The Enneagram System of personality typing has surged in popularity among American Christians, especially among the young who are culturally steeped in both the practices of church doctrine and dogma as well as of the secular world, and are not content with what the Bible says about the human heart and it’s perceived hard moral lines based upon the literal interpretation of Scripture.
A growing number of Christians want all people to be considered good by God and have trouble accepting the teaching that the heart of every human being is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” because they were born with a sinful nature and became totally depraved as a result of Adam and Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden (Jer 17:9 NLT, see also Gen 3). This thinking has led to exploring their inward self, apart from what the Bible says, to identify and understand their personality type so they can discover what makes them do the things they do so they can find pathways toward wholeness and inner healing, and experience life more abundantly.
The Enneagram is a geometric figure made up of a circle with nine points along the circumference, from which are drawn a triangle and an irregular hexagon. Each number represents one personality type, and the lines indicate directions of integration and disintegration. Some believe that the Enneagram can enhance a Christian’s participation in normal progressive sanctification as they grow in grace and truth.
The Enneagram is relatively new to the Western world. The earliest mention of the Enneagram is found in the writings of the Russian occultist P. D. Ouspensky. He was a student of the Greek American occultist George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, who brought the Enneagram to Europe in the 1920s. 1. Gurdjieff said it originated about 2500 years ago in a Babylonian wisdom school. He taught that each person is born with a “planetary body type” with specific physical and psychological traits. He believed that a person’s physical and psychological characteristics are related to a dominant endocrine gland and to planetary influences on that gland, which implicates the Enneagram with Babylonian astrology since those characteristics would be signified by a point on the Enneagram.
Gurdjieff’s use of the Enneagram also parallels the esoteric cabala’s “Tree of Life” of Jewish mysticism. Gurdjieff used the esoteric elements of the Enneagram with his students, but he did not formalize the system in written form. Therefore, others took this task upon themselves.
Oscar Ichazo began teaching the Enneagram in Bolivia in the 1960s and brought his version of the nine personality types to the United States in 1971 as part of his Arica training. He claims to have learned the Enneagram directly from Sufi teachers in Pamir before reading anything by Gurdjieff.2 Ichazo’s Arica training combines Eastern mysticism and Western psychology. The nine points on the circle’s circumference are used to analyze ego types for gaining greater awareness and reaching a higher state of consciousness.5
The modern Enneagram System used today was designed by Claudio Naranjo, a Chilean Psychiatrist, who openly admits that he got all of his information about the Nine personality types from doing automatic writing and trance channeling.3 Naranjo learned Ichazo’s system and taught the Enneagram at Esalon, a human potential, New Age center in California. Among his students were several Jesuit priests who began to incorporate the Enneagram into their counseling and into their own personal lives.5 As a result, the Enneagram’s popularity has spread rapidly among Roman Catholics. In fact, two of the most widely read books on the subject are written by a former Jesuit priest, Don Richard Riso.6
Although the geometric figure of the Enneagram remains the same, versions of the Enneagram personality typology differ among various teachers. Riso contends that his “interpretation of the Enneagram . . . diverges from Ichazo’s approach on several important points.”7 Helen Palmer, another Enneagram proponent, conducted seminars and wrote books, which also revealed a different emphasis and direction. Her publisher says, “Ms. Palmer has developed theories about the use of the Enneagram in understanding human personality and its relationship to aspects of higher awareness that are different and distinct from those expounded by Mr. Ichazo.”8
The promise of its Christian’ promoters is that it will help transform the Believer into the image and likeness of Jesus. It is taught, using the language of self-acceptance, that the Enneagram is to lovingly engage with one’s flaws, following them as breadcrumbs to rediscovering the best in them. It is believed that their imperfections (aka sins) are a shadow of their goodness, rather than signs of an intrinsic inherited badness because they are good from birth, created by a good God, so they have the capacity for both goodness and trouble.
In a direct contradiction, God promised to transform the Born-Again Christian by His power through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. The Bible commands, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2).
The first human beings were created good and given a free-will by their Creator, so they had the choice to be content with Him, who is love, or to want more. When a person becomes Born-Again by accepting and receiving Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, they are positionally sanctified before God and considered perfect, holy, and good, just as the first humans (Rom 1:7,8:28;1 Cor 1:2). Their condition changes every day based upon both the good and bad choices they make, but their position before God remains the same as He sanctifies their condition daily (Heb 10:14). The most profound truth about the goodness of God is that He knows everything about us and yet still loves us anyway.
The fact is that ONLY God’s written Word, the Bible, is all-sufficient to help the Born-Again Christian grow in godliness (2 Tim 3:17). To imply otherwise is to declare the Bible to be insufficient. No Christian should seek to be transformed by anything (or anyone) but the Holy Spirit.
