Lecture I in my Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories series from May 16th at Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto. In this lecture, I describe what I consider to be the idea of God, which is at least partly the notion of sovereignty and power, divorced from any concrete sovereign or a particular, individual person of power. I also suggest that God, as Father, is something akin to the spirit or pattern inherent in the human hierarchy of authority, which is based in turn on the dominance hierarchies characterizing animals.
Biblical Series I: Introduction to the Idea of God
Lecture II in my Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories from May 23 at Isabel Bader Theatre, Toronto. In this lecture, I present Genesis 1, which presents the idea that a pre-existent cognitive structure (God the Father) uses the Logos, the Christian Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, to generate habitable order out of pre-cosmogonic chaos at the beginning of time. It is in that Image that Man and Woman are created — indicating, perhaps, that it is (1) through speech that we participate in the creation of the cosmos of experience and (2) that what true speech creates is good.
It is a predicate of Western culture that each individual partakes in some manner in the divine. This is the true significance of consciousness, which has a world-creating aspect.
Biblical Series II: Genesis 1: Chaos & Order
This episode was recorded on September 6, 2021. Dr. Christopher Kaczor, Dr. Matthew Petrusek, and I discuss their new book “Jordan Peterson, God, and Christianity”—the first systematic analysis of 12 Rules for Life and my biblical series from a Christian perspective. We also cover—just to name a few—truth in fiction, a time before consciousness, faith, evolution, love, and acting as if God exists. Dr. Christopher Kaczor is a Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He was appointed a Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life of Vatican City, is a fellow of the Word on Fire Institute, and won a Templeton Grant for his work. He has written many scholarly articles and books. Dr. Matthew R. Petrusek is an associate professor at Loyola Marymount University in LA. He holds an MA from Yale and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Dr. Petrusek specializes in Christian ethics and moral theology and lectures on a range of topics surrounding philosophy, theology, and Catholicism.
