When God Is Too Ineffable | Jack Symes

Well, well, I wonder just to ask you then, at the top of Jacob's Ladder, then you take God to be there. You take God to be the thing on which all values hang on, slash the thing that grounds all of the values. To be clear, are you happy to say that, to say, "I believe in the existence of God as the greatest conceivable being," let's say?

Well, I think it's a matter of definition, I guess. It's a matter of definition. So, because before we can talk about whether or not God exists, we should have some sense of exactly what it is that we're talking about. In the moment, we're talking about the highest conceivable potential unity. But then I would also say, so it stands at the top, but it also stands in the top in a peculiar way, and this is definitely insisted upon in the Judeo-Christian canon, because God is inconceivable and ineffable. So, even if you do put him at the top, as you approach him, he recedes, and that capacity to recede is infinite.

It's also not within the scope of conceptualization. Right? I mean, the classic atheists, they perform a sort of sleight of hand, and what their God is always the wise old man in the sky who's the superstitious obstacle to the progress of science. But that's not at all how God is conceptualized in the biblical corpus. I mean, God is put at the top of Jacob's Ladder, but he's also ineffable and receding.

Well, let's pick up on a few of those ideas then. The first thing I think that's worth pointing out is, obviously, as you've said, there are conceptions of God in which God is ineffable. There's a big debate, as you know, there in philosophy of religion, to the extent to which God is ineffable. Some people take God to be completely ineffable; you can't say anything positive about God. You can only say what God's not in this view. So, God's not a pineapple. God's not an Adam Sandler movie, and thank God for that. And God's not this delicious beer to my side or anything like that. So, I can say negative things about God, but I can't say anything positive because God's beyond my own descriptions.

But I think the majority of philosophers of religion agree that you can say some things about God. Descartes gives the example of trying to get your arms around a great mountain, and the great mountain is God. But you can't understand God in his entirety. You can pick up a few rocks, you can describe a few rocks and say, "Hey, this is the property of omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, consciousness, being immutable, unchanging," and the like. So, I think there are some things we can reasonably say that God must have as part of God's essence.

On this question of, "Oh, let's, um, okay, let's go there," there are some things that we can just pause for a moment. Some things we can say about God's essence, such as this, right? Okay, just, and just finally on this, see, and because I know that you know your scripture very well, I don't know my scripture certainly as well as you do. I'm more from the camp of perfect being theology, as you know. There are three major strands of theology and philosophy which all try and arrive at a different or the same definition of God.

Really, revelation theology looks at religious experience and scripture and tries to infer properties from God from revelation. Creation theology looks at God's hand in the world and says, "Well, God must be powerful enough to create the world, good enough to give us the world, and knowledgeable enough to give us such a finely tuned universe." And then when we look at other versions like perfect being theology, and this is the version I think is the most reflective of God, is that God, by definition, must be the greatest conceivable being. If there is a greater being than God, then the thing that you're talking about that isn't the greatest thing isn't God. God must have all great-making properties, that is power, goodness, knowledge, and anything else we take to be intrinsically great at the top of Jacob's Ladder. If God has those things, then it is worthy of the name God.

America's healthcare system is lacking in any real care. Insurance companies regularly deny progressive treatment options. Primary care physicians refuse to order comprehensive lab work, and the standards of care lag years behind the leading research. That's where Mer Health comes in. Mer Health represents a paradigm shift in how we approach medicine. The premier health optimization platform, Mer Health empowers you to maximize your longevity and performance with the confidence that comes from having experts in your back pocket.

They offer cutting-edge diagnostic labs, concierge health coaching, and expert clinical oversight. They help you achieve your health and fitness goals by leveraging data-driven lifestyle and nutrition recommendations, along with supplement and prescription treatment options. If you're listening to this show, then you're probably a proponent of taking your health into your own hands. That's why we've teamed up with Mer Health to offer a turnkey optimization package designed for those who want to maximize their performance and longevity.

With the most elaborate testing on the market, you'll receive extensive lab work, thorough lab reports, video calls with Mer Health's experts, and expedited onboarding. Go to merhealth.com/Peterson and use code Peterson to get the same panel and medical oversight I get, and save 10% at checkout. That's merhealth.com/Peterson and use code Peterson at checkout.

