that are going to kill him. Right? And so there's a tremendous insistence on his transcendent goodness, and then his mode of death is betrayal at multiple levels, painful, disgusting, humiliating, and shameful to death because that's what the Romans designed crucifixion for, right? Yum, yummy in front of his mother. Like all the things that can happen to you that are terrible in life are scared in that story. Okay, so so what's the so what he might say? Well the question is that's gonna be reflected in your life to some degree because all of those terrible things, some of those terrible things are definitely gonna happen to you. So then the question is what attitude should you bring to bear on that reality? And the answer in that story is something like the answer in the book of Job, which is faith-predicated, not only acceptance, but welcoming. Right? Well, let's take the contrary position. Well, bitter resentful hatred of life because of its suffering.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, first of all, that's not gonna do you any good.
SPEAKER_01Do you see what Peterson has done to the Passion Story? The Passion story is an example of the tragedy that lies deeper than Jesus himself. And Jesus models for us an exemplary attitude towards suffering. He he accepts that suffering and still believes in the goodness of ultimate reality, the goodness of God, you might say. And so Jesus is reduced to an example, and that has two problems to it. Problem number one is that there's something deeper than Jesus, that he is merely an example of. And number two, he is not a savior in this way. He is a model of psychological health when suffering hits. Um, and so that is a Misunderstanding of Jesus on two profound levels at that point. And if somebody believes in that kind of Jesus, they absolutely believe in a heretical Jesus. Jesus who is simply an example of something deeper than himself, and Jesus who is merely a model to us of psychological health or ethical righteousness, that kind of Jesus is a Pelagian Jesus. Okay? Pelagius the heretic, Augustine said, no, we're saved utterly by grace that comes to us from outside the system, and that is where we're saved. Pelagius is much more the tragic figure who says Jesus marched up a hill, you march behind him, right? To believe in this kind of Jesus is not to believe in the scriptural Jesus, the Jesus of John chapter 1, the Jesus who brings the comedy. So this is Peterson's view of the death of Jesus, but we get onto the resurrection of Jesus, and uh he says some really interesting things.
SPEAKER_03I could ask you the same question he asked me, a variant of it. It's like, do you believe the resurrection happened?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we don't live in the same. I would say this is okay, we need to talk about this for sure. Like we definitely need to talk about this because this is, I mean, I understand why it's the most difficult thing for secularists to kind of get to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But the reality is that at some point you start to notice that the patterns that we're talking about, they are the patterns that inform the structure of reality. Right? That they are the they are the patterns by which we notice that we even identify things as as having existence, that we can see their value, that we can weigh their value in the same way that you're talking about. So those patterns are, let's say, our perception of those patterns are ref have been refined over time. We start to notice that these are the ones that actually hop down in some ways, constrain reality. And so in the end, the idea that those patterns would happen, I don't, it doesn't bother me one bit. Like it doesn't bother me to think that as the image of the resurrection, let's say, the image of the notion, like you said, exactly, like that if you are willing to give up your prideful holding on to something and you're willing to die for all intents and purposes, that that is when you that is when life becomes abundant. That is when life becomes real. And you can see that right, uh all the tingling of that in the Old Testament, with Abraham offering up his son, all of these things happen. But the quest the idea is that if that is the pattern of reality, then I'm to me it doesn't bother me one bit that it just happened. I don't have an explanation for it from the bottom up because that's not why I care for it. I care about it because I can see, top down, from constraining stories, I can see that it's the most affording story. So if someone says, finally, they say that this man that represents the pattern perfectly, that it happened in his life, that he resurrected, but I can't explain the physical, the physical like reasons and the physical mechanical ways in which it happened, at that point, honestly, I don't care because I know that it's real.
SPEAKER_01So Peugeot, as a Christian, is saying, Well, look, I I look at reality and everything seems to have a death and resurrection kind of shape to it. And therefore, it's not absurd for me to think that the logos of all reality went on that journey, death and then resurrection. Um, these are the lenses that I look through. When I look through the death and resurrection lens, when I look through the lens of Easter, I see the world and it comes into focus. I see truly when I see through the lens of Jesus. Um, that's that's the way that Peugeot kind of argues. Um Peterson has a really interesting line here.
