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Did Protestants Get Contraception Wrong? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Most Protestants have completely accepted the idea that contraception as a technology is just an unambiguously good thing. And that we should be planning our families, thinking through when is it right? When do we start? When do we stop? I mean, exactly the same as the culture. The Catholics are very against this idea. The first part of his argument is the Catholics were right. And I 100% agree with him, but this is not a conversation we're willing to have, especially within Protestant circles.
• 0:26
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am here with Phil Cottenwar. Phil, thanks for joining me today. My pleasure.
• 0:51
  So Phil and I, we've been getting to collaborate on various things. Phil has been helping with different editing projects with my new book, The Ruling Household. And you can also read some of the articles Phil is writing or philcottnoir.com, right? Is that where we're at? Yep. You got it.
• 1:09
  Yeah. So check that out for sure. Yeah. I love like Phil's a deep thinker and I'm excited to interact today on some of these topics. So a couple, a couple quick clips I wanted to chat with you, Phil, about today. So one was a comment that Naval Ravikant made that kind of caught my attention. So some of you guys are very familiar with Naval. Some of you don't know anything about Naval. Some people think he's like the smartest guy alive. Okay.
• 1:37
  I've heard many people make that comment. He doesn't go on very many podcasts. He's kind of like a little bit of an elusive figure. So when he pops up, it's always really interesting what he has to say. And then he goes back into his hole and starts to think deeply about things. But he's a very famous investor. He's especially in Silicon Valley circles. And so anytime he's going to say something, I've learned a lot from him about a topic that really...
• 2:06
  I've thought deeply about, I'm always really interested. So, um, let me play for you this clip and I'm excited to kind of like dig into what he's saying about the family. So, so let me, let me ask you some more questions about the future. What do you think is the future of the family?
• 2:25
  Yeah, so I think the Catholic Church was right and that contraception killed the family. It sort of killed Catholicism, actually. Killed religion, for sure. Contraception was a groundbreaking technology, right? And it changed the nature of the family. And now we're in this situation where...
• 2:44
  You kind of had enforced monogamy in society before, right? And if you had sex, you had a child, you needed two people to raise a child. You didn't have washing machines, you didn't have cars or whatever, etc.
• 2:59
  you're kind of forced into the family unit. And now through a combination of robotics, technology, automation, contraception, sex and marriage and childbearing, all these things have become highly decoupled, right? And so a lot of people are playing choose your own adventure.
• 3:19
  But those bundles were there for a reason, right? We're biologically hardwired for those bundles. So I would say like the happiest situation is if you have a happy family. If you're happily married and you got your kids and everyone loves each other, that's the best of all possible worlds. But that's so rare. Most people either fail trying to get to that or
• 3:38
  They don't even want to take the risk because if you try for it and you fail, there's so much downside that they sort of are opting into all of these alternative models. The weirdest one that I heard, and this is a Los Angeles story. I don't know if I want to out him. It's up to him. But this guy's having a, he has a son with a woman. They were married. They had a child.
• 4:01
  Then they didn't get along, they got divorced. Okay. They're still friends. They're obviously raising the son, you know, as divorced father and mother, but he decided he wants to have another kid. And who would he be best situated to have a kid with? He's already got all the child support worked out. He knows they're genetically compatible. They still get along. They already raised the child together. So he's having a kid with his ex-wife. And Banger.
• 4:27
  I think that he's basically, it's like a divorce, like he's paying for her enough to, you know, it's like the alimony thing that you had for the ex-wife. You use the same rules that you have with the existing kid. So in that sense, it's probably worked out. But if you tell people like, oh, I'm going to have another kid with my ex-wife, like that triggers them.
• 4:47
  race their mind in so many ways. And I think it's weird. Like it's, it's fine. It's probably better than having a kid with someone you don't know or don't love or having a kid without a mom. You know, I know that happens too. So it's probably fine, but it's weird. It's definitely weird. And people are getting pretty mad at him about it. Madden, I think he's going to write a book on the topic and become famous for us. He's already famous, maybe even more famous, right? But...
