The Enneagram: What Christians Need to Know About It

Testing the Spirits Behind the Enneagram

In 1 John 4 .1, the Bible says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Let's test the spirits behind the Enneagram.

What is it? How has it become so popular in many churches? Where does it really come from? And what does the Bible have to say? The Enneagram of personality, or simply the Enneagram, is a nine-sided star polygon used to classify human personalities into nine interconnected personality types.

The word comes from the Greek words enia, meaning nine, and grama for writing or drawing. Each number at each point of the Enneagram corresponds with a different personality. The Enneagram is utilized anywhere from business management to religious contexts.

Some believe it can help a person understand their own personality and the personalities of others, improve interpersonal dynamics, and become healthier and more productive. The religious believe it can help a person know God or achieve enlightenment.

Others do it just for fun. Though the Enneagram is largely regarded as pseudoscience, it has developed into a cottage industry with seminars, conferences, books, jewelry, candles, and more. This became quite the fad in many American churches.

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr was one of the first to promote the Enneagram to Christians with his book, The Enneagram, A Christian Perspective, published in 1995 and again in 2001. Over the next few years, Rohr's teaching on the Enneagram caught on with the emergent church movement, including teachers like Rob Bell and Brian McLaren.

How the Enneagram Became Popular in Churches

In 2016, Christian publisher InterVarsity Press released The Road Back to You, An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Krohn and Suzanne Stabile, who is called the Enneagram Godmother. Ivy Press has since published dozens of books on the Enneagram, including an entire series devoted to each personality type.

Andy Stanley had Ian Krohn, an Episcopal priest and psychotherapist, on his leadership podcast to promote the Enneagram. Stanley said Krohn is responsible for introducing the Enneagram to its broadest audience, evangelicals.

Rick Warren has hosted Enneagram seminars for teachers at Saddleback Church. Tyler Zack is an Enneagram pastor who has organized the Gospel for Enneagram Summit. Speakers included Russell Moore of Christianity Today and Lisa Vischer, the voice of Junior Asparagus from the popular children's series Veggie Tales.

She's now an Enneagram coach. Other speakers included Beth and Jeff McCord, who founded Your Enneagram Coach, so Christians can use its power to harness and transform self-limiting behaviors into life-enhancing personal empowerment.

The gift of the Enneagram, they say, is that through self-discovery, one can create and sustain meaningful and lasting relationships with others, God, and themselves. Not through Christ, but through the Enneagram.

Other Enneagram enthusiasts include Beth Moore, who says she is an Enneagram 7, and Scott Sauls, who's an Enneagram 4. In a passion talk, Sadie Robertson-Huff said,.

I'm a six-wing seven on the Enneagram. I can tell you everything there is to know about it.

Late Southern Baptist pastor Darren Patrick said,.

I think the Enneagram is like the image of God broken in nine pieces.

In the same answer, he said,.

You've got to understand, really. The Enneagram is to show you your dark side more than your sunny side.

Two weeks later, Patrick committed suicide. His widow was invited to speak at Tyler Zack's Enneagram Summit. Some churches have utilized the Enneagram to hire new staff, not according to their biblical qualifications, but according to their Enneagram number.

Here's Troy Frazier of the Revive Thoughts podcast.

I was working with getting hired at a church. Everything was going very, very well. However, at the very end, they just sent me a link and they said, hey, everyone who we would want to hire for this position is taking this Enneagram test.

And I don't remember what my numbers were, but let's just pretend for the sake of remembering these things. It was a four. The message I got back the next day was, oh, you are a four. I am really sorry, but actually, you know, I'm a four, Dave's a four.

We actually have several fours already and we're trying to have a well-rounded staff here. We appreciate you taking all the time on this, but yeah, not looking for a four right now. Thank you. This is not the only time, not the last time I would have an Enneagram test come up at Christian ministry.

It's happened actually a few different times.

The Occult Origins of the Enneagram

At best, the Enneagram is pop psychology. At worst, it's of the occult. Now, this is something that many evangelical teachers pushing the Enneagram try to ignore. Bill Gaultier, who led the seminar at Saddleback, has said the following about its origins.

