CAUTION AND POTENTIAL OF THE ENNEAGRAM

An explanation. A caution. And an invitation.

“What number are you?”

has become a phrase I overhear in casual conversations at a great many Christian gatherings. For the few of us who may not know, the question is about the Enneagram, a popular personality tool used by many to better understand themselves, their personalities and their spiritual challenges.

Some might call it a fad, but of course the desire to penetrate the mystery of personality, to understand ourselves better, is ancient. Why do we do the things we do? How can we improve?

When it comes to personality assessment, these timeless questions have been addressed in three main ways – typology, traits and testing. Typologies are basically classification systems to differentiate people. Traits are descriptions of personality qualities possessed by individuals. Tests are devices we use to assess typologies and traits.

Typology

She’s so melancholic. He’s really anal. How could I do that job when I’m such an introvert? That big guy at work is so extraverted. These common phrases are examples of typology at work.

The roots of typology run deep. Hippocrates (460–370 BC) used typology when he tied personality to cosmic elements and biological substance – air-blood-sanguine, earth-black bile-melancholic, fire-yellow bile-choleric, water-phlegmphlegmatic. Shortly after, astrological types were used to predict dispositions.

In the 1800s the philosopher Immanuel Kant spoke of four temperaments – sanguine, melancholic, choleric and phlegmatic.

Sigmund Freud and others in his theoretical camp emphasized classifications like anal, oral, phallic and the like, and linked these temperaments with weaning, toilet training and sexuality.

Carl Jung, an early disciple of Freud, believed you could explain people’s personalities through two attitudes (introversion and extraversion) and four functions (sensing, thinking, feeling and intuiting). In contrast William Sheldon linked personality with body type.

Many of our perspectives on personality find their foundation in these historical formulations.

Traits

Is personality consistent across situations? Or does it vary depending on the circumstances? Over the past hundred years, social scientists have gone in two main directions.

Trait-person theorists argue that the core of who you are will manifest itself in predictable ways in various circumstances. Kind and sympathetic people are that way everywhere.

But state-situation theorists argue against locking people into a particular personality. There’s too much variation as to how people respond in different settings, they say. Kind and sympathetic people may not have that trait in every situation.

One group sees personality through a predictive lens – tell me who you are and I will tell you with some accuracy how you will tend to respond. The other through a buffer lens – who you are interacts with your surroundings so I can’t be definitive on who you are without knowing where you are.

Experts today generally agree that people shape their environments and are also shaped by them. In other words, neither personality traits nor circumstances are perfect forecasters of how people will respond in a given situation.

Testing

Given everyone’s confusion around how to understand personality, and our fascination with ourselves and those closest to us, it is not surprising that in the past 75 years there has been growing interest in testing it.

We love categorizing and assessing, especially in the face of confusion and ambiguity. And in this cultural moment we measure what we value – and we value what we measure.

That brings us to the Enneagram, one of the most popular tools being used today.

Taken from two Greek words – ennea meaning nine and grammos meaning figure – the Enneagram attempts to capture the nature of personality within a typological framework and uses it to mobilize

transformation. Understanding our personality facilitates growth.

The Enneagram has roots in Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and Jewish history, and weaves together philosophy, psychology and spirituality through a focus on humanity’s tendencies and fears.

Enneagram users take a personality test that places them into one of nine different personality types identified by a number. The nine are in a dynamic relationship with one another as can be observed by the nine-point geometric symbol called an Enneagram.

Following the tradition of the desert fathers, particularly Evagrius Ponticus, deadly sins are linked with the nine types in the Enneagram – anger (1), pride (2), deceit (3), envy (4), avarice (5), fear (6), gluttony (7), lust (8) and sloth (9) – and are understood to be fixations which stand in the way of the goodness in God’s creation.

While disputed in many academic environments due to scientific concerns around reliability (does it measure consistently over time and situations?) and validity (does it measure what it purports to measure?), the Enneagram is still a widely adopted model in both secular and sacred arenas. “If I were to bring up a person’s Enneagram type in court or in front of the College of Psychologists as proof of assessment, I’d at least get laughed out of the building and probably would get investigated for lack of competency,” says Dr. Ed Ng, a psychologist in Vancouver.