• 5:13
  My advice to him was like, just tell him you're gay. Right? Just tell him you went gay. Cause then it's suddenly okay. It's weird how these rules work. That same thing is happening. Or in the way, but because you say you're gay, it's suddenly okay. Did you get out of jail? I've been holding that card in case I need it someday. So, well, you know, I wasn't going to mention it, but I'll leave it up. Right. Put on a wig. Yeah.
• 5:39
  Okay. All right. So basically Naval is giving us kind of like, there's three different parts to his, his statement. The first part that really struck me,
• 5:48
  was that the Catholic Church was right, that contraception was the end of the family. Now, a lot of people are not aware that this was a position of the Catholic Church, but there's a really famous, I've never been able to dig it up, I've looked for it. If anybody can find the link, please let me know. But there was a famous article in the New York Times, I think it was the 1920s, right around the time there was kind of the early stages of contraception conversation that pill hadn't been invented yet. But the Catholic Church was very much saying, this is a terrible idea.
• 6:17
  And and and so the writer for The New York Times actually laid out the argument against contraception. Can you imagine this? And so their argument. Wild. If we bring in contraception, essentially what will happen is the family will be over. Divorce will skyrocket.
• 6:33
  There'll be enormous amounts of sexual promiscuity. Children and women will suffer the most. I mean, it really described in detail everything that happened over the years after the 1960s and when the inconstitution became completely ubiquitous. Everybody just accepted it.
• 6:51
  And I don't hear this conversation happen very often in Protestant circles. And, you know, you see this a little bit more in Catholic circles. But basically, most Protestants have completely accepted the idea that contraception as a technology is just an unambiguously good thing. And that we should be planning our families with...
• 7:13
  The utmost of like, uh, just proactively thinking through when is it right? When, when do we start? When do we stop? I mean, exactly the same as the culture. The Catholics are very against this idea, of course, officially, although Catholics practicing Catholics by and large have no problem with, uh, Yeah. And so that's an important distinction. Yes. Yes.
• 7:32
  Yeah, the single priests of the Catholic Church are very against contraception. The married families of the Catholic Church, you know, it's very split. And unless you're a very observant Catholic, you tend to be a little bit more. So that's the first part of his argument is the Catholics were right.
• 7:47
  And I 100% agree with him, but this is not a conversation we're willing to have, especially within Protestant circles. That's his first statement. The second statement he's making is that there is a coupling or a bundling of these things that's inevitable, right? So the bundling of sex with...
• 8:04
  with marriage, with child rearing, is a bundle that we needed to fight to keep completely together. And so what the technology of contraception does is it disentangles the bundle. And all of a sudden now you just unleashed immense chaos. And the thing that he's describing is basically that's the end of the sort of assumed process.
• 8:27
  way that the family is designed to function. You're basically bringing into existence a different thing. I 100% agree with that as well. Again, another conversation I think we're not willing to get into the details of because it curtails freedom. I think that's one of the things that people have to understand that because we've adopted the position in the West, that freedom is the highest value.
• 8:46
  Any technology that comes along and gives us freedom is unambiguously good. And any of the side effects of that are no longer assigned to that technology. The technology is good. We know it's good. We know contraception is always good. Thank God we have it. However, the chaos that was unleashed.
• 9:08
  It just so happens to correlate with when we began to embrace this freedom. They're not connected. Anyway, I think that's the way the conversation is being framed. And I think it's really weird and unfortunate. And so it's really hard to have this conversation, though, if you don't go the other direction. And the third thing he said is when this happens...
• 9:25
  Um, then the regular healthy family becomes so rare that people are going to do what he calls choose your own adventure families. And then he gives us, you know, crazy example of a guy who is basically having children with his ex-wife. And if he just came out as gay, everybody would accept it. Um, yeah, it's kind of funny, but anyway, yeah, Phil, anything in that that you'd want to react to? I'm curious how, how that struck you.
• 9:51
  Yeah, a lot of thoughts. I like what you said so far. I think that's true. You know, I actually don't know this guy, Naval. I haven't seen him before. He's not in the circles of people that I've listened to. So having a very limited exposure, I've just seen this two-minute clip. Yeah. He strikes me as the kind of person that some have described as reality respecters. That's true.
