03/29/22

Two Trees in the Garden

Genesis two describes how God planted a garden in Eden and placed the man he had created (Adam) in it. Out of the ground God caused trees to grow, trees that were good for food and pleasant to see. Then the author of Genesis drew his readers attention to two particular trees in the middle of the garden—the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What was so special about these trees?

According to Ingrid Faro in the Lexham Bible Dictionary, the tree of life represents immortality, divine presence, wisdom and righteousness as a path of life; with an eschatological promise. It symbolizes the fullness of life and the immortality available in God. The opening and closing chapters of the Bible contain references to the tree of life. In chapter 22 of Revelations, trees of life grow on each side of the of the river of life and produce twelve kinds of fruit. The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations: “No longer will there be anything accursed” (Revelations 22:3). Note the plural of trees.

References to the tree of life and its symbolism appear throughout the Old Testament. In Genesis, the tree of life represents God’s life-giving presence in the garden of Eden and humanity’s ready access to Him.

The garden of Eden is God’s sanctuary and dwelling place. See “Nature, Red In Tooth & Claw, Part 2” for more on this point. Humans were placed in the garden to serve and protect it and to represent Him in the physical universe (Genesis 1:28).

In Proverbs, attaining wisdom is associated with the tree of life. Proverbs 3:18 says, “She [wisdom] is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.” Proverbs 11:30 says, “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.” It is also a fulfilled desire (Proverbs 13:12).

The golden candlestick in the tabernacle was a stylized tree of life, as is the menorah. The walls and the doors of Solomon’s temple, representing sacred space and God’s presence with humanity, contained images of trees and cherubim reminiscent of the garden of Eden. Ezekiel says sacred trees will be present in the future temple (Ezekiel 41:17-18). Ezekiel 47:12 recalls the garden of Eden in its description of a river, flowing from the temple with trees bearing fruit for food and leaves for healing on both sides. Revelations 22 draws on the imagery here in Ezekiel 47.

The ancient readers of Genesis would have understood the tree of life to be associated with eternal life. In the ancient Near East, a tree of life was a common theme representing humanity’s quest for immortality. In the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh discovers a plant that will restore whoever eats it to his youth. But a serpent stole the plant from him and swam away. The Lexham Bible Dictionary noted that in contrast to the Biblical account, the plant in the Epic of Gilgamesh rejuvenates, but does not offer immortality.

It thus differs from the tree in Genesis 3:22, whose fruit is said to enable the consumer to “live forever.” When Gilgamesh fails to attain the plant of life, he is encouraged to seek wisdom. In contrast, in the Bible, when Adam and Eve seek to gain illicit knowledge from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they lose access to the perpetual life offered by the tree of life. In the Gilgamesh epic, the source of life is intended only for the gods, but in the biblical account the tree of life seems freely given to the humans.

In The Babylonian Genesis, Alexander Heidel described the Adapa Legend, one of the Babylonian creation stories found within the Amarna letters. Adapa was created by Ea, the Babylonian god of wisdom, to be the provisioner of Ea’s temple in the city of Eridu. He was destined to be a leader among men and Ea endowed him with wisdom and intelligence but not immortality. When immortality is offered to him by the sky god Anu, Ea tricked Adapa into refusing the gift, telling him it was the food and water of death. “By refusing the food and the water of life, Adapa not only missed immortality but also brought illness and disease upon man.”

Like the biblical account of the fall of man, the Adapa story wrestles with the questions: “Why must man suffer and die? Why does he not live forever?” But, unlike the biblical account, the answer it gives is not: “Because man has fallen from a state of moral perfection,” but rather: “because Adapa had the chance of gaining immortality for himself and for mankind, but he did not take it. The gift of eternal life was held out to him, but he refused the offer and thus failed of immortality and brought woe and misery upon man.” The problem of original sin does not even enter into consideration.

In contrast to the tree of life, Gordon Wenham said in his commentary on Genesis 1-15 that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is only found in the Genesis story of the fall of man. He said establishing its significance is then significantly more difficult, but necessary because it is a key phrase in the narrative. Wenham rejected understanding “knowing good and evil” as either moral discernment or simply a description of the consequences of obeying or disobeying the commandments given by God.

Understanding it as moral discernment, knowing the difference between right and wrong, cannot be taken seriously given the narrator’s assumptions. “It is absurd to suppose man was not always expected to exercise moral discretion or that he acquired such a capacity through eating the fruit.” Eve’s reply to the serpent in Genesis 3:2-3 indicates she already possessed a knowledge of right from wrong.

