Jordan Peterson, Christ-Adjacent: My recent interview on Faith Radio

On Jordan Peterson debating 20 Atheists, reciprocal self-sacrifice, patriarchy and masculine virtue, and what it means to be "Christ-adjacent"

Jun 04, 2025

a cement block with a picture of a man on it

Readers, Paul Perrault recently invited me on for my third radio interview as he guest hosts The Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge on Faith Radio. (Our previous two interviews are here and here.)

Prompted by the recent Jordan Peterson v. 20 Atheists video, we discuss the culture impact of Peterson, the limitations of his approach, and its promise. The transcript of our interview is printed below. The audio can be found here or at the bottom of the post, if you want to listen. Enjoy!

Paul P.: Jordan Peterson.

Just saying that name can provoke many responses.

I’m Paul filling in for Carmen. Thanks for listening to Faith Radio on The Reconnect.

So you might love him; you might hate him. You might have both feelings at the same time. Maybe you’ve just listened to some of Jordan Peterson’s stuff, and you’re just kind of confused about him: “What’s he really getting at with all these teachings, especially around God and the Bible?”

Well, joining me now — Joel, I’ve always enjoyed reading your stuff, and I love the fact that you have a lot of it transcribed or on video, so I can listen to it while doing other things. But Joel Carini, “The Natural Theologian” — you can find him at joelcarini.substack.com — thanks for joining me this morning on The Reconnect.

Joel C.: Thanks for having me!

1. Jordan Peterson versus 20 Atheists

Paul: Now I mentioned a little while ago the very recent video, “Jordan Peterson versus 20 Atheists,” and I watched part of it. Have you watched it yet?

Joel: I have not been able to watch the whole thing. I watched the viral clip, and I have thoughts about that.

But something about the character of these kind of “Christian-atheist” debates is, I feel like, exactly what Jordan Peterson has come onto the scene to disrupt. It’s sort of like they tried to send him back 20 years to a William Lane Craig vs. Richard Dawkins debate. You try to recreate the same antagonism, which is exactly what Peterson has been trying to say: “This is not helpful. Even if you don’t know whether you believe the religious claims of the Bible, isn’t there something we can take from the faith expressed in the Bible, from the wisdom of ancient stories?”

And that method that he’s been using, it disrupts the whole antagonism, because Christians want to learn things from Old Testament stories. And if an atheist all of a sudden thinks, “Well, maybe, maybe these aren’t true, but they are deeply-encoded wisdom. And the only reason certain civilizations have survived is because these stories have helped them live in accord with reality” —

— well, all of a sudden we have a common starting point for conversation, which is very different thing than an antagonistic debate between two mutually incompatible worldviews.

Paul: Yeah, the one thing about the clip you’re talking about that really got me is — it’s just trying to do “gotcha” moments, instead of having those deeper conversations.

We could spend a lot of time on that, Joel, but I want to actually get to talking about the substance of what Jordan Peterson has been talking about. Because you and your wife, Anna, you spend a lot of time hearing him, going to even he had a speaking tour a few years ago, and he was visiting in various cities, and just would talk. It’s kind of like a music concert without music. It would be a Jordan Peterson talk-concert.

But you’ve been to some of these you and your wife, and what were you — kind of give us your impression first off about Jordan Peterson.

Joel: Yeah! Well, my impression has been that Jordan Peterson is able to communicate some of the truths about morality and faith that we evangelical Christians have long wanted to communicate to unbelievers.

But he does so in a way that doesn’t get their guard up. He does so in a way that they’re able to believe piecemeal. They’re able to believe part of the truth, one little piece at a time, more like a puzzle.

And often, the way we Christians operate is, it’s all-or-nothing; take the whole thing or nothing at all. Sometimes we talk about mutually incompatible worldviews. We talk about whole ideologies, as if Christianity is entirely incompatible with other sets of ideas.

But we less often take a constructive approach, which builds up brick-by-brick and says, “Hmm, my neighbor can see certain truths.” They can see, for example — what’s becoming common now is that evolutionary psychologists are some of the best witnesses to the duality of the sexes, that is, male and female. Well, now it’s the people who believe in evolution who are the strongest proponents of that. Okay, well, we have one truth in common. They are believing that even without believing the Bible. Well, that's actually a starting point for for conversation.

So that’s what I’ve seen Peterson do so much.

And what I started to wonder is, how much can Christians adopt some of his approach?

Obviously, we can’t become people who only believe that Christianity works but we don’t know whether it's true. We can’t become that. I think Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day. Okay, so I’m not going to be in the same spot as Jordan Peterson.

But can I tell my neighbor who believes in evolution, “Yeah. Don't you see what Peterson is saying? Sacrifice is essential to to life. If you don’t make sacrifices of your pleasure now, you can't get some of the good things later that come through patience and adopting responsibility.”