• 10:19
  I don't know who coined that. Maybe James would. But unbelievers that are nevertheless reckoning with the downstream effects of bad philosophies, of ideologies, and they're making course corrections. And he strikes me as a guy who's willing to basically question received wisdom, right? And he's saying, we've all been told that these are de facto good.
• 10:49
  I don't know about that. And I think that's a good sign. And, and I'm,
• 10:55
  You know, evangelistically, I think the reality respecters are the most ready crop of people who are rethinking through some of these fundamental questions. Because if you question contraceptives, you're really questioning sort of the whole liberal approach that you just laid out, that freedom is always more freedom and more liberty is always better.
• 11:23
  And if you question that, you start to pick at the foundations of the whole morality. And that obviously points very quickly to where does our moral foundation come from. But yeah, to return to contraceptives, this is definitely something Protestants do.
• 11:40
  We're mostly asleep at the wheel when this came through. And I think the church largely analyzed it from an individualistic point of view and said, we can just leave this up to the individual conscience. The Catholic church took a more societal scale approach. They analyzed it at a deeper level. Mm hmm.
• 12:03
  And I think they they they had already a body of reflection that they were self-consciously working from the Catholic social teaching. And they were able to see in a way that Protestants mostly missed the the the societal scale effects. If this became widespread. And there's a there's a famous Pope Pope the sixth Pope something the sixth. Yeah.
• 12:31
  I'm not super versed in the Catholic stuff, but he wrote an encyclical called Humanite Vitae. And it basically just made this argument succinctly and powerfully. And I think, so you're saying that Protestants mostly aren't willing to have this conversation. And I think that's probably true, but I would say now more than ever,
• 12:52
  There is definitely among thoughtful Protestants a willingness to say, OK, we we really missed something here. And, you know, what strikes me as well about what he said was, you know, this these bundles of.
• 13:10
  of goods, you know, and it's really a pro-tradition argument because he's saying we took we pulled these apart and we didn't realize that they were held together for a reason and that there were so many downstream goods that we didn't realize were connected. Yeah.
• 13:30
  And it makes me think, you know, if I think of it as like four things, sex, love, covenant or marriage and children. And like at the most hedonistic approach, you just have sex separated from everything else. Then in the more sentimental sort of secular approach, you say, well, sex should always be coupled with love.
• 13:53
  And then the Protestant church has been good to say, well, actually, sex should always be bundled with love and covenant and marriage. But like you said, they've mostly missed that sex should also be bundled with this package of children being part of that picture. Yeah.
• 14:12
  And the Catholic Church, I think, you know, got that right in a way that the Protestant church has mostly missed. So, yeah, those are some thoughts there as I listen to that. And it's very interesting to see two clearly secular guys having this kind of conversation. Yeah, they're both totally atheists. Scott Adams and Naval Ravikant. You know, you listen to the whole conversation, you get deep into AI and possible simulation theories and futures and...
• 14:42
  I mean, it's just like, you know, they're very like free thinking atheists. Right. But both of them feel like something radically crazy has been has happened to the family. And I love your phrase of reality respecters, because I think there's a way in which if you and this is what's weird to me about the fact that as.
• 15:01
  As believers, we should be the ultimate reality respecters. Like, right. Like for us to see an experiment, experiments that are that are being done on the family. Right. We have so many experiments we're running. We're running the contraception experiment. We're running the no fault divorce experiment.
• 15:19
  experiment. We're running the children being educated by the state experiment. We're running, you know, completely different versions of the family where both the husband and wife are hyper individuals attempting career experiment where, I mean, there's probably like 20 massive experiments where simultaneously you're running on the family, things that have, if you go back a hundred years would have been completely strange to everyone. And so, you know, I'm not against the
• 15:47
  in the modern world, find things that could improve and technologies, for example, that might help. But one of the things you have to do when you're running experiments is you have to run them in some kind of contained environment and then be very honest about reality. Like you're saying, you have to respect reality. You have to say, oh, this experiment is not working at all.