Wenham said understanding “knowing good and evil” to merely signify the consequences of obedience or disobedience was also inadequate. As noted in Genesis 3:5 and 3:22, eating of the tree “offered knowledge appropriate only to the divine.” Additionally, it does not fit with Deuteronomy 1:39 and 2 Samuel 19:36, “which observe that neither the very young nor the elderly know good and evil.”

The acquisition of wisdom is seen as one of the highest goals of the godly according to the Book of Proverbs. But the wisdom literature also makes it plain that there is a wisdom that is God’s sole preserve, which man should not aspire to attain (e.g., Job 15:7–9, 30; Proverbs 30:1–4), since a full understanding of God, the universe, and man’s place in it is ultimately beyond human comprehension. To pursue it without reference to revelation is to assert human autonomy, and to neglect the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of knowledge (Prov 1:7).

Wenham then referred to Malcom Clark’s observation that the phrase “good and evil” in legal contexts was used to describe legal responsibility. From this perspective, in Genesis 2-3 the phrase is used to signify moral autonomy, “deciding what is right without reference to God’s revealed will.” In the garden, God’s revealed will amounted to warning Adam and Eve to not seek knowledge of good and evil independent of His commandment on the pain of death. “In preferring human wisdom to divine law, Adam and Eve found death, not life” because they chose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

With the two trees, Adam and Eve are presented with a choice between obeying the wisdom of God in the tree of life or seeking their own wisdom, autonomous from God in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As a result of their choice, they realized they were now naked (ʿêrōm) before God (3:7, 10, 11); guilty of disobeying Him. See “Nakedness in Genesis” for more on this distinction.

03/8/22

The Ancient Near East and Job

Assyrian wall relief of a winged genius with cuneiform. © scaliger | 123rf.com

“The Bible is written for us, but it’s not written to us. It’s not in our language. It’s not in our culture. It doesn’t anticipate our culture or any other culture since that time.” So, when John Walton teaches about the book of Job, he dives deep within what the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East thought and believed about their relationship with their gods. Here are some of his insights on the book of Job and its relationship to the ancient Near East.

The book of Job is fully embedded in the ancient world. Even though it’s nor indebted to any particular piece of literature in the ancient world, it’s embedded in that world. That means the conversation about Job is unfolding in that context. Even when the book is taking a different perspective from what others in that time and culture might take, it’s still having the conversation in the context of that culture. As you read Job, notice how Job’s friends represent Near Eastern thinking and how he resists it and them.

While Job is not an Israelite (he’s from the land of Uz), it’s evident the book of Job is an Israelite book. It was written by Israelites for Israelites. Also, since it talks about the situation of a pious sufferer, it fits into a literary category known in the ancient world. There are several other pieces of literature that discuss the pious sufferer. However, the answers given in the book of Job are very different from what is found in other works of the ancient world.

There is an early Sumerian work called, “A Man and His God.” In this work, the person is suffering. He confesses himself ignorant of any offense that he might have committed. He suffers illness. He’s a social outcast. “But at the end of the book, sins are revealed to him and he confesses his sins and is restored to health.” The philosophy here is there is no sinless child born; everyone has sins.

There is an Akkadian Mesopotamian text called “A Dialogue Between a Man and His God.” Again, the person is ignorant of any possible offense. The pious sufferer motif is the idea that someone who on the surface looks like they’ve done everything right, that they are pious in all the right ways, yet they are suffering. Here, the man suffers illness and eventually is restored to health. There is no philosophy given here; no divine favor assured.

“One of the most famous pieces of literature in the ancient world is another Akkadian, Babylonian one called “Ludlul bel Nemeqi,” “I Will Praise the God of Wisdom.” Again, there is a character who is conscientious and pious, ignorant of any possible offence. And yet, he finds himself a social outcast. He’s suffering illness. What the gods say is unclear. His protective spirits have been chased away. He talks about demon oppression. In the resolution of his situation, the god appears in a dream and gives him a way to make a purification offering that brings appeasement. His offenses are born away; his demons are expelled; he’s restored to health.

Again, the implication is that he was not really without offense. The philosophy behind this work is that the gods are inscrutable. Who can know what they are doing? It ends in a hymn of praise to the Babylonian god, Marduk.

There is a final work called “The Babylonian Theodicy.” Here the person claims piety, but his family is gone and he’s suffering poverty. In this case, there isn’t any resolution of his situation. The conclusion is that the purposes of the god are remote; you can’t tell what they’re doing. It seems to say that the gods have made people with evil inclinations and prone to suffering. That’s just the way things are.