SPEAKER_03The problem I'm having increasingly, so to speak, as a materialistic reductionist, let's say, as a scientist, is that it's becoming more preposterous for me to believe that it didn't happen than it is to believe that it did happen.
SPEAKER_01That's a brilliant line. To believe in the resurrection is not to believe in the preposterous thing, as though there's only one preposterous thing. There are multiple preposterous things you can believe about reality. Um you could believe that the man, Jesus of Nazareth, did not rot in a Jerusalem tomb, but actually rose up again bodily to demonstrate that he is the logos of all creation. That's a preposterous thing to believe, I guess. But there's another preposterous thing to believe, and that is that we live in a world in which the pattern of death and resurrection plays itself out at every level. It has worked itself into every atom of creation, it has also worked its way sociologically and culturally and historically into every nook and cranny of Western civilization. That preposterous story has in fact worked its way into all our lives and becomes the pattern by which we see the world and see it truly, but Jesus actually just rotted in the tomb. And and Peterson says that, well, that's a preposterous thing too. He put it in a very similar way in a conversation that he had with Jonathan Peugeot back in 2021. Let's have a look at the way he put it at that point.
SPEAKER_03Well, I've got the choice between believing two impossible things. I can either believe that in the world is constituted so that God took on flesh and was crucified and died and rose three days later. Or I can believe that human beings invented this unbelievably preposterous story that stretched into every atom of culture. And uh it isn't obvious to me that the second hypothesis is any easier to believe than the first, because the more you investigate the the manifestations of the story of Christ, the more insanely complicated and far-reaching it becomes.
SPEAKER_01Right. It's impossible to believe that God took flesh and died and rose again. It's impossible to believe that. But it's also impossible to believe that this preposterous story has reached into every facet of modern life and transformed it utterly. A Christian believes the first impossible thing, but a secularist believes the second impossible thing. And it's really a case of choose your miracle. Like, which preposterous thing are you going to believe, actually? And in 2021, Jordan Peterson was like, I'm not sure which is more easy to believe. In 2024, he says this. Let's listen to it again.
SPEAKER_03It's becoming more preposterous for me to believe that it didn't happen than it is to believe that it did happen.
SPEAKER_01It's becoming more preposterous. So that is interesting. It looks like on the balance of probabilities, Jordan Peterson is saying, uh I'm more leaning towards resurrection than not. But here's my question. Is the pathway that Jordan Peterson is treading, is that the way towards Christian faith? Because if you conclude that Jesus indeed rose from the dead, then he is vindicated as Lord. Not just example, not just archetype, not just model, uh, not just the greatest instantiation of a primordial reality that is really real. He is Lord. He is the primordial reality. And as soon as you come to that conclusion, then you've got to kind of start again with your methodology. It can't be let's begin with nature and then figure out whether there's a supernatural. You've got to begin with the supernatural Lord Jesus, and then he gives you the lenses with which you see reality. Do you see the difference between those those two different approaches? And so even if Jordan Peterson's very naturalistic approach leads him to a belief in the resurrection on the balance of probabilities, his work is then all ahead of him because then he needs to start again with the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than the example, the archetype, the model, Jesus Christ. Now that might sound like a distinction without a difference, but I do think it makes all the difference in the world whether we do this bottom-up thing or whether we receive Jesus from on high. And maybe that difference will become most obvious when we turn to the issue of Abraham. They talk about this story about Genesis chapter 22 and Abraham sacrificing Isaac. And I think it's a good example of two different methodologies. There's one methodology that looks at Genesis 22 as an example of what happens in nature, as an example of the sacrifice that we all must make towards higher goals, right? There's that way of reading Genesis 22. Or there's a way of reading Genesis 22 and the sacrifice of Isaac, as this is testimony to the supernatural sacrifice of Christ. Um, two different readings of the Abrahamic sacrifice, and I think those are very different, and I think at that point we'll start to see a very different approach between bottom-up and top-down.
