Myth Became Fact

On Wesley Huff, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, & Jesus Christ

Friends,

Today’s post is a bit less formal than my usual content. I don’t often use this space to comment on current events, but I can’t stop thinking about this latest episode of Joe Rogan with Wesley Huff. So…here goes. Let me know what you think.

1. My Praise: Huff Is Brilliant

Yesterday I tweeted a spur-of-the-moment reaction to the above viral video clip from Joe Rogan’s interview with biblical historian and Christian apologist Wesley Huff, which got quite a bit of attention—at least more than I’m used to for a social media post—both positive and negative. In the video, Huff critiques Jordan Peterson’s tendency to interpret Jesus as an archetype rather than a real life historical figure who was crucified and rose again. The clip covers a lot of ground (which is one thing I appreciate about Huff—he’s dense). In short, he argues that Peterson’s intellectual treatment of Jesus amounts to little more than “a moral example,” whereas Jesus would have explicitly rejected this understanding of himself. In my tweet, I pushed back a bit, arguing that—well, let me back up…

First, I must admit I had only seen a couple of clips from the episode at the time of my post. Since then I’ve watched the whole conversation. And let me just say…what an interview. What a performance. Huff is brilliant. At thirty-three years old, he’s already basically the real-life version of Nicolas Cage’s National Treasure character, except far better, focusing his genius and his obsession on texts vastly more important than the Declaration of Independence. The man knows his stuff, and he’s a true believer to boot. Honestly, in retrospect, I can’t think of almost anyone more perfectly suited for a conversation of that kind with Joe Rogan, especially given Rogan’s own modern, forensic approach to spiritual things.

I highly recommend the whole episode, but one highlight for me was when Huff offered Rogan a gift…and not just any gift…a hand-made papyrus copy (which Huff himself created!) of P52, the oldest extant fragment of the New Testament, in which Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?” Could there be a more thoughtful and fitting gift for Joe Rogan, the modern world’s most famous asker of questions? I think not.

2. My Beef: Myth Became Fact (Without Ceasing To Be Myth)

Anyway, now that I’ve sung Huff’s praises, I’d like to return to the aforementioned issue, the one itty bitty problem I had with Huff’s presentation, which is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our modern Evangelical world.

Once again, Huff suggests that Peterson “misses the forest for the trees,” seeing Jesus as an archetype rather than as an historical fact. Here’s a quote:

[Peterson] seems to think that the concept of Jesus, as an example, is more important than the actual flesh-and-blood, first Century itinerant Jewish preacher who was crucified and rose from the dead physically—which is the claim of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament—and that’s an example for us to look on and live by. But I actually think that Jesus condemns moralism. And, ultimately, what I see Peterson doing is looking on Jesus as a moral example. And if Jesus is nothing but a moral example, then you can save yourself and you don’t actually need a Savior.

And here’s my initial response:

Huff makes a good point here, but it seems to me he’s only half right, the other half of what Peterson gets right. In this clip, he seems to want Jesus as fact but not as myth, whereas Peterson tends to want him as myth but not as fact. But in Jesus, myth becomes fact.

[Then, in a follow-up tweet, I added…]

And I could say the same about Jesus as example versus substitute. If he is only example, we are not saved, but if he is only substitute, we are not saved.

The responses to my post were wide-ranging. “This makes no sense,” one guy said. Others asked for further clarification. So, without getting too into the weeds, I thought I would take a minute to do so with you here, blessed reader.

When I say that “[Huff] seems to want Jesus as fact but not as myth, whereas Peterson tends to want him as myth but not as fact,” I am borrowing this language from one of my all-time favorite essays of C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact.”

In “Myth Became Fact,” Lewis considers the arguments of his progressive opponents who wish to strip Christianity of its “vestigial mythology” while retaining its more desirable elements. In his rebuttal, Lewis takes an unusual tack. He paints the problem of human knowledge—especially modern knowledge—as a kind of divorce between abstract understanding and concrete experience. And then he offers “myth” as the bridge between the two.

Human intellect is incurably abstract. Yet the only realities we experience are concrete—this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality. [...] This is our dilemma—either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste—or, more strictly, to lack one kind of knowledge because we are in an experience or to lack another kind because we are outside it. As thinkers we are cut off from what we think about; as tasting, touching, willing, loving, hating, we do not clearly understand. The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think. You cannot study pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyze the nature of humor while roaring with laughter. But when else can you really know these things? ‘If only my toothache would stop, I could write another chapter about pain.’ But once it stops, what do I know about pain? Of this tragic dilemma, myth is the partial solution.”

To elucidate his point, Lewis briefly tells the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus is given permission to lead his lover out of Hades on the condition that he never look back to make sure she has stayed with him. He does look back, however, and she fades away.

You may reply that you never till this moment attached that "meaning" to that myth. Of course not. You are not looking for an abstract "meaning" at all. If that was what you were doing, the myth would be for you no true myth but a mere allegory. You were not knowing but tasting. But what you were tasting turns out to be a universal principle. The moment we state this as a principle, we are admittedly back in the world of abstraction. It is only while receiving the myth as a story that you experience the principle concretely. When we translate, we get abstraction, or rather dozens of abstractions. What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality. Truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is. […] Myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract. Nor is it like direct experience bound to the particular.

Lewis then suggests that, just as myth is the partial solution to the problem of knowing, Christ, in his incarnation, is the ultimate solution to the problem of myth, the means by which the truest imagined story becomes actual, real-life fact.

Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth that is also a fact. The old myth of the dying god, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens at a particular date in a particular place. By becoming fact, it does not cease to be myth. That is the miracle.

