Place the contemporary clinical psychologist and cultural commentator Jordan Peterson alongside the late Jesuit philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984).

Both became intellectually formidable in their respective eras, but Dr. Steven Umbrello advocates in his new book, Mediated by Meaning, that synthesizing key concepts from these Canadian thinkers opens avenues to self-transcendence and greater consciousness.

Umbrello, the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies’ managing director, knows this pairing “does look strange” at first glance. However, these men from “different intellectual worlds and different times” contemplated many of the same existential questions: how we know what is true, how our values shape perception and how a person moves from confusion toward a meaningful life.

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The 33-year-old Toronto native credits Peterson in particular for illuminating the psychological struggle to answer these core questions with “unusual force” and accessible language. In fact, Umbrello likens Peterson’s utility to what fourth-century Biblical scholar Eusebius described as a “preparation for the Gospel” (Praeparatio Evangelica).

“He's made Biblical language audible to people who have dismissed Christianity even before hearing it,” said the University of Turin researcher. “He speaks about sacrifice, sin, conscience, evil and redemption in a vocabulary secular listeners can approach. I'm a testament to that, as I think actually millions are. It can clear away intellectual debris and awaken a desire for something more, something foundational.”

Regarding Lonergan, Umbrello proposes that the philosopher-theologian’s Generalized Empirical Method (GEM) framework of how knowing occurs through the operations of consciousness — experiencing, understanding, judging and deciding — provides a “philosophical foundation that's strong enough to carry the weight that Peterson places on things like meaning and truth and value.”

In other words, “Peterson describes what it feels like to wrestle with meaning, and then Lonergan explains what the mind is doing during the wrestling,” said Umbrello.

Recounting his personal return to Christianity after falling away from his faith as a young man, Umbrello said it was Peterson at first who helped him “recover a sense of agency” through his forceful messages of telling the truth, taking personal responsibility, repairing damaged relationships and even approaching the Bible with an open mind and heart.

Fully committing to the search for meaning, truth and value led Umbrello to discover Lonergan not long afterwards. His conduit was the book Philosophy and Catholic Theology: A Primer by the current Bishop of Portsmouth, England, Philip A. Egan. The last few chapters were dedicated to Lonergan and his 1972 magnum opus Method in Theology.

“When I started researching him, I thought, ‘oh, you could tell this is a genius,’ ” said Umbrello. “But he is strangely not well known. I thought that it would be maybe even useful to me to explore a little bit more about why he is not well known. When I started reading, I went, ‘there's something here, but I can't put my finger on it’ because I still haven't had that insight, but I'm close to having a eureka moment. Once I started to really understand how simple, but still difficult Lonergan was, it was kind of that feeling when people discovered the Gospel for the first time, and they have to tell everyone.

“I'm still on that kind of journey, trying to tell everybody.”

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Thanks in part to Peterson, Lonergan’s concepts became more tangible to Umbrello, and in Mediated by Meaning he elucidates how the former can make the latter easier to comprehend for a wider audience.

Ever since Peterson first vaulted into prominence nearly a decade ago, Umbrello said the 64-year-old, who is battling a recurring neurological condition known as akathisia, proved “moral seriousness still has an audience,” but after a certain stage, one must turn to the Church as “it possesses the fuller account of where that seriousness leads.”

Umbrello added that Peterson “reopened the questions I had learned to suppress,” but it was “Lonergan (who) taught me how to pursue them responsibly” as the Jesuit’s philosophy is attuned to the ever-presentness of God’s grace and love.

He used scissors as a metaphor to explain why Peterson cannot be the end destination in the journey toward meaning.

“Peterson unfortunately lacks the real intellectual, moral and religious conversion as defined by Lonergan,” said Umbrello. “He doesn't allow for grace in his philosophy. It's all about the climb. He often uses an ascent pattern. You accept responsibility instead of chaos. You make your bed. You stand up with your shoulders straight. You talk about sacrifice, the climb toward maturity, and that's wise. That's the bottom half of the scissors.

“But scissors don't work if they don't have the top half also,” he continued. “Lonergan's account of grace is that God's love begins in the first moment. Our response is real and free, but grace has already made that response possible. God loved us first. Peterson's philosophy seems not to take into account the top half of the scissors that makes the cutting even possible. Christianity begins with God entering the pit, not with the wounded person proving that he can climb out.”

While Peterson's wife, Tammy, received the grace of an inner conversion and completed a journey to the Catholic Church in 2024, Peterson has discussed and even wrestled with his faith publicly through his writings and podcast interviews but has maintained a distance from fully adopting Christianity.

Umbrello said Peterson “has been standing at the crossroads for many a year pointing and saying, ‘there it is: there is the truth and the truth is Christianity.’ People listen to him and walk down the road where he was pointing and arrive at that person of Christ, but unfortunately, Peterson didn’t seem to walk with them."

“At a certain point, you may wave back and say ‘come,’ but if they don't walk with you, at a certain point you just keep walking.”

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Christian admirers of Peterson, including Umbrello, hope he formally embraces Jesus as God rather than just the ultimate example of Carl Jung’s Redeemer archetype. Nevertheless, he declares in the final chapter of Mediated by Meaning that Peterson and Lonergan together “offer a unified vision of intellectual, moral and existential integrity.” And such a vision is key to living in truth, value and meaning amid a time of moral relativism.  

Visit stevenumbrello.com/mediated/ to learn more.