The Born-Again Christian is called to deny themselves and follow Jesus daily. The Enneagram is ultimately self-focused. It creates a framework for identifying in a test rather than in Jesus. That is the very core problem of the human race and why Jesus became human and shed His blood so that the Born-Again Christian can be transformed and renewed daily by dying daily to self – not discovering it! The Word of God, by way of the Holy Spirit, reveals the heart of anyone open to the truth. The Born-Again Christian already has all they need for life and godliness! (2 Peter 1:3).
The Enneagram is an untested instrument, and it has opened itself to theological error, social and psychological misuse. The lack of scientific investigation means there are no controls to determine who actually is an expert, nor which advice is helpful or detrimental, nor whether the goals of the Enneagram system are sound.
The questions that need to be asked is whether one should use the Enneagram system are:
Can a tool from the occult be an instrument that has the capacity to heal, or to do harm?
How dangerous are practices derived from occult origins and considered an abomination to the Lord?
Perhaps the best question to ask is:
Can a Christian use the Enneagram to glorify God and grow into the likeness of Christ?
The Enneagram did not emanate from the Word of God. Although it helps gain some self-knowledge, it is not beneficial for spiritual growth. The Bible provides all a Christian needs for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).
The Enneagram is pure and simply just another gospel of psycho-heresy that comes directly from mysticism and the occult. Its purpose is to give insight that only the Bible has the sufficient authority to provide. It is a demonic path of counterfeit sanctification. The Occultic roots of this system have never been proven as false and can never be thoroughly purged or redeemed. It NEVER belonged to God. That is the very core problem of the human race and why Jesus became human and shed His blood so that the Born-Again Christian can be transformed and renewed daily by dying daily to self – not discovering it. The Holy Spirit doesn’t need anything like the Enneagram to reveal a person’s heart so they can become more self-aware.
The Enneagram is, at best, a flawed system that will inject a nebulousness into the doctrine and life of the Born-Again Christian, and at the worst, it is the same as the false idols that seduced the people of Israel with their promises to enhance what God was doing for them. Adding a tool of the occult to understand the self is like being less than a degree off course at the beginning of a journey and ending up at a totally wrong destination. A gallon of pure freshwater will kill you with just a single drop of arsenic.
The Word of God, by way of the Holy Spirit, reveals the heart of anyone open to the truth. The Born-Again Christian already has all they need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3)!
Inner Healing
Memory is a neurological process that everyone creates unconsciously. Science has revealed that memory formation is related to the development of the Hippocampus of the Brain. Studies have shown that the Hippocampus is insensitive to environmental stimulation and is inactive before the emergence of behavioral function. It is important to point out that it is impossible for memories to be stored in a prenatal, natal, and early postnatal brain because the myelin sheathing around the cells in the brain are not fully developed.
The mind automatically links experiences in order to give meaning to what a person does. Most learning and change takes place at the unconscious level. When a person is in a normal mental state, their critical and logical thinking is at the forefront, and automated responses found in the subconscious (such as breathing, etc,) are in the background.
In the practice of “Christian” Inner Healing attempts are made to lead a person into seeing Jesus in a past (or present) situation. This practice is no different than using hypnotic induction techniques and leading a person into a dissociative trance-state used in the Occult. When that is done the result is that critical thinking gets overloaded, becomes confused and shuts down as a safety mechanism, which brings the subconscious to the forefront, inducing an altered state.
At that point, ideas and suggestions can be implanted into the subconscious and often become real and tangible in the mind. Research indicates that after hypnosis, a person is unable to distinguish between a true recollection and what they imagined or created under the heightened suggestibility.
Human psychology has so permeated the church that ”modern” counseling methods include such things as “womb therapy” or using Jesus as a “spirit guide” via a “sanctified” imagination so that a person can “center down” on a “metaphysical” journey to mind-travel back into the past. Once the person arrives, they are to use “god-light” to seek out the hidden inner-child regions and dark rooms of the unconscious mind for repressed, or hidden pain, or trauma, so that “god” can directly speak truth to them for healing. However, it is only God’s written Word - the Bible - that is truth.
The Bible also says that it is the Holy Spirit who will finish the work He began in the person who yields their life to Jesus. (See Phil. 1:6; 1 Th 5:24) The “inner” person of the Christian is being renewed day by day. (See 2 Cor. 4:16; 3:18) The Born-Again Christian stands positionally before God blameless and perfect - emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Jesus said, "Apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).
True “inner-healing” comes by accepting what God has already done through forgiveness and appropriating His promises. The Bible warns against imaginations that would interfere with knowing God as He truly is (See 2 Cor. 10:5).
Christians don’t need to conjure up a mental image of Jesus in the memory of a painful life circumstance or situation nor in an attempt to draw closer to Him in the here and now. Holy Spirit will reveal a specific event or behavior that needs healing at the moment He deems it necessary, and He will provide the guidance to bring about complete healing and wholeness, when He is ready, not when a person attempts to make it happen.
All people need redemption. As stated previously, painful experiences are directly and indirectly caused as a result of the sinful nature passed down to all of humanity. Those who have been emotionally, physically, and spiritually wounded can have their hearts and minds completely healed by Jesus Christ. The foundation of all emotional, spiritual, and physical healing is found in forgiveness - through both receiving and giving - as defined by the shedding of Jesus’ blood on the Cross.