• 16:08
  And so we have the data. The data's in. The more you go down these roads, the worse it is for the family. And what's interesting about their conversation, Naval and Scott Adams, they both basically say that the idea of a fully functioning, happy family
• 16:23
  family is incredibly rare and unlikely, and therefore just a bad bet. And this is the way a lot of people are talking about family today is just it's so rare. It's so unlikely that you'll find that person and that you'll have a healthy family that we need to attempt these choose your own adventure alternative arrangements. And I think that what we're not doing is necessarily saying, well, there are places and times in which, um, you know,
• 16:49
  This does work. One of the things that even of all is from India, ancestry, and within the country of India, the divorce rate is 1.1%. And I find that fascinating. Like, so important to understand and to study cultures that have a divorce rate that low. It doesn't mean that everything's perfect in India. There's lots of problems with the way the family is structured in India. There's lots of non-Christian elements to it.
• 17:16
  But there are some basic traditional elements that are highly respected within Indian culture that allows them to stay married, even though there are expected challenges that hit those families, that hit those marriages. And so I think that somebody like Naval, who's around a culture that has such a low divorce rate.
• 17:34
  has the ability to say, well, it doesn't mean necessarily that this whole institution is bankrupt. It doesn't. But the further you get, and now, of course, living on the West of the West Coast, you know, living his life in California, in Silicon Valley, being surrounded by alternative, hyper-independent, hyper-individualistic versions of the family, you're going to run into some of the most advanced experiments that are being done on the family that aren't working. And therefore, you start to lose hope
• 18:01
  And that's why I think, you know, my message has been, hey, the problem is not with the family. The design is incredibly well designed. I love those four, kind of that bundle you described, you know, really understanding each of those things. And obviously the thing that, Phil, you and I have to kind of like work out here is since we're both from the Protestant tradition, what do we do with that last one?
• 18:21
  So if we agree that sex, love, covenant, and then we want to argue that children should be a part of the bundle and that there's something inherently wrong, you don't hand that freedom to the new young couple and say to them, hey, I know that you've just gotten married. I know that you love each other. You're going to have sex. But whether or not you have children, whether you value children,
• 18:49
  That's completely up to you. There's no, there's nothing our faith has to say about that, that, about that decision. And, and to your point, the Catholic church has really clearly stated what they think their, the connection is. But yeah, how would you, how, how would you talk to a young couple who's like, well, we don't know if we want to have kids. Like we definitely want to get married. We definitely want to have sex. We definitely, you know, plan to stay married for life, but kids. No, I don't really like kids that much.
• 19:18
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• 19:39
  Yeah, I mean, that's a mindset that is absorbed from the wider culture and sadly absorbed pretty deeply among a certain stream of evangelicalism. I was just flipping through this before we started. This is a book called God, Marriage and Family by Andreas Kossenberger. He's a Protestant theologian or biblical guy.
• 20:07
  And there's a section here on contraceptives. And I thought it was interesting because I remember looking at this when I first got married, and he quotes Alan Moeller, who's the president of the largest seminary in the world, which is the Southern Baptist Seminary.
• 20:22
  And he says, we must start with a rejection of the contraceptive mentality, contraceptive mentality that sees pregnancy and children as impositions to be avoided rather than as gifts to be received, loved and nurtured. This contraceptive mentality is an insidious attack upon God's glory in creation and the creator's gift of procreation to the married couple.
• 20:48
  That's a pretty strong statement. I think that at some of the higher levels of Protestant ethical thinking, there is increasingly some clarity on this issue, but it hasn't filtered down to the pews. And I don't know how to do that or how that can be accelerated, but I'm encouraged to see that, you know, this sort of what you're presenting is,
• 21:12
  this more biblical way to look at the family and understand contraceptives. You know, I first encountered it through Protestants, but they were pointing to some Catholic resources and saying, yeah, we missed this. So it is a conversation that's taking place. But like I said, I don't think it's filtered down to the masses yet because evangelicalism is also, it's so widespread and there's so many alternative ideas
• 21:37
  pockets in it that don't all share the same sort of tradition or thought leaders. And so, I mean, it's a hard one to solve because there's no one institution or leader that speaks for evangelicalism or has the reach to really affect all of it. So I think we just need to do our part in the circles that we have and push this conversation forward. That's good.
