Wanting to reconcile the Bible with modern scientific understandings of the world, Bultmann argued that the ancient cosmologies we find on the pages the Bible need to be displaced in order to get to the moral and existential core of the Scripture's message. The "mythos" of the Bible--its ancient metaphysical and cosmological assumptions about the structure of the cosmos--could be safely set aside in our search for Biblical truth. Modern persons do not have to subscribe to the ancient visions of science we find in Scripture. We should, rather, seek existential wisdom and moral guidance.
Bultmann called this process, removing or reading around the mythos of the Bible to get to its existential and moral content, "demythologization."
An extreme example of demythologization, one that predated Bultmann, was Thomas Jefferson. Unable to reconcile the miraculous and supernatural aspects of the New Testament with his Enlightenment commitments to reason and science, Jefferson famously cut out, with scissors, all references to the miraculous and supernatural from the gospels. What was left over, called The Jefferson Bible, was the historical account of Jesus' life along with his moral teachings. Jefferson had demythologized the gospels, transforming Jesus into a moral philosopher and exemplar.
For example, did Jesus physically rise from the dead? Is the tomb empty? Christian orthodoxy confesses that Jesus was, ontologically, resurrected. The resurrection really happened as a historical, factual event within history. Some Christians, however, demythologize the resurrection. Christ's "resurrection" is symbolic, existential, and moral in nature. Christ is "resurrected" in our hearts and in our midst whenever we embody and display his love and the spirit that animated his life.
In light of demythologization, let's see how it relates to the moral, existential, and ontological layers I've been describing. As described in the first post of this series, the effect of a Jeffersonian or Bultmannian demythologization was to sever the connections between the moral, existential (mythological, narrative, symbolic), and ontological layers. To wit:
Moral / Political Layer
[demythologization]
Existential / Symbolic / Mythological / Narrative Layer
[demythologization]
Ontological Layer
The decoupling here goes from the bottom up. With Thomas Jefferson, for example, we see the mythological layer being severed from the ontological layer. Jesus and the Bible remain, as a narrative, along with the upper moral/political layer, the Judeo-Christian ethic. Over time, as the West secularizes, the mythological/narrative layer is deemed superfluous and liberal humanism goes on to jettison explicit mention of Jesus and Christianity. In the words of Robert Jenson, the world "loses it story." Stripped of the myth, what remains is the moral/political vision of Judeo-Christianity. I described all this in Part 1 of this series.
Let me now return to what Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pageau have been up to. One way to describe their work is the "remythologization" of the Western moral and political vision, along with all the existential benefits that this remythologization brings. Again, meaning is the bread of life. So, we can describe Peterson's project like this, starting now at the top:
Moral / Political Layer
↓ [remythologization] ↓
Existential / Symbolic / Mythological / Narrative Layer
[demythologization]
Ontological Layer
For example, in his work on Genesis we can see Peterson restitching the moral layer back to the existential layer. This explains a bit of why Peterson's work is so multivalent. Since the moral layer involves politics, Peterson's work can become overtly political and partisan. But Peterson's career began with the existential aspect of remythologization. And this early Jungian work was, in my opinion, Peterson's strongest and best work. It explains why Peterson spoke so powerfully into the lives of lost young men. By reconnecting their lives to myth, the call to "order the chaos" of their lives, Peterson was filling an existential vacuum. Peterson was remythologizing the lives of directionless young men.
More recently, however, Peterson has turned away from the existential to the political side of his project. I'm not a fan of this political turn. Not because I disagree with him about the Judeo-Christian foundation of the West. See Tom Holland's work on that point. My problem is with Peterson's partisan take on this political diagnosis, how he thinks the Judeo-Christian foundation of the West is solely represented by the Republicans. That's a ludicrous claim.
Regardless, to return to the point I made in Part 1, there remains the issue of the ontological layer. Beyond the remythologizing of our values and moral vision, reembedding them in the Christian story, there remains the issue of metaphysical truth, the question of the Real. As we've noted, Peterson hesitates at the ontological layer. He will remythologize our moral vision and values, but he won't reontologize the myth. And that's the part I'm interested in. Here's a picture of the work I think needs to be done, still moving from top to bottom:
Moral / Political Layer
↓ [remythologization] ↓
Existential / Symbolic / Mythological / Narrative Layer
↓ [reontologization] ↓
Ontological Layer
That is to say, the moral and political layer is reembedded in the story and the story is reconnected to the Real.
Of course, a person might say, for the reasons I discussed in the last post, that this final step of reontologization, what we might call the "confessional" or "creedal" step, is problematic. Once things get ontological, it will be asserted, things start to get dogmatic and exclusive. Which is a no-no in a pluralistic, post-modern, liberal, humanistic, inclusive, spiritual-not-religious world. So, let's keep things restricted to the top layers. Keep things at the mythological level, like a Jordan Peterson or a spiritual-but-not religious "spiritual seeker." That, or keep things restricted to the moral and political layer, like a liberal humanist or a social justice warrior.
In response to that desire, I've already described in the prior two posts how the layers will start to drift when they become decoupled. For example, Peterson and his fans are concerned that the moral vision of the West is becoming decoupled from the Christian myth. And while I think they are wrong in their partisan response to that threat, I think they are right in raising the concern that an anti-human worldview will come to replace the Christian myth.
In a similar way, I've expressed concerns about how Peterson's vision of the Christian myth is decoupled from Christian metaphysics and ontology. Without that ontological connection, I've argued, Peterson's remythologization of the Bible is vulnerable to its own drift into dark, Nietzschean waters. Paul Kingsnorth has powerfully made this point.
In short, if you want to cast an anchor, that anchor has to reach the bottom. You have to make contact with the Real. Anything less deep and you'll start to drift. Values need to be remythologized. And the myth needs to be reontologized.
But a reader might respond, "Well, that's Jordan Peterson's problem." What about, then, the progressive liberal humanists? The social justice warriors? The spiritual seekers? How are they susceptible to drift?
I'll turn to that in the next post.