Okay, so with regards to the argument about ineffability, Mer Eliade points out one of the consequences of a God that's too ineffable. So, a God that you can't characterize. He’s mapped out the death of God phenomenon across many cultures and over many times. What you often see happening when a culture emerges and begins to flourish is that there's a revelation at its beginning.

Interestingly enough, that has a certain amount of psychological and sociological energy, and it unites people. It offers them a framework of meaning that quells their anxiety, and also a goal or a destination that imbues them with positive emotion and that pulls the culture together. Then it happens upon occasion that the pinnacle value that's posited by that culture comes under rational assault or perhaps falls prey to conflict with other religions, and people start to doubt, and the system decays—the death of God, let's say.

Well, Eliade pointed out that a God that is so ineffable that nothing can be said about him tends to float off into, what would you say, into the cosmic ether and lose his connection with humanity. So, I think it's better to think about it in a hierarchical manner. And so, here's one way that I've come to understand it that's both neuropsychological and mythological at the same time.

So, you know, in the story of Exodus, Moses is compelled forward to take a position of leadership as a consequence of his encounter with the burning bush. Right? The bush is a tree; it's the tree of life, and it's on fire because it's alive. A burning bush is a representation of that which calls you forward. That's a good way of thinking about it. Now, that takes concrete form in your life, right?

So, you might be attracted to a particular lover; you might be attracted to a particular profession or a particular book on a shelf when you walk into a library. It's like a light turns on, and you're called forward to it, like a moth. And then, as you know, as you mature and you transform, and the way that you look at the world changes, the thing that compels your interest transforms. But then you could imagine something at the bottom of that that's constant across all those transformations, that's like the spirit of calling per se, and it spirals you upwards in a developmental path and it recedes as you move towards it.

Now, that's one characterization of God. Particularly in the Old Testament, God is calling, right? And that's reasonably well-mappable, I would say, onto the neurological systems that mediate positive emotion, because the positive emotion systems do call you forward. They fill you with hope; they fill you with enthusiasm, which is a word derived from the phrase for being possessed by God. But it, you know, you can kind of understand that behind all the things that call approximately is the spirit that calls transcendentally, and you could think of the essence of that spirit as a closer approximation of the Divine.

That's not a full characterization of the Divine, because in the Old Testament, for example, you also have God as the voice of conscience, which is quite different. That's more of a restrictive voice or impulse, so to speak. This is good, though, because I think that these things that are in scripture, whether scripture is revealing truths or it's revealing moral truths and the like, whether it's revealing symbols, I take your view to be they're reflecting the Divine.

Schopenhauer's view of aesthetics was that when we're having an aesthetic experience, it taps into the rhythm of what he called the will. So, you're tapping into the form of aesthetic beauty, which I think your view is sort of similar to there, in terms of scripture. There's certainly parallels, at least. But what I think's interesting from a philosophical point of view is, and I think for people more generally, is whether these events are concrete in the sense that they're historical events, and second, whether or not you do take this God to be a perfect being, like the God of Anselm, the God of Aquinas, the God of Augustine, like the classical conception of God.

Because I think there are a lot of Christians out there at the moment that are holding you up and saying, "Look, Christianity's back. Here's Jordan Peterson saying he's a Christian, and here’s him talking about scripture. Like, new atheism's dead, and here we are with the resurrection of Christianity." But I don't think you're the type of Christian which they have traditionally had in mind, for sure. My colleague at Durham University, Philip Goff, is either coming out or maybe I’m going to be coming out for him here as a heretical Christian.

He thinks you don't have to believe in a perfect God, and you don't have to believe that the Christ event was a real event in order to be a Christian. There is a middle way between God and atheism, and that's my view as an agnostic as well. There is a middle way; it's just different to perhaps yours and Philip Goff's. I wonder, would you be happy to be characterized in that middle ground in finding new, radical solutions to what's been a very partisan debate between theists and atheists?

Well, I think… [Music].