• 22:07
  Well, I would love to take the theological conversation one step farther and start talking about Protestantism. So we've been discussing the fact that, yeah, within the Catholic Church, within the Eastern Church, within these larger denominations, even within Protestantism, you have oftentimes sort of a clear hierarchy. And so if something's going wrong down at the pew level...
• 22:31
  and it bubbles all the way up to the top, there's at least an understanding of where there's a place to have that conversation. And once there's a decision made, it sort of represents the whole, even if there's a lot of challenges with that. And so I think all of these conversations around the family, it's been very difficult for Protestants not to get sort of sucked in to the culture and then discover 20, 30, 40 years into a experiment that we are, whoops, I guess, you know,
• 23:00
  That was actually a theological question. It wasn't a practical question first. It was first a theological question. And we thought it was just a practical question. Like when you're having a conversation with a couple, let's say a young couple, and they're like, I don't know if I like kids. We think that that's in a, you know, too many of us, I think, put that conversation into the category of personal preference. Correct. We don't think that it's first and foremost, we're actually having a theological conversation.
• 23:25
  And so that is, I think, a repeated challenge. Now, I'm as Protestant as they come. I'm constantly protesting the way the church is done, and I'm constantly trying to understand how do we reform it better. You posted recently a review of Gavin Ortlund's book, What It Means to Be...
• 23:46
  Protestant, which I found your review to be really helpful. And it got me excited about the book, and I've been reading it, and I'm like, oh, this is so good. This is so needed. Like, I enjoy reading, you know, books. I'm on my second book on kind of Eastern Orthodox theology, which has been really interesting for me. But I would say that the deeper I go into Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology, the more Protestant I feel. Yeah.
• 24:12
  But I also want to be really thoughtful about what this entails. And so Gavin Ortlund's book has been great. I wanted to get your take on something that Jordan Peterson repeatedly says in critique of Protestantism.
• 24:27
  And he says it in the most succinct way I've ever heard him say in his conversation with Russell Brandt not too long ago, right around the time Russell Brandt converted to Christianity. So I wanted to get your take on his just really brief statement here on his beef with the Protestantism. Okay.
• 24:48
  pathway. And you see, this is where the atheist types get it so wrong, you know, because they tend, like the more literal Protestants, to assume that what religious practice is, is the mouthing of a set of propositions, right? It's like a theory of the world. And that's not the case. It's a manner of conducting yourself, directing your attention, and acting. And then there's representations of that in imagination and semantically, but the fundamental issue is the actual pattern of action,
• 25:16
  You know, that's why the highest level of religious devotion in the Christian tradition, it's the same in Buddhism with regard to Buddha. It's the imitation of Christ. It's the attempt to act out the archetype in the confines of your life. And the offering there is that this is a strange offering. The offering there is that that's possible. It's possible for each person to operate as a center of divinity in the world. And I believe that...
• 25:41
  I don't believe that there is a more reliable truth than that. And I also think that's true scientifically, by the way.
• 25:49
  So in a real succinct way, he basically says, look, Protestants and militant atheists have this in common. They essentially want you to agree to a set of very defined propositions, and which sort of describe their faith or their theory of the world. And if you mouth your allegiance or your agreement with Jesus,
• 26:11
  those set of propositions, you're saved, right? You are a part of their tradition. He contrasts that with more of a Catholic view of how the faith works. And he says it's more of how you live it out in the world, how you act out in the world, which is aimed at what he describes as the imitation of Christ.
• 26:31
  And that this tension exists between traditions that emphasize, like, and Protestants look at that oftentimes and say, well, that's sort of salvation by works. That's sort of like a, it's really, there's a collision between a focus on that as primary and the gospel itself, which is rooted in what we actually believe. Yeah, so I've got a lot of thoughts, but I wanted to feel like you just get your take on this collision that Peterson is describing here.