“We can see that they offer a very different perspective on the gods and the suffering people experience.” The answers we find here is divine inscrutability— you really can’t know what the gods are doing. Everyone sins, “and therefore in suffering, you can never claim that it was not deserved.” Or even that the gods made humanity crooked. No one can do everything that the gods require. “So, there would always be something that the gods can get angry about.”

There tends to be less of an inclination to assign blame for suffering in the ancient Near East. “People are really without information. The gods have not communicated forthrightly.” The Egyptian, Babylonian, Canaanite or Hittite gods have not really revealed themselves. There is no clear communication about what they desire, what will please them. “There is no sense of that in the ancient world.”

People in the ancient Near East believed the gods were largely inconsistent and had their own agendas. They might act differently from one day to the next. Therefore, even though they feel their situation is the result of the god’s neglect, anger or change of mind, “they really have no way to think through it all.”

In the ancient world, if the gods became angry, people believed they would remove their protection; and as a result, the individual would be vulnerable, “in jeopardy from demonic powers” or other forces. In “Ludlul bel Nemeqi,” after the person has done everything he can think to do, he says,

I wish I knew that these things were pleasing to one’s god. What is proper to oneself is an offense to one’s god. What is in one’s heart seems despicable is proper to one’s god. Who knows the will of the gods in heaven? Who understands the plans of the underworld gods? Where have mortals ever learnt the way of a god?

Notice the frustration in what the speaker says. What would it be like to live in such a world, where there are powerful beings who affect everything you do, but have not told you what they expect of you or what will please them; or what will make them angry. What if you had a job like that, where you were being held accountable, yet your boss never made it clear what it was you were supposed to do or not supposed to do? And that you were punished or rewarded based on your guesses.

The Bankruptcy of Polytheism in Job

This is a little of what is in the literature behind the book of Job. “But Job so far transcends them; has so much more to offer.” For example, with Job there is no inclination toward polytheism even though in the ancient world, polytheism was the common way to think about the gods. There is a small bit of a community in the opening chapters with the divine council, but no suggestion of polytheism. Job even makes some affirmations to stand against polytheism. In Job 31:26-28, he swears he has not been enticed by the sun or moon, which would have been iniquity, “for I would have been false to God above.”

This only makes sense in a monotheistic Israelite context. All the other people groups around routinely worshipped the sun and the moon. This wasn’t an aberration. Only in an Israelite context would this have been a reasonable claim for Job to make that he had not raised his hands to praise the sun or the moon. Job has a good deal of certainty about his righteousness, giving the book a very Israelite feel.

Job shows no curiosity about which god has brought him trouble. He seems to know exactly which God he is talking to; no others are in the picture to confuse the situation. “Sometimes if one god is giving you trouble, you can appeal to another god to help you out of it.” Job makes no such an appeal to any other god. “He is only working through one God.”

In the ancient world, they believed the gods had created humans because they had become tired of meeting their own needs. The gods would get hungry or thirsty, they would need clothing and housing. “They had to grow their own food, irrigate their own fields, build their own houses.” This was tiring, exhausting work. The gods decided to create slave labor; people who will meet their needs.

“So people were created so that they would meet the needs of the gods and pamper them.” But then the gods had to do things for the people they created. Once they became dependent on people to meet their needs, they had to preserve them. They had to send enough rain for people to grow the crops to feed the gods and themselves. If the people died of starvation, they couldn’t feed to the gods.

“The gods had to protect their interests by providing for people and protecting people.” Today, we would say there was a codependency between the gods and people. The gods depended on the people to pamper them; and the people depended on the gods for protection and provision. Here is one of the places where justice fits. The gods were interested in preserving justice not because it was inherent in their nature, but because if there was mayhem and chaos, if society was not ordered and just, then people could not attend to their duties in pampering the gods.

“The gods had some self interest in making sure there was justice, order in society.” So, when Satan asked, “Does Job fear God for no reason?” (Job 1:9), the question hit at the very foundation of the symbiotic, codependent relationship between the gods and people. “In the ancient world, nobody served god for nothing. The whole idea of serving god was so that god would return the favor.” No one in the ancient world served god for nothing; the rituals were so that the gods would bring prosperity and protection.

The very premise of the book of Job denies that this so-called codependency between the gods and people will always be in place. “Only in Israel could you begin to think in that direction.”

