On Jordan Peterson and the necessity of tethering the Gospels to Tradition

Canadian-born psychologist Jordan Peterson has launched a third installment of his video discussions of the Bible, this one devoted to “The Gospels.” I know this because of recently received emails asking, “Does the Church teach this?” and “Does the Church teach that?” A segment of the new installment entitled the “The Birth of Christ” is now available on YouTube.

Catholics who consume Dr. Peterson’s content can take confidence in the presence of Bishop Robert Barron, who serves as the distinguished Catholic representative among the Jewish, agnostic, Neo-Platonic, and other guests around the table. Nevertheless, just as with Peterson’s other videos on Christianity, some of my Catholic students panic when they watch them, fearing they may have missed something in their catechesis since some guest or other made some claim that doesn’t accord with Catholic teaching.

In the case of the latest video, most of the emails I’ve received are asking whether the Gospels should be melded into one or kept distinct as we find them in the New Testament. The question arose because Dr. Peterson and his guests are using The Single Gospel, a condensed version of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John into one narrative. At one point, the guests confusedly search for a passage Peterson refers to.

The video then cuts to a spliced-in interview with guest Jonathan Pageau, an Eastern Orthodox iconographer, who explains that Peterson’s option to use The Single Gospel might sit strangely with Christians accustomed to flipping pages between the four Gospels. Unfortunately, it’s only while the end credits are rolling that Pageau follows this up with a fuller explanation of the richness that the four Gospels bring to the Christian tradition (with a small “t”).

For Catholics who have never pondered this question previously, perhaps the best place to start is Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation:

The sacred authors, in writing the four Gospels, selected certain of the many elements which had been handed on, either orally or already in written form; others they synthesized or explained with an eye to the situation of the churches, the while sustaining the form of preaching, but always in such a fashion that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus. (par 19)

I suggest readers watch Peterson’s video since he and his guests incidentally touch on several elements present in this passage from Vatican II. I suspect most of Peterson’s Christian audience is familiar with why the gnostic Gospels, such as those of Thomas and Philip, are excluded from the Christian canon. Fewer, however, are probably familiar with why the Church maintains four separate Gospels and has refused to condense them into one, single narrative.

Gregg Hurwitz, a best-selling author and a former student of Peterson, argues that, given the imperfection and selectiveness of human memory, the story of Jesus would be less credible if it weren’t for the different textures and conflicting details we have in the four Gospels. Hurwitz conjectures that friends and witnesses were able to recall different facets of Jesus’s life and view his deeds through different lenses.

At the same time, Peterson’s use of The Single Gospel raises an ongoing issue I have with all his biblical content: there is limited discussion of the crucial importance of the Apostolic Tradition in receiving the Scriptures, interpreting them, and handing them on to others. Once the Gospels are untethered from that Tradition, it’s hard to know just how to tether the them back onto it, no matter how sympathetic and learned is your reading of them.

As Dei Verbum makes clear, the Apostolic teaching contained in the Tradition is just as fundamental as the scriptural canon itself and, of course, precedes it. The Gospel was handed on in two ways: orally by the Apostles, and in the Apostles’ writing and that of others associated with them “under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 76). Even the episcopate is, in a certain sense, more fundamental than Scripture, as the bishops were appointed by the apostles who gave them teaching authority (cf. Dei Verbum, 7). “Indeed, the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time” (CCC, 77; cf. DV, 8). Further, “Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church” (DV, 10). The vital relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and the teaching office of the Church is an essential one.

Conversations between Peterson and his guests tend to gloss over this “living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit” which the Church refers to as “Tradition” (with a capital “T”) and which is indeed “distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it” (CCC, 78). The attempt to dissect, analyze, and decipher a condensed, singular narrative of the life of Christ apart from that Tradition—or, at best, only tenuously connected with that Tradition—will only get so far.

The cynic in me says that this is precisely the point, since it keeps Peterson’s Catholic audience hanging onto their seats wondering if and when he will be fully initiated into the Catholic Church. Perhaps he and the Daily Wire would lose some subscriptions if they failed to maintain such gripping suspense. Yet I refuse to pay too much attention to that cynical voice, for I do have the impression that Peterson’s search—and that of his guests—is genuinely bent on penetrating the meaning of these mysterious texts and figuring out why they have influenced and captivated the world for centuries.

In the meantime, I encourage my Catholic students to trust what they already know through study and what they already are through baptism, confirmation, and their participation in the Holy Eucharist. At the very least, they should wake up every morning excited not only to immerse themselves in Holy Scripture, but to bask in the light of Tradition with a capital “T” through which “the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes” (Dei Verbum, 8).

Catholic World Report