So that’s been my primary reaction to Jordan Peterson: How can we Christians start to communicate with others the way Peterson has been so effective?

Paul: He has been, and you get to those ARC conferences that he’s been doing, and he's had people that are staunch Christians as well as other people at these. But there's that commonality of vision when, especially when it comes to cultural issues.

2. Voluntary, Reciprocal Self-Sacrifice

But you just brought up “sacrifice.” That is a key thing he talks about, mutual sacrifice. I’m trying to find what was the phrase he used on that one …

Joel: “Voluntary, reciprocal self-sacrifice,” I think.

Paul: Can you — Yeah, that is the phrase. Expand that. Help us understand what he means by that.

Joel: Yeah, so Jordan Peterson is arguing that the principle that we can’t just live for ourselves and our own hedonistic pleasure is built even into our biology.

So often he’ll speak about lab rats and how they love to engage in a kind of play. If one of them does what they would call anti social behavior, and if we saw a kid do it, we might call it sin, well, nobody wants to play with them anymore. And so, what they learn to do is control some of their impulses, sacrifice some of what they want right now in order to allow the game to continue.

Well, in a very simple way you take that to children. As he says, if I want other child to play with me, I need to sacrifice some of my time with this big red ball. I need to let him have some time. And now there’s mutual self-sacrifice in order to have more of a long-term back-and-forth and connection.

And really, at large scale, that’s what society is. We work, we sacrifice our time to all get these various economic and interpersonal good things from each other to allow society to go on.

And so Peterson is saying that it’s not just Christianity or hedonism. The message of Christianity and the cross about living a life more of self sacrifice is something that we actually all need to do, whether we believe or not.

And in fact, he’d say, we’re all doing it in some degree, every day, simply being self-controlled and in sacrificing for others.

Paul: Again, we’re speaking with Joel Carini, “The Natural Theologian.” You can find him on substack. Joel carini.substack.com Plus he's got a video channel too on YouTube that I've watched many videos on.

When we continue in just a moment, okay, reciprocal, voluntary self sacrifice. Jordan Peterson says he he gets a lot of those ideas, too from the Bible. But is this what Jesus really calls us to, or does he call us to more? We’ll talk about that in just a few moments here on The Reconnect. I’m Paul filling in for Carmen on Faith Radio.

3. Jesus Asks More of Us than Jordan Peterson

Paul: Life requires sacrifices. Jordan Peterson talks a lot about about reciprocal, voluntary self-sacrifice. That’s a true, natural reality, I think.

But is it the more ultimate reality? Joel Carini, the Natural Theologian, is with us again here on The Reconnect. I love talking to Joel, and visiting his website gets me thinking a lot, which is good. I need that.

But Joel, you are thinking through this because you’re very familiar with Jordan Peterson, and you and your wife, and I love the article you wrote about this very principle, “Jesus Asks More of Us than Jordan Peterson,” when it comes around this issue of self-sacrifice. Talk about that.

Joel: In his recent talk at this ARC conference, a talk about Christian civilization, Peterson was saying that voluntary self-sacrifice is the principle on which society is built. If we don’t sacrifice our present pleasure for future, long-term goods, we don’t have society.

But people like Paul Kingsnorth, another Christian intellectual, have criticized this, and one place that you can criticize it is from Christ's own words. Christ says:

If you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. But love your enemies and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.
— Luke 6:33-35 (paraphrase)

So in a passage like this and elsewhere, Christ talks about, even the Gentiles do that, we need to do more. We need to have a righteousness greater than the Gentiles or the scribes and the Pharisees.

Okay, so the kind of self-sacrifice that’s at the foundation of civilization that we all need to exercise in getting up early, going to work, doing good for others, that is wonderful.

But the Christian ethic ultimately goes beyond it. The Christian ethic is ultimately shaped by the idea that we will truly rise from the dead, and therefore we can sacrifice some of our life now without expecting to get anything in return from others. Christ says to invite people to your table who can’t have you back to their table, so that not everything is reciprocal, and that’s how you get treasure in heaven. So I think sometimes Peterson reduces these spiritual truths down to what you could call a natural truth.

But I think we have to resist the opposite temptation as Christians, which is to make everything into a spiritual truth. But there’s actually so much of what Christ came to do that is to restore nature, to bring us back to being fully human. So, our righteousness should exceed that of the Gentiles, as he says. But it shouldn’t be anything less.