• 26:58
  Yeah, I would say two things. He's putting his finger on something that's legitimate and true. It is a characteristic weakness among Protestants, or as he calls it, the more literal Protestants, I guess. I guess that describes me. And the conservative Protestants who kind of, who would take the Bible as the authoritative and inerrant word of God. So, yes, I think he's on to something, but...
• 27:27
  This is Jordan Peterson, and I've seen and listened to him enough to see. I think it's kind of convenient for him to...
• 27:38
  If we're going to weigh these things, the more propositional or theological, intellectual approach of the faith versus the praxis, the imitation of Christ, the lifestyle, the being a little center of divinity for those around you.
• 27:59
  I think it's convenient for him to emphasize this because he always wants to bracket this off and not commit to metaphysical claims about the existence of God as presented in the Bible, of the resurrection, of miracles. So...
• 28:19
  I think it's a little too simplistic to say that the truest manifestation of religion is this... I just don't think you should...
• 28:32
  The best Protestantism and the best Christianity biblically has never allowed a division between these two things. Yeah. And so I would reject his framing of it a little bit.
• 29:02
  A lot of what I received as a millennial Christian living, you know, growing up in evangelicalism, conservative evangelicalism, there were a lot of assumptions about the Bible and about salvation and about life in the world that, you know, in its worst manifestations was pretty much how he describes it, that you just mouth the right propositional statements about the gospel and you're in and nothing else really matters.
• 29:30
  And, um, and that is a gross distortion of a, of a thoroughly biblical worldview. Um, so that's what I would say. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I, yeah, I think, I think keeping these two things together is really important.
• 29:46
  There has been a challenge that Protestants have had in overemphasizing the theory of the world. And the way he says that, I think the way we would say that, the way it seems like the New Testament describes that is simply with the word faith. What do you believe? What do you trust? Where is your allegiance actually resting on? And that there is a way in which when your allegiance is resting, trusting in the truth, it saves you.
• 30:12
  But if, but the New Testament is constantly trying to make the case that then it should also transform you. Um, and if it doesn't, yes. And it's always saying that if you're not transformed in, in your relationships and in, in all those practical ways, then, then your faith is, is in vain or, or it's, or it's, or it's not even real. Um.
• 30:34
  So it's constantly challenging the idea that we can have this proper knowledge without a lived out faith. Sorry, I interrupted you there.
• 30:43
  No, that's perfect. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we have to keep these together. And I really like your observation just about Peterson in general, that he has famously been allergic to admitting to certain metaphysical beliefs because I think it immediately changes the category of
• 31:04
  that people put him in. And there's a wisdom in avoiding those attempts to get him to mouth certain metaphysical beliefs, but it comes at a really high cost. And I think that you're pointing out that maybe one of the costs it's coming at is that he's incapable of understanding the importance of that as an initial step.
• 31:29
  Because he wants to endlessly exist in a world in which he does not have to make those kinds of declarative statements of belief, which allows him to really exist within the category of psychologist or academic.
• 31:44
  And he's afraid that as soon as he mouths, believes that are overtly Christian, he's going to be categorized as a Christian. And there is a ghettoization of Christians that happens within the public conversation. And I think that you're immediately written off and then you start to live inside of a exclusively Christian ecosystem in which...
• 32:11
  Peterson has really avoided this. He's able to exist in a much broader ecosystem that doesn't just involve believers in Jesus, but also people of no faith and many faiths. And I don't know if you've ever wrestled with
• 32:27
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• 33:05
  I think fundamentally he is sincere. I don't think he's being duplicitous. I don't think he's believing one thing and saying another. This is a blockage he has in his own thinking. So, yes, it's a strategy, but I don't think it's an insincere one.
• 33:24
  Um, it's been successful for him to obviously grow an absolutely massive platform, though. Some people have observed recently that young men like Gen Z and stuff, they're they're not listening to him as much. And they've moved on to other guys. I don't know if that's true or not. Yeah. But for men, let's say about about my age, millennial generation, I think I think he still holds a very wide audience. Um.
• 33:55
  I think what I would say as well, though, is...
