Jordan Peterson on Divine command theory
Peterson rejects crude divine command theory but argues that moral order is grounded in a transcendent structure that religious language approximates.
Jordan Peterson's position on divine command theory is complex and resists simple categorisation. He does not hold that morality consists of arbitrary divine decrees — the voluntarist position — but neither does he think morality is a purely human invention. Instead, he argues that moral reality has a structure that is discovered rather than created, and that religious traditions have encoded this structure in their narratives, laws, and commandments over millennia.
Peterson's key claim is that certain moral truths are embedded in the structure of reality itself — in the archetypal patterns of human experience that are reflected in mythology and religion across cultures. The biblical commandments, in his view, are not arbitrary rules imposed by a cosmic tyrant but articulations of deep truths about what makes human life sustainable and meaningful. They work because they are aligned with the actual structure of human psychology and social reality.
This puts Peterson in an unusual philosophical position. He takes divine commands seriously — far more seriously than most secular intellectuals — but he grounds their authority in their psychological and existential truth rather than in the sheer will of a commanding deity. Whether this constitutes a sophisticated version of divine command theory or a naturalistic reinterpretation of it depends on how broadly one defines the terms.
“The moral order is not something we invented. It's something we discovered, and we discovered it the hard way — over thousands of years of catastrophe.”