So this is really interesting when you observe a neighbor or another non-Christian who shows a lot of virtues. You see somebody, and you’re like — maybe you listen to a pastor, and you’re like, “I really want to show hospitality.” And then you meet someone who is just so outgoing and friendly that everyone wants to be around them. And it’s not because they’re a Christian; it might just be kind of their personality. It’s their gift, and it’s something we should just learn from: “I want to sacrifice my comfort to make other people feel comfortable.”

And that might not be quite loving your enemies, because your neighbor isn’t your enemy, but it’s still this way of being more fully human that we need to at least do as well.

So I think what Christ teaches ultimately goes beyond some of what Peterson has said, and I want us to be attentive to that for sure. But I don’t want us to do anything less than what Jordan Peterson is calling for.

That’s actually why Jesus is asking more of us than Jordan Peterson, because he’s actually asking what Jordan Peterson is as well. (“These you should have done without neglecting the others.”)

4. Strident Patriarchal Influence or Model of Masculine Virtue?

Paul: Somebody just wrote in, Joel, one of our listeners, Mark, who said, “A fair number of my evangelical friends are fans of Peterson for his strident patriarchal views, and their faith is becoming less Christ-centered. Anything he says, they give a pass and are less interested in a pure and simple devotion to Christ.”

I don’t know if you have any comments on that one, but I see that as a potential weakness.

Joel: I don’t know if I would use the word “patriarchal” to describe Peterson. I think that applies more accurately to certain figures on like the Twitter Christian Right and someone like Andrew Tate especially, to subjugate women in relationships.

With Peterson, I think that’s something people can sort of mistake — when he emphasized the possibility of a non-toxic-masculinity, of a virtuous way of being a man. If people are taking these bad lessons from it, I wholeheartedly think that that’s an error, but I think Peterson, at his best, is calling us all to responsibility.

And I think it’s something that resonates with men, because it calls them to something higher. Sometimes even from churches, men get the message that they are the source of all the problems, that it’s their sin that breaks up marriages, they're playing video games in their basement. And it’s easy to wag the finger at that.

But what Peterson comes along and does is, he actually inspires them with a vision of doing something more. That’s what I take from Peterson at his best.

And I think Peterson is actually an antidote to — apparently, this is kind of outside of my wheelhouse, but like younger men are listening to Andrew Tate at ridiculous rates. Andrew Tate is literally a convicted criminal and a pimp — I don't know if you're supposed to say that on Christian radio.

Paul: It works.

Joel: He’s a terrible human. There’s no comparison to Peterson on that level.

And I think we really need to get right, what is virtuous masculinity. And if it’s not Peterson, I don’t really know what it is.

5. Jordan Peterson, “Christ-Adjacent”

Paul: I guess a phrase somebody gave to me is talking about people who are “Christ-adjacent.” They're not fully in the camp, but boy, they resonate with that. Would you call Jordan Peterson one of those?

Joel: Absolutely. “Christ-adjacent” is beautiful. I've focused on this ancient critic Christian category of preparatio evangelica.

Paul: Translate that!

Joel: “The preparation for the gospel.”

So the idea that there are these figures, even outside the faith, who prepare the way for the gospel. A figure like Clement of Alexandria, a church father, he said that what the Hebrew Old Testament did for the Jews, philosophy had actually done for the Greeks and the Romans. It had primed them for believing in one God, for believing that justice isn’t just the will of the stronger, and other other things that Socrates and Plato argued.

I think it’s really important to take this more friendly attitude to these people who are, as you say, Christ-adjacent.

I’m in a philosophy Ph.D. That’s been my study, and that is the main thing I’m in the business of doing is, I'm trying to find non-Christian philosophers who are saying true things, things that I was taught in theology classrooms. But now I’m seeing them on the lips of non-Christians who are arguing their way there, from the bottom up.

The way I approach this, and I especially approach Peterson —

Paul Vanderklay

, who’s written a lot about and spoken a lot about Jordan. Peterson, drew my attention to this passage in Mark 9:38, where the disciples say, John says:

Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.

So you've got this person doing what the disciples are supposed to be doing, but he's not really, officially a disciple of Jesus.

Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us.

I think that’s quite obviously how we should approach Peterson.

Here’s someone who’s doing a mighty work. Many people are listening to him, going further than him. While Peterson has these kind of hang-ups about evolution and different things that I think keep him from the brink of really believing in the supernatural, his wife and his daughter have become Christians. Many young men and women who were New Atheists, who believed that Christianity was evil, started to consider the claims of Christianity, and have become full-blown Christians as a result. This is doing mighty works.

And he couldn’t do this if God were not at work through him. And as Christ says, the one who is not against us is for us.

Paul: Hey, we have to leave it right there, Joel, because we just ran out of time. But so good. Thanks, Joel, thank you for joining us here on The Reconnect, and hope we can talk again sometime.

Joel: Thank you, Paul. Thanks for having me on again.