“The book’s answers do not hinge on human nature or divine nature, but on God’s policies in the world. How does God work? And in that sense, again, it’s very unlike what we find in the ancient Near East.” The book of Job, then, is not indebted to any piece of ancient Near Eastern literature. “It uses the ancient Near Eastern literature as a foil.” It wants you to think about the other answers that were given, to see how bankrupt they are.

This was a retelling of Session 5 of Dr. John Walton’s YouTube series of 30 mini lectures on the book of Job, “Job and the Ancient Near East.” Dr. Walton also wrote the commentary on Job for NIV Application Commentary Series, for which he was one of the contributing editors for the Old Testament.

01/25/22

God Is not a Vending Machine

The book of Job in the Bible is not about Job. “Job” is the title of the book, and he is a main character, but the book is not about him. In the beginning of the book, Job loses all his wealth, his children and his health, but the book is not about suffering. When you get to the end of the book, all of what Job lost at the beginning is restored, and then some. So, what is going on here?

If you go to the book of Job, thinking that you are getting an answer to why there is suffering in the world or in your life; you’re going for the wrong reason. And you are going to be disappointed. It is not going to tell you that.

Dr. John Walton, an Old Testament professor at Wheaton College, has a YouTube playlist of 30 mini lectures on Job. The above quote and the discussion that follows on were based on his first lecture, “Interpretation problems and false ideas about Job.” Dr. Walton also wrote the commentary on Job for NIV Application Commentary Series, for which he was one of the contributing editors for the Old Testament.

Job is unique, not only in the Old Testament, but within the entire ancient world. The first problem Walton wants to address is what does the book of Job actually say. The Hebrew in the book is the most difficult in the Old Testament. There are many words in Job that only occur once in the Hebrew Bible. So, there are difficulties understanding the meanings of some words and how they are used.

Then there is the issue of what kind of literature or genre Job is—how did the author communicate what he wanted to say? Walton sees Job as a unified, coherent text. In his commentary on Job, Walton said Job is unarguably wisdom literature, rather than historical literature. “As wisdom literature it makes no claims about the nature of the events.” A discussion about whether the events are real events misses the mark.

As wisdom literature, Job could be thought of as a “thought experiment.” If this is the case, the author is using various parts of Job to pose philosophical scenes that address wisdom themes. Walton said in both philosophy and science, hypothetical situations are explored for their philosophical value. “The point is not to claim that the events in the thought experiment did happen, but they draw their philosophical strength from the realistic nature of the imaginative device.”

So, if the book of Job is a thought experiment, the reader should draw conclusions about God from the final point, not from every detail in the book. For example, the opening scene in heaven is not intended to inform us about God’s activities and nature. “We would not rule out the possibility that such a scenario could happen, but we would be mistaken to think that author seeks to unfold a series of historical events. It is wisdom literature.”

A common misperception when reading the book is that Job is on trial. Job thinks he’s being accused of wrongdoing and is being punished for it. He claims he’s been wrongly accused and treated inappropriately; he sees himself as the victim. However, he thinks he’s on trial and so do his friends. Job has trials; he’s not on trial. The book makes this very clear from the beginning; Job is not on trial.

The book is not about Job. It doesn’t present Job as a role model for us to follow in the midst of suffering. It is about God. We need to see what it teaches us about God, not what it teaches about Job. It is a wisdom book, and wisdom is ultimately about God.

It is not a treatise on God’s justice. If you look for an explanation of God’s justice in Job, you’ll be disappointed. The book of Job does not explain or defend God’s justice. Job’s accusations against God concern His justice. And our questions about suffering often concern justice. “But the book of Job does not defend God’s justice. Instead, it defends God’s wisdom.”

If we think it defends God’s justice, then we’ll try to justify or somehow explain what happened to Job. But to do that, we’d need all the information there is on the issue, but only God is omniscient. From the beginning of the book, we know Job and his friends do not have all the information about what’s going on. They know nothing about the opening scene in heaven. “We are not in a position to try to talk about whether God is just or not.”

The book of Job is also not designed to help us think about suffering. Rather, it is designed to help us think about God when we are suffering. “That’s what we really need to know.” It is a book about trusting God, rather than answers that explain the suffering we see in the world. Trusting God should be our response when we don’t know what’s going on—as it was with Job.

The book of Job is more about what constitutes righteousness than about why we suffer. In Job 1:9-10, Satan said to God, “Does Job fear God for no reason?” Then Satan said God has put a hedge around Job and all that he has. Walton thought Satan is asking God what really motivates Job’s righteousness. Here is one of the theological, philosophical issues grappled with in Job.