SPEAKER_03So I write about this in this story, in this chapter on Abraham, in this book. Abraham is promised a son forever, and through his son, the possibility of establishing a numberless destiny. Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_01That's Genesis 15. So you're you're promised this son who will be from your own body. Um and and so Isaac, the promised son, the promised child, and all the promises of God are given to this child, uh Isaac. And he's not the child of human efforts. Abraham went to his Egyptian maidservant, Hagar, to have Ishmael, but that is not the way that the promise will come. It won't be through the effort of man, it will be as the gift of God. So can you imagine Abraham and Sarah when they finally have the child of promise? Isaac, when they hold him in their arms, they are holding the salvation of the world. Here is the seed of Abraham, the offspring of Abraham. And through him will come the patriarchs, and who through him will come the nation of Israel, but through him will come the human ancestry of the Messiah, Christ. They are holding in their hands, as they hold Isaac, the hope of the world, the seed of Abraham, the chosen one, right? In a very deep sense, they're kind of holding Christ in their hands, because through him will come the Messiah in his earthly incarnation. Through him will come the hope of the world, the restoration of the nations, the blessing of the cosmos. They're holding the chosen one of God in their hands, and he is the one the Lord asks Abraham to sacrifice. It is a Christological story that's going on here. Not really an example for any of us to follow. Thank God. But a proclamation of the chosen one, the promised child, the seed of Abraham, who will be raised from the dead. And so what's going on in Genesis 22 is not an example of anything that you should follow. It's a proclamation of how God will raise from the dead Christ. It's a very different way of reading the story. Let's see these different ways unfold.
SPEAKER_03And um and he finally gets his son, him and Sarai, and they're pretty thrilled about this, and then God flips the situation around and says, you know, that son I've been promising you forever as part of our agreement, I think you need to offer him to me. Right. So why don't you take it from there and explain that? Because see, this is one of those stories that the atheist types again point to when they're making reference to the cruelty of God in the Old Testament text. It's a funny thing, eh? Because on the one hand, the authors of these stories are supposed to be naive and childlike. And on the other hand, they're capable of comprehending a deep malevolence and describing suffering. It's like, well, you can have one of those critiques, but you can't have both. So and it's no, there's no doubt whatsoever that those Old Testament stories deal with human frailty and malevolence and suffering very, very, very, very straightforwardly and realistically. Okay, so now God calls on Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.
SPEAKER_02And it I mean, it has to do with all the things we were talking about until now, which is that if you think that you completely own something, like a purpose or a goal, if you think it's only my son, no matter what it is, it it will become infected. It won't be affording of true purpose and true life. It always has to be given up. And you'd like you know that too, because you've talked about this so many times, which is that when you raise a child, you know that you're going to give that child away. To to what? To what? And so you're going, you're you're raising the child for someone else than yourself. Like, especially the idea, even that you will give you. Raising is the right word there. And so you raise your daughter up, let's say as a father, I raise my daughter, and then I give her in marriage to someone else. And it's like that is, but that's actually the only way for that to be real to me is if I understand that whatever it is that I have, I have to offer it up towards something beyond it, and then it becomes real. As soon as I try to hold on to that. And then you get it back too. That's right. You know, and then this is You get it in the book. This is what Jesus says. When Jesus says those who who tried to save their life will lose it. Yeah. Right? And those who are willing to die, willing to lose their life, will gain it. And and it's a structural argument. It's not, it's something that is true at every single level of being.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but no. Um the typological significance of Isaac as my son is that he represents Christ. And maybe once we take seriously that he represents Christ, we can, as a secondary interpretation, say, okay, he represents all that is precious to us. But first of all, we've got to we've got to go with who Isaac is. And and look at Genesis chapter 22 from verse 1. Sometime later, God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Then God said, Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac. Okay, that language is language that is only really applied to Christ. It's the language of Isaiah 42, it's the language of of all throughout John's gospel. This is language of your son, your only son whom you love. And anyone reading this more literally would think, well, doesn't Abraham already have Ishmael? How is he his only son? Well, because he's playing the part of Christ, because he's the seed of