Jordan Peterson being interviewed by broadcaster Patrick Coffin. Peterson is saying things that were commonplace wisdom 60 years ago, writes Mark Ruelle. (YouTube image)
I too knew nothing of Jordan Peterson until his emergence a few months ago. I understood his writings and public lectures were making him anathema to the radical Left, but I had no real idea what he was actually saying until I watched a few of his videos on YouTube, particularly a recent interview with Patrick Coffin, a Catholic apologist broadcasting out of L.A.
What struck me is that Peterson is saying things that were commonplace wisdom when I was a young teenager 60 years ago – good common sense about the process of growing up and taking on the responsibilities of becoming a mature adult, which could be expressed in moral parlance as following the natural law and developing good habits (learning to live a virtuous life).
The institutions of our Western society have strayed so far from teaching virtue (and have worked overtime in ridiculing it) that we can easily mistake sainthood for a life lived according to the natural virtues. Sad. Perhaps we find Peterson such a breath of fresh air because he is helping us all, particularly young men, rediscover the natural virtues: prudence (sound moral judgment), justice (giving to others what is their due), fortitude (courage to do the right thing), temperance (rightly ordering our passions and desires), belief in God to whom we are accountable, hope that we can improve ourselves and the world around us, and love that tries to treat others the way we would like to be treated.
All this reflects the Ten Commandments and makes for a sane and healthy society. But it’s not what gets us to heaven. That is the action of grace.
Excellence in the natural virtues, although good, can itself lead to a form of self-sufficient Pelagianism: ‘I’m a fine person, I practise the right virtues (specially tolerance, inclusiveness and kindness), and I’m just the kind of person that’s entitled to enter heaven.’
Our Catholic Tradition has always avoided an “either/or” reductionism which invariably leads to heresy (sola scriptura, sola fides, sola gratia, etc.). Instead it embraces the ‘both/and” of paradox: both faith and good works, both scripture and tradition, Christ both human and divine, both faith and reason, and in the matter of becoming a saint, both nature and grace.
In G.K. Chesterton’s words: “The Catholic Church has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white, which is tantamount to a dirty gray … Christianity has sought in most of these cases to keep two colours coexistent but pure.” (Orthodoxy)
So too, I believe, in the current debate about nature and grace. Grace builds on nature, but it also transforms it. A life formed by the natural virtues is more likely to be the good ground in which the seed of the Word can develop deep roots.
An undisciplined life devoid of virtue presents a less promising soil, but even grace can work with the little it finds.
The relationship between the virtues and the Divine Life in us has been best expressed, in my opinion, by Abbot Marmion, OSB: “It is a fact of experience that we act nearly always according as our habits incline us. The moral virtues – acquired (natural)] or infused (supernatural) – serve principally to remove from the soul all the obstacles that delay our advancement towards God. They help us to use the necessary means to fulfill our various obligations of the moral life and thus they safeguard within us the existence of Charity (the Divine Life). In return, Charity, above all when it is strong and ardent, crowns the other virtues by giving them a special lustre and adding to them new merit. The soul, urged by Charity, accomplishes little by little the acts of which the repetition produces the acquired moral virtues.” From Christ the Life of the Soul, published 1921.
So yes, Jordan Peterson, thank you for bringing our collective attention back to the natural virtues. And one day, God willing, may you receive the gift of Grace that will enable you to embrace the other side of the paradox.
Mark Ruelle
Tsawwassen, South Delta
Paul Schratz’s May 7 column “Catholics meet their ‘elder brothers’” is so pertinent and fitting. The federal census has always bothered me with the assortment of questions chosen and what is left out.
The reference to religion being left out is paramount and I sent the census office the following comment:
“I do not intend to complete a census form anymore and contribute to the exclusion of any reference to one’s religious background. You are using incorrect terminology in asking for ethnicity rather than religion, i.e. the census considers Judaism an ethnicity, not a religion, and failed to list Judaism as an ethnic option. The same goes for other religions, from Catholics on, since the last time religion was included was in 2011.
The census is dictating a secular political direction in choosing to close down reference to our diverse religious history. The census allows all sorts of choices but cannot include one’s essential religious profession? Don’t inform me that we are required to complete the census. I will do so only when you include religion.
Sissy von Dehn
Vancouver