I did some research about the history of it and I became convinced that I feel like God has had his hand in the development of this tool. Now, you may say, well, wait a minute, Bill. I've heard about, you know, all these different influences, Eastern religions, and Sufi Muslims, and you know, all this stuff.

Well, that's true. It's a cross-cultural tool. The first thinkers in the history of the Enneagram were the desert fathers and monks of the third and fourth century. And they were Christians. The desert father, Evagrius, is the one that identified the seven deadly sins.

The whole Enneagram, the theory is based on that plus two more, nine deadly sins. Now, you don't always hear about that.

Because it's a lie. In fact, the guy who pushed that story about the Enneagram going back to ancient sources admitted he made it up. Here's Chilean psychotherapist and Enneagram guru, Claudio Naranjo.

So when people heard me, they thought I was talking about something that comes from Babylonian origins through Oscar Hichasso to me.

Well, yeah, because they trust that more. They're being scholars.

I thought it would make sense. Actually, when I was, I chose to do that intentionally, and I was remembering a recommendation of Oscar Wilde, who said, if you want an idea of yours to become famous, attribute it to a famous person.

That's right.

So at the conference, I told them I had made up this tale that all this came from millennia ago.

From Babylonians.

And that this information came from the Zufis.

The earliest mention of the Enneagram is from Russian occultist, Peter Uspensky, who got it from his teacher, occultist George Gurchiev. They taught that the human soul is trapped by personality and needed to be set free.

Gurchiev explained this using symbols like the Enneagram. He said, all knowledge can be included in the Enneagram. A man may be quite alone in the desert, and he can trace the Enneagram in the sand, and in it read the eternal laws of the universe.

The term Enneagram of personality is credited to Oscar Hichasso, a philosopher who founded an occult school in Chile. He called his study protoanalysis, nine ways in which a person's ego becomes fixed at an early stage of life, often due to psychological traumas.

Each person latches on to one of these ego fixations, becoming the self-image that develops into their personality. Hichasso claimed to receive this from spirits, including an angel called Metatron. His student, Claudio Naranjo, referred to these spirit guides as a higher authority, through which he was also influenced.

Naranjo assigned each of the nine Enneotypes, which he claimed to have received through automatic writing, a form of spirit contact.

Actually, Oscar Hichasso had not described any of the Enneotypes either. Actually, in the seven months we spent with him, he devoted about six hours to talk about the Enneagram, but he never came to describe any one of the types.

That was in Eureka.

In Eureka, Chile.

In Eureka, Chile, yeah. So that came from my own observations, but mostly from automatic writing.

Automatic writing?

Yeah, it came to me through automatic writing.

What did?

The specific information.

And it's Enneotypes.

About Enneotypes, which I then verified through observation.

The Bible's Warning Against Divination and False Gospels

When you find your personality type is a six-winged seven, according to the Enneagram, this is not, as Darren Patrick called it, a reflection of the image of God. The Enneagram is not what God says about you.

It turns out the Enneagram is what demons say about you. Galatians 1, six through eight says, I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another.

Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to the gospel we have proclaimed, let him be accursed.

Deuteronomy 18, 10 through 12 says, there shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices soothsaying, or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer, or one who is an enchanter or a medium or a spiritist or one who inquires of the dead.

For whoever does these things is an abomination to Yahweh. In 1 Timothy 4, 1, we are warned, the spirit explicitly says that in later times, some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the doctrines of demons.

Now, just because a professing Christian uses the Enneagram, that doesn't automatically mean they have become a new age pagan. They may be misled and should be warned that such a tool is not of God. It's no different than astrology, which also engages human personality and utilizes shapes like this.

Well, that looks familiar, doesn't it? Tools like these will not deliver the freedom or enlightenment they promise. They lead to more deception, darkness, and even death. The Bible says, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

Ephesians 2 .10 says to Christians, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Later we read, therefore, look carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.

On account of this, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Turn from these new age demonic tools. Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from these worldly things. Turn to Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

If you want to know who you are and what you are made for, the answer is in his word, the Bible. Know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error when we understand the text.

Thank you for watching. Please subscribe to our channel and look for our podcast with 20 minutes of Bible study, five days a week. Special thanks to Good Fight Ministries, Koltish, Marsha Montenegro, and American Gospel, some of the sources for this video.