WHAT IS THE ENNEAGRAM?

The Enneagram is an ancient personality map, a helpful guide on our journey toward self-knowledge. Based on nine archetypal styles, the Enneagram helps reveal a person’s core motivations. Rather than confine us to a “type,” the Enneagram simply helps us understand why we do what we do.

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If you don't already know, “Ennea” means nine, and “gram” refers to something that’s written (which refers to a drawing that shows the nine personality styles).

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WHO IS IN CHARGE OF IT?

Unlike other personality assessments, no organization owns the copyrights or regulates Enneagram content. Don't think of it like a franchised McDonald’s, offering the exact same product all over the world. It’s more like a food truck rodeo. They're all small businesses and reliant upon a few people to cook and serve customers food. But every one of them is independent of the others. Their menus, food quality, flavors, cleanliness, and service vary significantly. And you can often tell who has a good product based on how many people are in line.

 

The upside of this arrangement with the Enneagram is that there are many different writers, speakers, consultants, and coaches that have complete freedom to borrow, add or subtract, and develop it as they like. And many have completely different purposes for their assessments, reports, courses, events, Instagram accounts, and more. This includes us! We've rewritten the content to uniquely reflect Christian beliefs and terminology. The downside of no one owning, accrediting, or controlling the material is there is no central pot of money to control the quality or pay for scientific research on its validity. (That said, there have been several studies on the reliability of several specific assessments or training events and the results are positive - for example click here, here, and here).

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WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

Like other grassroots movements, it's been influenced by a diverse set of people from different backgrounds, psychological leanings, and spiritual traditions. Oschar Ichazo (1931-2020) claimed that he was the first developer of it using material from P. D. Ouspensky (1978-1947) and Georges I. Gurdjieff (1879-1949) and other ancient influences like Evagrius Ponticus (345-399), Ramon Llull (1232-1316) and Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). This earlier history is elusive because a few have claimed that it was a secret tool that was passed down orally from person to person. These sources have led a few to argue that it came from ancient Christianity, Islamic Sufis, Judaism, Homer, or even the Pythagoreans (yes, as in the theorem). However, Ichazo debunked much of this and it can be simply too much conjecture in these arguments for us to be certain. As mentioned above, many continued to develop it into our current form and use like Claudio Naranjo, Don Richard Riso, Helen Palmer, and Fr. Robert Ochs (just to name a few). 

 

You may have heard that the Enneagram can't be trusted because Claudio Naranjo said he relied upon "automatic writing". Funny enough, the words of this "trickster" have been explained by his followers Russ Hudson (click here), Katherine Fauve, and Beatrice Chestnut (click here). For a detailed treatment of the Enneagram's history, click here for our friend Tyler Zach's free online webinar. You can also find a free downloadable PDF of some of this material on Tyler's website gospelforenneagram.com.

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DO WE NEED TO KNOW ITS ORIGIN?

No. While its history is important, it's ok to let it remain ambiguous. That's because neither positive nor negative origins can sufficiently establish the merits of a tool (see the logical fallacy of origins). For example, someone would be committing this fallacy if they said:

“A Christian wrote this song, so you know that her lyrics about God are true.”

“Albert Einstein was a secular humanist who said the Bible was childish, so we should disregard his theory of relativity."

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Now, let's move on to consider why people are drawn to the Enneagram and how we use it to introduce people to Christ.

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WHY ARE PEOPLE ARE DRAWN TO IT?

Reflecting on James K.A. Smith's insights in "On the Road with Saint Augustine," Tyler Zach writes in his PDF on "Should Christians Use the Enneagram":

 

On this road, Augustine shifted his focus from the outward world to his inward self. The road he took was one of self-examination. But for him, this journey of self-reflection, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, doesn't lead us to pride but rather greater knowledge of our inherent limitations. On this road of searching for the true self, if you get to the very end, you will find God.

 

It's a true yet sad reality, that our friends are more open to hearing that they're sinners from a personality assessment than from many of us. But what if we journeyed with people through their story, walking with them down their road of self-examination? What if we used it to show how Jesus meets their deepest longings?

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We have found a wide-open door for the gospel through the Enneagram. After years of "being there" for people in pastoral ministry, we have developed a tool that fosters rich conversations with people who take our assessment, consider their motivations, and are open to rich truths that answer their deepest needs and gives them hope.

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HOW DO YOU USE IT?

Dr. Todd Wilson makes the case in "Enneagram Goes to the Church," that like a skilled composer, we should "transpose it into a Christian key" and show people the way to Jesus. After all, God speaks through general revelation and calls his people to redeem worldly devices. An example of this is Paul's use of the pagan "idol to an unknown god" in Acts 17 to point the Greek philosophers to Jesus. 

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This is exactly our purpose in this material. We have changed some more typical Enneagram content to be centered around the gospel and changed the terminology to reflect biblical language. Examples of this are using "old or new self" instead of "false or true self," "false belief" instead of "core fear," and referring to people's personality "styles" rather than their "types."

 

Christians who truly love their neighbors and take seriously Christ's great commission should welcome any open door to spiritual conversations that foster Christ-centered transformation. That's why our goal has been to use this tool to show people how Jesus meets their deepest motivations and grounds them in the "good news" of Jesus Christ.