If Job behaves the way he does because he expects to get prosperity and reward, his “so-called righteousness is just going to dissolve in the wind.” This seems to be the view expressed by Job’s wife, who asks why he continues to hold on to his integrity and counsels him to curse God and die (Job 2:9). The book of Job challenges its readers to be righteous even when they are suffering. “It challenges us to be righteous because righteousness is what should characterize our lives.” It calls us to be faithful because God is God, and not because he is generous.

“God is not a vending machine,” where we insert righteous behavior and expect his favor in return.

This was a retelling of Session 1 of Dr. John Walton’s YouTube series of 30 mini lectures on the book of Job, “Interpretation problems and false ideas bout Job.” Dr. Walton also wrote the commentary on Job for NIV Application Commentary Series, for which he was one of the contributing editors for the Old Testament.

01/4/22

The Foundation of Our Assurance

There are Christians who seem to live a kind of sun-filled Christian life. They never appear to encounter anything that challenges their assurance of salvation; nothing that disturbs them or their assurance. But others struggle to recognize the tell-tale signs of genuine Christianity in their lives. For most of us, we know there are going to be obstacles and disturbances as we seek to become more Christ-like. “We always need to be prepared for the way in which Satan seeks to spoil our assurance.”

Sinclair Ferguson observed this was what Satan always tries to do. “He knows he cannot destroy our salvation.” But he does everything he possibly can to destroy our enjoyment of salvation. Part of our enjoyment of salvation is knowing that we are truly the Lord’s, that we are really saved. So, in the video, “Hindrances Strew All the Way,” Ferguson invited us to think about a number of possible hindrances that could be obstacles to our enjoyment of salvation.

Sometimes we have a tendency to confuse the foundation of our salvation in justification with the super-structure of that salvation. “If we don’t understand that justification is complete, then in our Christian life, we’re likely to try to add to our justification, or complete our justification.” If that is true, we will not be able to enjoy our justification, because we don’t believe it is really complete enough. Justification is complete when we come to faith in Jesus Christ. “No degree of sanctification will add to your justification.”

If you try to rebuild the foundation of justification by adding to it, you will destroy the assurance you have.

A second thing that can hinder our assurance is inconsistent obedience. If we live in a way that is inconsistent with the gospel, then we’re not far from wondering whether the gospel is really ours.

There is a third hindrance to assurance that is a serious misunderstanding of affliction and suffering. “God promised me blessings, and look at what’s happening to me. How can I be sure of my salvation?” Ferguson said we need realize the problem may be deeper than it first seems. Many Christians are sure God loves them because of the blessings they experience.

“If you base your assurance on the providences of God rather than on the promises of God, when the providences of God become difficult for you, you’re bound to lose your sense of His love.” The first remedy is to understand that our persuasion of God’s love is based on the cross of Christ, not on His providences. God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8), not that He showed His love by giving us many blessings. “So, we don’t find our assurance of our salvation in the blessings that God gives to us.”

Sometimes those blessings come to us in very dark parcels, according to Ferguson. God fulfills many purposes in our lives through suffering, not blessing. Christians need to understand “that sufferings produce character.” If God never disciplined us, it would raise the question of whether we were illegitimate children and not sons (Hebrews 12:8).

So, because we are sinners, of course there are going to be things God does in our lives that grate upon us, because He’s transforming our lives and our wills to conform to His character and His will.

Ferguson makes a point here about affliction that I’ve long seen with recovering alcoholics and addicts. Sometimes God uses afflictions in our lives to prepare us for future service to others. “The day will probably come when you look back on this experience and this hardship and say, ‘Oh, I think I understand now part of why that came into my life, because it’s enabled me to minister to somebody else.’” Now that you’ve walked a little further in the aftermath of your personal affliction, you can help another person understand how things will go; that they can get through it.

Even if I can’t say exactly what God is doing at this point in my life, when I’m struggling with affliction, or suffering, or disappointment, I know the kinds of things He is doing, and I realize everything He is doing, as Paul says in Romans 8, is working together for the good of those who love Him.

That good Paul referred to is to conform us to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many (Romans 8:29). So, when you go through affliction, don’t say, “He doesn’t love me any longer.” Because now we understand He demonstrated His love towards us in that while we were still sinners, He died for the ungodly. “And there I rest, and in that light, I know that whatever afflictions I may go through are part of His purposes to make me more like Jesus.” Rather than diminishing the sense of His love and oujr assurance of his salvation, they minister to it.

