We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine is a big book. The #1 New York Times bestseller by Jordan Peterson is large in terms of length (544 pages) and vast in intellectual scope. Peterson addresses the biblical stories that shape narratives of our culture from Hamlet to Wicked, from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov to Disney’s Lion King. In We Who Wrestle with God, Peterson focuses particular attention on the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, the Tower of Babel, Abraham, Moses, and Jonah.

To interpret these stories, Peterson draws on his expertise in clinical psychology, as well as on evolutionary biology, political history, and insights from Milton, Nietzsche, Jung, Popper, Solzhenitsyn, and JK Rowling. In comparison to his earlier YouTube lectures on the Bible, We Who Wrestle with God shows considerable development in depth and breadth, in part by drawing on insights gleaned from his online seminars on Exodus.
Peterson begins by noting that a vast number of objects present themselves to our senses. There are also a vast number of ways to focus our sense perceptions. So, how do we prioritize our perceptions?
What we value enables us to turn the chaos of sense perception into the order of human action. As Peterson puts it, “We perceive, therefore, in accordance with our aim.” If I give you $1,000 for each blue thing you notice in your vicinity, you’ll start to notice blue things that you didn’t notice before. If the reward were for finding living things, you’d focus on them instead of blue things.
Aims shape our perceptions, and narratives shape our aims. The stories we are told and the stories we tell ourselves shape what we seek. Here, Peterson echoes the insight of Alasdair MacIntyre who wrote in After Virtue, “Man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. . . . I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’” Stories also shape our desires. As René Girard notes, “We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.” Stories teach us what others desire, thereby shaping our own desires.
The stories are not just about the particular people involved but also about the ever-recurring challenges of the human experience.
Given this framework, Peterson’s book is not reserved for those who view the Bible as divinely inspired or those who “believe in God,” a phrase Peterson problematizes in a way similar to Thomas Aquinas, who distinguishes three senses of believing in God. In Peterson’s view, every one of us is fated to wrestle with God, though perhaps not as Jacob did in the biblical story (Genesis 32:22–32). “God” is, in one of Peterson’s characterizations, whatever our final end is—that to which other things are ultimately ordered and sacrificed. If we are to move forward, we need a goal. Proximate goals arise because of more remote goals, and the ultimate goal functions for us as “God.” In this analysis, Peterson echoes Aristotle’s understanding of human action in the Nicomachean Ethics as well as Paul Tillich’s idea that our “God” is whatever is the object of our ultimate concern. As Peterson puts it, “When attention must be prioritized and action taken, no atheism is possible. Something must be elevated and all other things sacrificed.” Peterson sees the biblical stories as portraying God as various “characters.” God is a creative spirit walking with Adam. God is the summons to prepare given to Noah. God is the call to adventure for Abraham. God is the dreadful spirit of freedom for Moses. And God is a voice of truth urging Jonah to break his lying silence for the good of his enemies.
With all due respect to some of his critics, Peterson is not aiming to provide a historical-critical interpretation of Scripture in the literal sense. His attention to context, ancient languages, and multiple translations shows he is also not by any means ignoring the specificity of the biblical text. But he isn’t writing for scholars interested in Akkadian loanwords in biblical Hebrew. He is writing for those who want to think deeply about the stories that shape our culture. Judging Jordan Peterson’s archetypal reading of biblical stories as a poor historical-critical interpretation is like judging Michael Jackson’s Thriller as a bad sculpture.
Peterson’s critics are also mistaken when they construe him as an advocate of a kind of radical individualism. On the contrary, Peterson emphasizes, “We inevitably exist, as human beings, in relationship” (italics his). For him, to champion individual rights, including freedom of speech, is not to advocate the expressive individualism of an atomized and buffered self.
