A concept taken from the thought of Swiss psychoanalyst C. G. Jung, the collective unconscious denotes mental concepts shared among members of a society or culture. Peterson characterizes the stories of the Bible as part of the collective unconscious of Western civilization.

A covenant is an agreement or contract; in religious terms, it is the relationship between God and humanity, predicated on the moral law. Peterson argues that social contracts must be founded on a deeper reality based on respect and sacrifice for God and the individual.

The story of Jacob’s vision of a ladder ascending to heaven in Genesis is, in Peterson’s interpretation, emblematic of the progressive nature of existence: Human beings aim upward toward godliness, and creation as a whole aspires upward from “good” to “very good.”