The fourth hindrance to assurance is a misunderstanding of what union with Christ does and doesn’t do. When there has been a sudden, radical transformation in a person’s life, there can be a tendency to think this is what the Christian life is like—overcoming sin is easy. There is a tremendous transformation, and “it’s almost as though it’s easy to deal with sin.” We don’t realize that the Lord has been carrying us, His lambs in His bosom (Isaiah 40:11). Then at some point He says, “You’re going to have to learn to walk the walk.”

There are lots of obstacles as you walk the walk. And the danger arises that you can become prey to others who will say, “Now, are you feeling a bit disappointed with your Christian life? Here is the plan . . . Here is the method, and it will raise you above all the struggle, and you will have fullness of life.” If you are really united to Christ, then you will be delivered from the struggle. This is the very opposite of Paul’s teaching, who says the reason for the struggle is because you have been united to Christ.

Something similar is said about the Holy Spirit, “If you were just filled with the Holy Spirit, all those struggles in the Christian life would go.” Again, Paul counters by in effect saying: “I wouldn’t have any of those struggles were it not for the presence of the Holy Spirit! It’s precisely because the Holy Spirit has come to indwell me that the struggles have begun.” Young Christians will often say that since becoming a Christian life has become more difficult. “If we think union with Christ is the way to be delivered from challenges, difficulties, struggles with indwelling sin, then we haven’t really understood what union with Christ does.”

It transforms our lives and puts us into the battle; the battle with the Devil. Remember that the Devil cannot destroy your salvation, so he will try to destroy your assurance of salvation. In The Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin said: “Satan’s aim is to drive the saint to madness by despair.” Satan wants to make the Christian believer so ashamed of their spiritual condition that they will despair of their salvation.

I cannot say to Satan, “I’m not as bad as that.” The truth may be that I am worse than that. But I am able to say to him along with John Newton, “Although I’m bowed down with a load of sin, by Satan sorely pressed, I may my fierce accuser face, and tell him, ‘Christ has died’” (from the hymn, “Approach, My Soul, the Mercy Seat,” by John Newton). It takes us back to Jesus Christ, the foundation of all our assurance.

This article has been based on the 12^th and final video in Sinclair Ferguson’s teaching series, The Whole Christ, from Ligonier Connect. Here is a link to Ligonier Connect. The video series is itself based upon his book of the same name. You can review summaries of the Marrow Controversy here and here. If the topic interests you, look for more of my ruminations under the link, The Whole Christ.

12/14/21

The Common Grace of Recovery

Regardless of the influence of genetics, personal history, or environment, Twelve Step recovery is centered upon the hope that the addict or alcoholic can actually choose to establish and then maintain abstinence from drugs and alcohol. Powerless they may be over the influence these substances exert over them once the substance is coursing through their veins, but the individual is not powerless over the decision to ingest the substance. In order to recover, the addict or alcoholic must believe that they can really choose to not pick up a drink or a drug; and that they can surrender their life to the God of their understanding. They are powerless over alcohol and drugs, but not the decision to use them.

The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.

As explicit as this statement in the A.A. Big Book seems to be, the spiritual relativity of the Twelve Steps meant that “our Creator” could be a variety of things; and often meant the recovery program itself. Narcotics Anonymous said this explicitly in their basic text: “It wasn’t until we came to Narcotics Anonymous that recovery became possible. This program can do for us what we could not do for ourselves.” The author of “What We Could Never Do” in the AA Grapevine used language reminiscent of an individual testifying of their “born again” experience. They said: “The central fact of my life today is the absolute certainty that AA has entered into my heart and life in a way which is indeed exceptional.”

This postmodern avoidance of absolutes, especially about God, was firmly embedded in Twelve Step recovery from the beginning. The recovery program described in the A.A. Big Book was merely suggestive. Although God existed, you didn’t have to believe in him all at once; and could even fashion your own understanding of a “Higher Power.” The ability to imagine God as you understand Him has remained a hallmark of the spiritual worldview of A.A.

In a 1949 address before the American Psychiatric Association, Bill Wilson explicitly stated that A.A. was not a religious organization because it had no dogma. He also stated that the only theological proposition—of a Power greater than one’s self—would not be forced on anyone. There was a self-conscious avoidance of the absolute certainty with which the apostle Paul declared that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Even while acknowledging the parallels to religious conversion within the recovery program of A.A., Wilson said that too many people were afraid of being “God-bitten.”