Abraham, he's the hope of the nations, right? He's the savior of the world in this sense. In this sense, Isaac is playing the part of Christ. And then it says, go to the region of Moriah. Mount Moriah is where the temple is. We're talking about a mountain in the region of Jerusalem, sacrificing there as a burnt offering. On a mountain I will show you, a burnt offering is a sacrifice of atonement. So take this Christ figure to a mountain in the region of Jerusalem where he will die as a sacrifice of atonement. Early the next morning, Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servant, Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship, and then we will come back to you. Abraham knows he is getting his son back. It's a point that Hebrews chapter eleven makes. He knows that this is typological. He knows that this is a Christ figure through whom the salvation of the world will come. And so he believes in resurrection, okay? He knows that they will come back, both of them. Verse 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. The father has the tools of judgment, the fire and the knife. The son trudges up a mountain in the region of Jerusalem with wood on his back. Does this remind you of anything? As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Father, yes, my son, Abraham replied, The fire and the wood are here. Isaac said, But where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two of them went on together. Notice God will provide a lamb for himself as this sacrifice of atonement. Verse 9, when they reached the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord do a word study, and the angel of the Lord, fascinating figure, called out to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son. You have not withheld from me your son, your only son. So who does the angel of the Lord think he is? Okay, he thinks he is divine, right? He is the second person of God. Okay? He is the sent one of God. That's all the word angel means, sent one. He is the sent one of the Lord, who also is the Lord. And here he intercepts the judgment of Abraham on Isaac. Fascinating to think he intercepts this judgment, but he will receive this judgment himself on that mountain in the region of Jerusalem, as the burnt offering, with the wood on his back. Verse 13, Abraham looked up, and there in the thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. What did Abraham say God will provide? He will provide a lamb. What is provided on this occasion? A ram. So, verse 14, Abraham called that place the Lord will provide. And to this day it is said, on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. What will be provided? The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the true seed of Abraham, the true child of promise, the true chosen one, the true one through whom the blessing of the nations will come. He will on that mountain be sacrificed as a sacrifice of atonement. He will be provided for you, right? That is who Isaac represents first and foremost. Genesis 22 is not a story about the pattern of biology and sociology, as though there's this primordial reality called sacrifice, and if you make the right kind of sacrifices, life will go better for you. This is a proclamation of Christ. And sure, having received Christ, he gives you the lenses to see all other things in the world. And you can notice that, yeah, there are patterns of death and resurrection all throughout society, all throughout biology, all throughout history, all throughout psychology. Absolutely. We live in an Easter-shaped world because first and foremost, it is Christ the risen one, who is the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world. The word, the logos, the logic of all reality, is this Christ who set up a world in which he would come in the flesh, and he would be the risen one as Lord of everything. Jesus is not an example of sacrifice, and sacrifice is the ultimate reality. If that were the case, then perhaps we should all enact Genesis chapter 22. Perhaps we should all sacrifice our Isaacs, right? And Genesis 22 becomes a little morality play about how I'm Abraham and I need to sacrifice my Isaacs in order to live the properly flourishing life. But the whole point of Genesis 22 is that the Lord will provide. The Lord will provide. It's about his resurrection blessing, not about my cross-like sacrifices. My cross-like sacrifices all flow from his resurrection blessing. And do not get that the wrong way round. Do not prioritize your cross-like sacrifices. When the whole of the Bible, Old and New Testament, is all about his resurrection blessings. So Jordan Peterson, he feels like it's less preposterous to believe in the resurrection than to not, and that is, I guess, a hopeful thing, but the path he's on might lead him to a false Jesus. A Jesus who is more about tragedy than about comedy. A Jesus who is more of a model and an archetype than he is a savior and a risen one. That's my view of Jordan. I don't know where you think he is at. Maybe I've got my analysis wrong. You can let me know in the comments. Before you write your comment, you can go to 321course.com and check out Jesus and his vision for God, the world, and you. Start an account at 321course.com. It's totally free. I'd love to see you on there, and I'd love to see you down in the comments. Why don't you share this video around the place and do subscribe so that we can catch you on the next one? Thank you. Bye bye.