And here lies the rub with regard to Huff’s critique of Jordan Peterson treating Jesus as an archetype. As an historian, Huff (rightly) wants to make sure Rogan and his whole secular audience know that Jesus is not “just a story” passed down to inspire faith and love and obedience. On the contrary, he insists, Jesus was an “actual flesh-and-blood, first Century itinerant Jewish preacher, who was crucified and rose from the dead physically.” Yes. The God of the Universe came down. The word was really made flesh. The myth of the God-man was not mere myth; it became fact. I agree. I am simply saying, with Lewis, that just because Christ became a flesh-and-blood fact in the world does not mean he ceased to be a myth. And that really is a miracle, because (and I’m sure Huff would agree, but it still needs to be said…) our salvation does not lie merely in the facts themselves—Christ’s death and resurrection—but in our faithful participation with our crucified and risen Lord. I know it may seem that I’ve now sunken into the theological weeds, which is exactly what I promised not to do. But bear with me. This is deadly practical. Here’s what I mean:

Evangelicals generally (and rightly!) uphold two separate propositions about salvation:

1. There is no salvation without the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

2. There is no salvation without our personal faith in Christ and his work.

The trouble is, very often, we have little to no understanding of how or why these two truths hold together. What is the connection between them? If I can do nothing to save myself, if Jesus must achieve everything for me, then why is my personal faith necessary? Doesn’t the condition of my believing negate the objective power of the cross? Likewise, if my faith in Christ is the central thing, why did he have to die for my sins?

The Bible does provide answers to these questions. There is a bridge between these two propositions. But the bridge itself is not propositional. It is not itself a fact, but rather a whole structure of meaning—a myth, if you will—that traces the relationship between God and humanity from creation to fall to covenant to exile to redemption and beyond. In the beginning, God did not make mere things, but agents, choosers, lovers, worshippers. Even the sun, moon and stars respond to him in their own way. And we, human beings, much more so. He made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in him. Thus, when we deny him and walk away from him, the problem becomes all the more complex. And the solution must entail not only forgiveness—not only God doing something on our behalf—but God leading us back to him, somehow wooing us to love and trust him again as he has loved us. That is our story.

What I am saying is: the structure that holds our faith together is not merely factual but mythical. The hidden source of all meaning became flesh without ceasing to be the hidden source of all meaning.

Thus Lewis continues…

I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian, we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth—fact though it has become—with the same imaginative embrace we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other. A man who disbelieved the Christian story as fact but continually fed on it as myth would perhaps be more spiritually alive than the man who assented and did not think much about it.

That last line is particularly stirring (and admittedly debatable). But I submit that at present we are seeing exactly this sort of thing come to pass. The Christ-myth, in the deepest, truest sense of the word, is haunting our secular moment, and people like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan and Tom Holland and Russell Brand and Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw are proof of it. Each of these men have had quite different relationships with the facts of the Christian story. Some have converted; some clearly have not. Nor do I wish to defend wholesale the religious perspective of men like Jordan Peterson. He is not a Christian, and therefore I do not share his stance with regard to Christ. But the careful observer will notice that Peterson sees far more in the person of Jesus than a “moral example.” Peterson is that exact man in Lewis’s speculation who continually feeds on the Christian story as myth, yet without committing to it as fact. And he does, in fact, seem to have grown more spiritually alive than many of us who assent to the facts of the faith but think little about them.

Again, I am as frustrated with Peterson about this as the next guy. But his journey over the last few years should at least remind us that the Christian story is a far deeper and more mysterious well than we (yes, even we Christians!) might be tempted to suppose. We can and should defend its historicity with modern forensic arguments as Wesley Huff did so well this week on Rogan. But we also do well to remember that there is more to the story. The vast majority of Christians do not give their allegiance to Christ because of the proper validation of historical facts. They simply hear the music and can do no other than dance. The facts still matter. But the music matters too, perhaps more than our modern minds care to admit.

3. Make “Christ-As-Exemplar” Great Again

I have gone longer than I intended, so I will end with only a brief note about Christ as “example” versus “substitute.” Put simply, the thing is a false dichotomy. Much ink has been spilled by great Christian theologians tearing the “moral example” theory of atonement to shreds. And I get it. Jesus is much more than a moral example, but…he is not less. Moreover, he is not only a moral example, but the one true example of perfect love and submission to the Father, which we cannot do without. I don’t know how else to say it: there is no salvation for those who do not finally love God. We underestimate the degree to which Jesus and the apostles in the pages of the New Testament paint our salvation not only as vicariously achieved in the person of Christ but also as personally worked out in us. I repeat: there is no salvation if it is not in us. This is why, when he came, he said, “Follow me.” Because we must. Salvation is participatory, because it is relationship.

Yes, if Christ is only an example to follow, we cannot be saved. But if he is only our substitute, we also cannot be saved. Old Testament sacrifice was not primarily about killing or burning other things in our stead. It was about offering gifts up to God for the sake of communion with him. Jesus’s life and death on the cross is also about this. And we must follow his example. “Therefore I urge you brothers to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” (Romans 12:1). We could not be holy and pleasing without his blood. Yet, we cannot be in relationship with him at all without taking up our crosses and offering ourselves to the Father as he did, in faith and love. This is the purpose for which we have been made clean—not merely to get out of jail, but to offer ourselves to the living God, to love him as he has first loved us. As Lewis put it, paraphrasing George MacDonald, “The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.”

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4. Bonus Material

In which Jordan Peterson, in conversation with Jonathan Pageau about Jesus, seems truly to consider that the myth of all myths did actually become fact…and it terrifies him:

“Sometimes…the objective world and the narrative world…touch.”

Yes, Jordan. Merry Christmas to you too.

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