• 33:58
  Peterson has walked this line and he, you know, he's been asked outright, why don't you convert? And, or, or if, you know, like, why wouldn't you join the church or something like that? And he says something interesting. He's like, I think my role is to, to be on the margins. So there's a, there's an interesting sort of self-conception there that he sees his own role, um, in a certain way, which sort of precludes him joining a team and putting the sweater on, you know, so to speak. Right. Uh, yeah,
• 34:28
  But I would say my observation is at scale, he has become a bridge where a lot of people, you know, who were far from any kind of Christian truth claims, started to entertain them in a much more serious way because of his content. And then they've surpassed him and they've gone beyond where he stopped and they've joined, you know, they've become believers. There's a lot of stories like that. And I thank God for that.
• 34:54
  So, I mean, who can say? This is a very interesting phenomenon. The other thing that strikes me about Peterson is like there's something about the way he approaches the Bible and Christianity that really reminds me of old school theological liberalism, you know, which sort of rejected the miraculous claims of Scripture. But the thing about the earlier manifestation of theological liberalism was that they always parroted.
• 35:22
  progressive culture. And so they always reinterpreted scripture to basically align with, you know, you know, left wing views, progressive views of sexuality and family and gender and all these things. And so, you know, now they've become totally irrelevant and they don't resemble they don't really resemble the Bible or the Christian faith historically at all.
• 35:46
  Peters is a different thing. But he's like on the other side of the political cultural spectrum. He also rejects the miraculous or at least navigates this ambiguous space where he won't commit. But it's more of like a right wing. Right. Theological liberalism, which I haven't seen before. That's interesting. Yeah.
• 36:09
  It is very interesting. Yeah, that's a really interesting comparison. Yeah, I think part of maybe what happened with the kind of old liberal theological perspective was that it seemed to be created by textual criticism. They really basically annihilated their ability to trust in scripture. And then they tried to salvage their faith. Whereas what I see Peterson doing,
• 36:39
  is as a clinical psychologist, he notices that these more traditional and biblical patterns are what actually help people. And I think he's confused by that. So it sort of started there. Why is this happening? And then as a Jungian, somebody who really appreciates story, archetype, he began to explore the possibility that the Bible itself contains...
• 37:07
  the world's best archetypes. And the more he ran that thought experiment, the deeper confidence he got in the Bible. And so he almost had like a reverse journey from a lot of the theological liberals who, who's, who's, um, it kind of going back to the beginning of what he said, their literalism in the way they were trying to interpret the Bible was so rigid that by the time
• 37:33
  they began to really use those same tactics on the scriptures. It just, they couldn't salvage their faith. And whereas I think that one of the things that's happening increasingly is people are just saying, but why does it work? Why does Christianity work? And why does the Bible work?
• 37:49
  have the patterns that work the best and why some of the most ancient descriptions of those patterns like his new book that's coming out in a few days um dawkins and his conversation says he references cain and abel over 300 times in his book his new book which i have already i can't wait to read it but um he's obsessed with that symbol that the archetype of the of these uh warring brothers and what it says about the nature of our current times
• 38:17
  Yeah, man, it's so interesting. And, you know, listening to Peterson talk about the Bible is an interesting experience because he pulls stuff out that, you know, I didn't see in there. And it's really interesting. And, you know, I don't know that I would say that it's proper exegesis, but at a more imaginative level and a pattern level, symbolic level, you know, there's really something to it. And so...
• 38:45
  I would say like a careful intake of what he's proposing from the scriptures is, it can be an enriching experience as a believer. But I just, yeah, obviously we can't follow him and everything that he's concluding about these things.
• 39:05
  Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks, Phil. I love getting to kind of dive into a little bit of the, you know, the, this sort of crossover between the way that these, especially ideas of family and marriage are being, um, are being kind of seen and recovered in some ways, especially when I see it pop out of the most unlikely places like, uh, Silicon Valley atheists or as our conversation kind of morphed into like what, where, um, somebody like Jordan Peterson's going. So.
• 39:34
  Yeah, thanks a lot for having this conversation with me today. It's great. Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at FamilyTeams.