God states that He "blots out transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins." (Isa 43:25 NIV) Jesus dealt with ALL sin - once and for all - on the Cross, where the sin of every Christian became His, and the righteousness of Jesus became theirs. The Bible declares that Jesus;
“died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised... Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (2 Cor. 5:14-15 NIV).
Forgetting The Past
The Bible commands the Believer to forget “what lies behind” and strain “forward to what lies ahead”, as they “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 3:13-14 NIV) The Bible prohibits reliving the details of past sins that were committed:
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose (reprove, condemn evil) them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.” (Eph 5:11-12 NIV)
The past has no hold over a Born-Again Christian. They find perfect peace as Holy Spirit applies the finished work of Jesus to their hearts, for they are “sprinkled and purified from an evil conscience" by the power of the blood of Jesus. (Heb 10:19-22 NIV).
God originally created mankind as good, without sin. However, mankind chose not to trust God and turned away from Him, which caused sin to enter into the DNA of the human race. The Bible says about mankind, and the old nature, that;
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jer 17:9 KJV)
The old nature is in constant battle with the new nature of the Born-Again Christian:
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. (Rom 7:14-20 NIV)
The Root of the Problem
What happened in the womb or some specific event in the past of a person is not the reason for their problems, or failures, or mistakes. The Bible says that it is sin, which is any thought or behavior that is offensive to God. It is mentioned more than 600 times! Sin does not exist as a result of lies that have been believed which then leads to defective thinking and ultimately manifests as sinful behavior.
As stated previously, thanks to Adam and Eve, the root of mankind’s problem is that they possess a sinful nature which is compelled to rebellion. Every human being is now “a slave to sin.” The reason Jesus came to Earth was to save humanity from their sin. (See Matt 1:18-22) He shed His blood for “the remission of sins.” (Matt 26:28) It is only Jesus who can make a person free from its eternal consequences. (See John 8:34-36)
The Bible has revealed the way for every person to find freedom from the old nature and establish a relationship with God. True healing comes when a person accepts the truth that “all have sinned and are falling short of the honor and glory of God." (Rom 3: 23 NIV)
God’s prerequisite for a person to be set free from sin is repentance and confession of personal rejection of God. Jesus said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matt 4:17 NIV) Jesus didn’t come to call “the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32 NIV)
All internal subjective experiences, perceptions, feelings, and thinking are to be in total submission and conformity to God’s Word alone. It is what one believes that ultimately determines behavior, not what a person feels.
“If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Rom 10:8-10)
Christians were saved from the penalty of sin at conversion. They are being saved from the power of sin through daily sanctification. They will be saved from the presence of sin when they are glorified! The only way to deal with the past and keep it from being used by the enemy as a weapon against the Christian is to:
“… put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;… and … put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:22-24 NIV)
It is time for the church to make Jesus the center of their ministry with the primary emphasis on the Word of God and by allowing the Holy Spirit to work and move freely in their midst.
Ministry to people should have Jesus at the center and not the problems caused by the sinful nature in fallen mankind. Relying on Jesus is the only way to bring about healing and restoration, not man-made human counseling and deliverance methods, no matter how spiritual they may sound, or are seemingly justified by poor exegesis of Scripture.
God has supplied every answer needed for the problems of this world in His Word, for it alone declares what is absolutely right and what is absolutely wrong. Holy Spirit will directly lead a Believer to the path they are to walk, and He will make their paths straight when they stray. God requires every human being to conform to His Word.
Born-Again Christians don’t need to worry about being eternally deceived by satan because they have been sanctified by God’s truth. Jesus prayed; “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth” (John 17:17 NIV. Holy Spirit was given to guide every Believer “into all truth” (John 16:13). Jesus is the great Shepherd and His sheep will not follow a stranger because they hear His voice:
“… and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers” (John 10:2-5 NIV).
The Biblical way of counseling ministry and deliverance is the way of the Cross - through dying to self by taking no thought for tomorrow, esteeming others more highly than one’s self, and casting all one’s cares upon Jesus - letting Him take care of them. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus provided the only true, and 100% successful, source for spiritual, emotional, and physical healing for all of mankind.
Endnotes
1 Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi. “Gurdjieff & Kabbalah: How Gurdjieff’s System relates to the Tree of Life,” Gnosis, Summer 1991, pp. 42-45.
2 Riso, op. cit., p. 16.
3 Martin and Deidre Bobgan. The Psychological Way/ The Spiritual Way. Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1979, pp. 104-108.
4. www.enneagram-monthly.com/uploads/2/5/3/9/25390132/em_223w.pdf
5 Riso, op. cit., pp. 16-17.
6 Ibid. and Don Richard Riso. Understanding the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1990.
7 Riso, Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery, op. cit., p. 16.
8 Helen Palmer. The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991, p. xvii.