But avoiding the Scylla of expressive individualism doesn’t push Peterson toward the Charybdis of utopian socialism. Here, too, the biblical stories illuminate. Peterson unfolds his account of the dangers of socialist utopias in relation to the story of the Tower of Babel. He notes, “The narrative is not political—or if it is, it is so only in service of a higher or deeper meaning. The same can be said of many of the biblical narratives that mention specific societies or even specific people: they are to be regarded as types or patterns, with what is specific and identifiable used only to characterize a deeper truth.” This seeking of the deeper and more universal insight of Scripture is found throughout Peterson’s book. The stories are not just about the particular people involved but also about the ever-recurring challenges of the human experience.

One of these challenges is voluntary agreement among individuals. God makes such agreements known as “covenants” with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. Jesus establishes a New Covenant. According to Peterson, contract and covenant are synonymous. He writes, “What precisely is a covenant? A contract between two parties who agree to undertake or refrain from undertaking certain acts: a contract, compact, deal or bargain.” I wonder if Peterson would be persuaded by prolific author and Scripture scholar Scott Hahn who draws a sharp contrast between “covenant” and “contract” in the Bible. In A Father Who Keeps His Promises, Hahn writes:
A contract is the exchange of property in the form of goods and services (“That is mine and this is yours”); whereas a covenant calls for the exchange of persons (“I am yours and you are mine”), creating a shared bond of interpersonal communion. For ancient Israelites, a covenant differed from a contract about as much as marriage differed from prostitution. When a man and woman marry, they declare before God their undying love to one another until death, but a prostitute sells her body to the highest bidder and then moves on to the next customer. So contracts make people customers, employees, clients; whereas covenants turn them into spouses, parents, children, siblings. In short, covenants are made to forge bonds of sacred kinship.
This distinction between covenant and contract can shape how Scripture as a whole is to be understood. Hahn notes, “If you want to get to the heart of Scripture, think covenant not contract, father not judge, family room not courtroom.” It would be extremely interesting to hear a podcast of Peterson and Hahn discussing these matters.
In any case, in We Who Wrestle with God, Peterson notes the many ways the biblical stories address family dynamics, including the covenant of marriage, both monogamous and polygamous. He writes, “Long-term monogamous strategies are therefore not only the human norm, cross culturally speaking, but also the correct ideal.” Peterson is right that there are abundant empirical grounds for preferring monogamy to polygamy. Monogamy is better for women, who are more likely to experience equality in marriage; better for children, who are more likely to receive good care; and better for men, who are more likely to have a chance of getting married. The biblical stories themselves portray the discord arising from polygamy as Peterson notes happened with Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Despite the discord polygamy brings, according to Harvard University Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology Joseph Henrich, “The anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 per cent of human societies have permitted men to have more than one wife.” What accounts for the worldwide switch from default polygamy in ancient times to default monogamy today? In The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, Henrich answers that the Catholic Church’s teachings on marriage gave rise to free markets, inalienable rights, and democracy. If this is accurate, then it is the biblical stories, as understood in the Catholic tradition, that give rise to these goods.
The stories of the Bible are among the most influential stories of the human condition, in its frailty and glory, in its fragility and resilience.
In We Who Wrestle with God, Peterson shows an increasing interest in Catholic voices. He cites figures such as John Henry Newman and Thomas Aquinas, and he repeatedly explores Catholic social teaching about subsidiarity.
Augustine of Hippo does not yet seem to be a major influence. But in using Scripture to interpret Scripture, Peterson puts into operation Augustine’s method of interpreting the New Testament and Old Testament: the Old is the New concealed, and the New is the Old revealed. Like Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana, Peterson sees God communicating not just through words, but also through things like a pillar of fire or a pillar of cloud. In the same work, Augustine taught that there are virtually infinite correct interpretations of Scripture, yet any interpretation that undermines love of God and neighbor is a bad one. Peterson likewise explores paths of polyvalent interpretation.
The stories of the Bible are among the most influential stories of the human condition, in its frailty and glory, in its fragility and resilience. Peterson is convinced that engagement with the rich and deep stories of the Bible can help us write a better version of the story of our lives. In We Who Wrestle with God, Peterson offers archetypal readings of the Bible that are personal, literary, historical, ethical, multi-disciplinary, and imaginative to help readers aim higher.