In 1961, Wilson said the following in “The Dilemma of No Faith” for the AA Grapevine: “Our concepts of a Higher Power and God—as we understand Him—afford everyone a nearly unlimited choice of spiritual belief and action.” He suggested that this was perhaps the most important expression in be found in the entire vocabulary of A.A. Every kind and degree of faith, together with the assurance that each person could choose his or her own version of it opened a door “over whose threshold the unbeliever can take his first easy step into . . . the realm of faith.” So, recovery does not require that you acknowledge and worship Jesus Christ as your Higher Power. At this point, Twelve Step recovery wanders off in a different direction from the Romans Road.

Confess and Believe

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:9-13)

Here is one of the classic summaries of the fundamental elements of faith leading to salvation. The confession of Jesus as Lord here refers to the position Christ has because he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, where he was given authority over all of creation (Ephesians. 1:20-23). The order Paul uses in verse 9 (mouth and heart) corresponds to the order of Deuteronomy 30:14, which he just quoted; but then he reverses that order (heart and mouth) in verse 10. Paul is not presenting a recipe or magical formula for salvation. Rather, he is emphasizing the central importance of believing in your heart for the process of salvation, for everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.

There is a principle in Scripture with regard to human nature that inexorably links heart and behavior: whatever rules your heart rules your behavior (Matthew. 6:21; Luke 6:45). So here we see that even in salvation, this principle applies: we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth. In his commentary on Romans, John Murray said: “Confession verifies and confirms the faith of the heart. . . Confession with the mouth is the evidence of the genuineness of faith.” This is equivalent to the discussion of faith in works in James 2:17-22. Faith without works (behavior that does not proceed from faith) is dead.

The Big Book described in chapters five and six how the program of recovery embodied in the first eleven of the Twelve Steps works. It ends with these words: “But that is not all. There is action and more action. ‘Faith without works is dead.’The next chapter, “Working with Others,” is entirely devoted to Step Twelve. It suggested the “works” for the practitioner of the Twelve Steps was carrying the message to others. The spiritual experience of faith in the first eleven Steps should lead to helping others. Step Twelve says: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to alcoholics, and practice these principles in all our affairs.” Without citing the biblical origin of the quote, Bill Wilson relayed a saying that had relevance to his own recovery and almost played a role in the naming of A.A. itself.

Bill Wilson lived with Dr. Bob Smith and his wife Anne for about three months after he first met Dr. Bob in Akron, Ohio. Every morning they would have a devotional time in which Anne would read from the Bible. The book of James was a favorite; and Anne would conclude their devotional time by saying, “Faith without works is dead.” Not only was this a favorite quotation of Anne Smith, but the book of James was a favorite with early AA’s– “so much so that ‘The James Club’ was favored by some as a name for the Fellowship.”

Paul makes the same connection between faith and works in Romans 10:9-10. Faith, believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, without works, confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord is dead faith. But “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Paul drives this point home in his repeated use of the Greek word gar, (commonly translated as “for”) four consecutive times in verses 10 through 13 of Romans 10. By doing so, he explains the declaration he just made in verse 10:9, that if you confess with your mouth (that Jesus is Lord) and believe in your heart (that God raised him from the dead) you will be saved.

Common Grace and Recovery

How do you obtain salvation? According to Romans 10:9, by believing in your heart and confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. How do you obtain recovery? By a surrender to a god of your understanding, fashioned from the knowledge of God revealed in creation (Romans 1:19-25). You can use ritual and language with strong similarities to the ritual and language of those claiming a relationship with Christ, but it’s not the same.

You can be “reborn”; you can believe that your Creator has entered your heart and begun to accomplish things you could not do for yourself. But if this does not rest on the foundation of Jesus Christ it is not salvation in the Biblical sense. The spiritual and theological differences between the two are radical. Biblically speaking, a self-fashioned understanding of God is idolatry since you worship and serve some aspect of creation that manifests “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” (Romans 11:33) instead of God himself.

In the “We Agnostics” chapter of the A.A. Big Book, Bill Wilson wrote that deep down inside us was the fundamental idea of God. Faith in some kind of God was a part of our human make-up. “Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but he was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us.”

Humans beings are naturally in possession of rational and moral abilities. Because of the Fall, these abilities are used in ways that are hostile to serving and glorifying God. But this capacity for rationality and morality has not been diminished through sin. We are not irrational or amoral in this sense as a consequence of the Fall. Through sin we fell ethically and became hostile to God.

A Fallen, sinful person has no ability (they are powerless) to keep that hostility from becoming consistent and full blown. At it says in Romans chapter 7, we can have the desire to do good, but not the ability to carry it out. We are captive to the law of sin inside of us. But there is common grace, which is: “The means by which God keeps [us] from expressing the principle of hostility to its full extent, thus enabling [us] to do the relative good.”