Yet many Christians find the Enneagram helpful as they seek to unearth barriers blocking their journey with God, the unique strengths and struggles they find in themselves.

The Enneagram’s ultimate concern is not to lock people into a way of being, but to cultivate self-knowledge so someone is true to their real self.

For those who might quickly negate the device because it is not directly rooted in Scripture, we need to remind ourselves of the theological construct of common grace. God is positively disposed toward all His creatures, not just those who are Christian, and through Him good can come from anywhere. A good God brings benefits to our lives from unusual places.

Caution

It is refreshing to note many of those who write about the Enneagram have a more nuanced approach than some of their followers, and do not offer the device as the definitive word on personality or spirituality, but invite caution.

In The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth (Zondervan, 2017) author Christopher Heuertz writes that when working with the Enneagram, “We hardly understand what we are working with, so we would do well to take a learning stance of humility.”

In The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective (Crossroad, 2004), Richard Rohr and Andreas Eber remind us that all “typologies have the disadvantage of necessarily neglecting the uniqueness, originality and peculiar nature of the individual.”

When someone says, “I’m an eight,” is that a statement that fully captures who they are? Or is there a risk that now they see themselves through that lens and are

While disputed in many academic environments due to scientific concerns around reliability and validity, the Enneagram is still a widely adopted model in both secular and sacred arenas.

locked in? Language, after all, can both describe and also create reality.

Misuse of personality tests can easily lead to psychological determinism where we limit our ability to exercise our volitional muscle and become a victim of ourselves.

We are more than our number on the Enneagram, so we need to tell our stories to each other, and not use the test as a way to shortchange interaction and cheapen the complexity of what it means to know and be known. Swapping numbers is not enough to understand the person standing in front of us.

While self-knowledge is the intended focus of the Enneagram, the simplicity of nine numbers makes it easy to use on others as a kind of weapon. Rather than being hospitable toward others and taking them for who they are, the misuse of a test of this type runs huge risks of locking others into a specific category.

We rob them of their uniqueness. And if they are not familiar with the device, we alienate them because we purport to know something about them they do not know about themselves.

Invitation

Instruments like the Enneagram can be dismissed completely or embraced uncritically. Rather than pursue one of these two extremes, we would all benefit from more substantive Christian reflection.

CHARACTER

When the Apostle Paul assertively presents theological arguments, his personality looks very different than the quiet, almost passive disciple Andrew. Scripture seems loud on character rooted in the triune God, but quieter on personality. Instead of using them interchangeably, could we unpack the difference between them and pursue character with the same intensity?

SCIENCE

The pseudoscience critique is an invitation for more work to be done on the Enneagram’s validity and reliability. This would not only aid the secular space, but would address the notion that many Christians tend to like such devices, therefore revealing their anti-science and anti-intellectual bias. Might more scholarly scrutiny of the Enneagram enhance our impact in the public square?

THEOLOGY

When some expressions of the Enneagram position it in the context of religious pluralism, and link fixations with deadly sins, we move out of personality into the realm of theology. These are complex issues that require wisdom and a discerning of spirits. Could more careful attention be paid to how theology and personality relate to spirituality?

UNITY

Personality theorists have spent centuries trying to navigate the puzzle of what makes us unique and what we have in common – there is no one quite like you, but there are also people very much like you. A different slant emerges from the biblical record where what brings us together dominates. With so much fragmentation in our world, how does personality relate to unity?

Finally, amid the history and complexity of personality assessment where identity is addressed primarily by the “Who am I?” question, we would do well to ask the equally important question – “Whose am I?”

There is neither Jew nor Gentile [nor 8, 9, or 1], neither slave nor free [nor 2, 3 or 4], neither is there male and female [nor 5, 6, 7], for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).

While self-knowledge is the intended focus of the Enneagram, the simplicity of nine numbers makes it easy to use on others as a kind of weapon.