The unworthy heirs of the English Common Law tradition in Ontario decided that it was appropriate to revoke Jordan Peterson’s license to practice psychology. His sin was voicing political and cultural criticism that these worthies didn’t like. Apparently, freedom of speech is considered so trivial a thing that they did not even deign to back their decision with any type of reasoning, dismissive of any notion that a government needed an excuse for preventing people from uttering opinions they don’t like. The intellectual history of the West veered away from the integrative approach of the Renaissance.
While the worthies were preparing their edict, Jordan Peterson was sitting down to a long and extraordinary conversation with his professional colleague and friend, Professor John Vervaeke. Both of these psychologists have followed the threads of the modern science of psychology, from its classic roots in Greek thought through its reinvention in Descartes and then through its various developments to the present day. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: Do Not Let Hamas Escape Into Exile)
They use that grasp of psychology to address what is properly called the crisis of meaning: the collapse of common meaning that plays out now in every aspect of culture, politics, and personal lives. Both men are animated by the absolute necessity of what they call in the title of this talk — the Rebirth of the Sacred.
Not that the sacred ever died. But that its power in society has eroded. Its role of giving us all a sense of a unifying wholeness, powerful precisely because it makes the differences we have complementary and so enriching, rather than isolating and impoverishing. And this is essential to freedom — failing that unifying wholeness present in our lives, differences inevitably are final. Conclusions become premises; there is no meaningful talk possible, as all differences now are a priori and thus incapable of resolution.
Both psychologists are actively involved in the exploration of Biblical, patristic, and medieval Christian literature. They also have a personal religious practice in which those things figure. That these things are combined with a passionate study of modern science, the Neoplatonists, and ancient Middle Eastern and hermetic traditions is reminiscent of nothing so much as the spirit of the Renaissance. Before the revolution of material science and before the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the cutting edge of European Renaissance thought embraced a religious humanism that inspires to this day by its art and philosophy.
The intellectual history of the West veered away from the integrative approach of the Renaissance, on which humanism and theism informed and complemented each other profoundly. In our age of political and cultural division, to have such a vital, integrative approach again is like a draft of fresh water to a worn and thirsty desert pilgrim.
The world is falling apart around us. As we tear each other apart in culture wars, only the tyrants seem to offer a unifying vision, much as in the catastrophic Great Depression. Whether it is the savage and tyrannical reading of classic religion offered by Iran and ISIS or whether it is the vision of a new tsarist empire of Putin, or the modern vision of the all-powerful, all-intrusive state offered by China, tyranny is freshly assertive. It also finds its ardent and violent admirers in the Free World, followed by a gaggle of useful idiots who support the violence as much as their minimal courage lets them.
What Peterson and Vervaeke are building in this conversation and in their various labors is a re-visioning of the religious forces that came together to make free society possible. Those forces have always been there, right beneath its surface, to be called upon in crisis to provide the vision that makes effective unity possible. (READ MORE: The Totalitarianism of Cultural Fog)
It is more than interesting that the greatest of political figures, who mastered the art of inspiring people to make transcendent and self-sacrificial effort towards the worthiest goals, appealed to the underlying religious heritage in a way that was extraordinarily welcoming.
Neither Lincoln nor Churchill were demonstratively pious. Churchill said he supported the church from without. Of Lincoln, a friend said: “[He] was by nature a deeply religious man. But I have no evidence that he ever accepted the formulated creed of any sect or denomination. I know that all churches had his profound respect and support.”
But the sense of something that lay behind all the chaos of the tremendous struggle of the Civil War, that made the horrendous losses meaningful and purposeful, animated the words of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, an immortal testament to the riveting necessity of defending political freedom:
Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
Churchill galvanized his nation and the world by properly casting the fight against Hitler in religious terms:
Bearing ourselves humbly before God, but conscious that we serve an unfolding purpose, we are ready to defend our native land against the invasion by which it is threatened. We are fighting by ourselves alone; but we are not fighting for ourselves alone. Here in this strong City of Refuge which enshrines the title-deeds of human progress and is of deep consequence to Christian civilization; here, girt about by the seas and oceans where the Navy reigns; shielded from above by the prowess and devotion of our airmen —we await undismayed the impending assault.
That both men were not doctrinaire or narrow in their religion was key to the universality of their appeal and their success in calling a nation and a world to its highest cause and deepest commitment.
This is in the spirit of the Renaissance as well. I marvel at the religious power of Michelangelo. I look to the meeting of the Italian philosopher Pico della Mirandola with the rabbi and kabbalist Yaakov Allemano, resulting in Pico’s seeing in those Jewish mystical teachings the presca theologia, the ancient true strain running through all religions and enabling them to understand each other fully. I am amazed at Johann Reuchlin, who was also attracted to the Kabbala through Pico, and who studied together with Rabbi Ovadia Seforno, a great biblical commentator. An ordained priest, Reuchlin fought for the inclusion of Hebrew studies in the universities and fought for religious freedom, intervening with the Holy Roman Emperor to stop a planned confiscation and burning of the Talmud throughout his domain.
This mindset of deep piety expressed through a humble and human openness, common to these great Renaissance figures, inspired the constitutionalist movement towards political freedom. While France and later Russia would engage in trashing the historical biblical heritage of the West, England and America found sustenance in the kind of religion that flourished when all were given freedom to worship as their conscience dictated. It certainly flowed through the Common Law tradition which saw even the greatest monarch as subservient to God, and which saw in the Jewish Law tradition the model of a law which people carry forward in their hearts and to which, in their God-given liberty, they are devoted. (READ MORE: James Carville, Religion Deserves a Place at the Table)
Both Peterson and Verveike see religion at work in science’s devotion to truth and meaning. They include it not only in the intellectual discussion of religion, but in religion’s devotional communion. In doing so, they are preparing the grounds for the renewal of the cause of free societies in the West and worldwide. Devotion to that which is both deepest and most high rescues religious traditions from narrowness and intolerance, and revives a world choking on the dismal dry sand of the rampant nihilism that has shattered our institutions, evaporated political trust and cooperation, and left a swath of drug death, mutilation, and incoherence throughout our country, It is a call to rebirth and renewal that will be regenerating freedom long after the Ontario bureaucrats lapse into well-deserved oblivion.