Common grace is then a restraining force that keeps us from being completely hostile towards God, whether or not we believe in Him; whether or not we have a Romans 10:9 relationship with Jesus Christ. The addict or alcoholic is powerless over addiction because it is a manifestation of his or her hostility to God. Apart from the common grace of God within the Twelve Steps, they express this hostility in the horror of their active addiction—independent of their faith or lack of faith. Yet, through God’s common grace, even an atheist or agnostic can stop their previously active addiction.

A self-described atheist went on a week-long drinking binge after three and a half years of abstinence. Returning to her home group, she said she prayed twenty times a day to a God she didn’t believe in to please help her to not drink: “Please, God, if you are there, do not let me do it to myself again. After six months of believing I would never be able to stay sober again, I finally lost the obsession to drink.” She said it took her twenty years to “stop fighting God and to surrender.” She cleaned up her mouth; learned to have relationships; and “found a new friend in God.”

The ‘miracle’ of being relieved of the obsession to drink is accomplished through the common grace of God. And this grace is equally available to those who turn to the program of A.A. or N.A. as their Higher Power as it is for those with a Romans 10:9 relationship with Jesus Christ. God “makes his sun rise of the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:42).

If you’re interested, more articles from this series can be found under the link for “The Romans Road of Recovery.” “A Common Spiritual Path” (01) and “The Romans Road of Recovery” (02) will introduce this series of articles. If you began by reading one that came from the middle or the end of the series, try reading them before reading others. Follow the numerical listing of the articles (i.e., 01, 02, or 1st, 2nd, etc.), if you want to read them in the order they were originally intended. This article is the 11th in the series. Enjoy.

11/23/21

Differing Paths

In the movie “The Last Sin Eater” (based on the novel by Francine Rivers by the same name), ten-year-old Cadi Forbes has an encounter with her Appalachian community’s “sin eater”—a human scapegoat who took the sins of the newly deceased upon himself in exchange for food and drink. She tried to tell the sin eater what the man of God told her; what was in his book (the Bible) about another sin eater . . . who ate everyone’s sin. Cadi was trying to help him see that he no longer had to be an outcast; he didn’t have to continue to be a sin eater. The sin eater interrupted and said that he refuses to read that book, because it may reveal that the twenty years of his life as a sin eater have been in vain. That is the dilemma for both A.A. and N.A. members and those who are called by Christ into relationship with Him. Although the truth of God is clearly seen, we seek to suppress it because of what it says about the impotence of our efforts apart from God.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:20-23)

Throughout chapter six in Romans Paul used slavery as a metaphor to compare the life of sin and the life of righteousness. Slavery was a common situation of life in Paul’s time. Estimates were that 85-90 percent of the Roman population was either slaves or the descendants of slaves. While they were viewed as “human tools,” slaves were still granted many legal rights.

They could worship as members of the extended family of their owner. They could marry, but the offspring of that marriage became the property of the owner. Slaves could also accumulate money on their own to purchase their freedom or to start a business once they were set free by their owners. While slaves could be architects, physicians, administrators and teachers, they were often hired out as day laborers in construction and industry. And they paid about two-thirds of their wages to their owners.

By the beginning of the first century the numbers of freed slaves had increased dramatically; partly because of the significant decline in the freeborn population of the time. No doubt there were both slaves and masters in many of Paul’s churches, including the church in Rome. According to Martin Hawthorne in the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Jewish slaves were particularly evident in Rome: “Jewish slaves had been brought to Rome by the tens of thousands from the time of Pompey’s conquest until the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.”

Continuing with the metaphor of slavery here, Paul observes that while we were slaves to sin, while sin was our master, we were “free” of any service obligations to righteousness. In other words, we could not serve two masters. We either serve sin and hate righteousness; or serve righteousness and hate sin (Matthew 6:24). But what benefit (or fruit) did we get from our slavery to sin, from the lawlessness and impurity of which we are now ashamed? There was no benefit; the end result is death. But now that we are free from sin and surrendered (as slaves) to God, the fruit (benefit) we receive is salvation and sanctification. According to Paul, there will be service to something in our lives. Which will it be? Slavery to sin results in lawlessness—which leads to death. Slavery to righteousness results in salvation and sanctification—which leads to eternal life.

The Greek word for wages in 6:23 was used outside of Scripture to refer to an allowance or salary paid out at designated times. Most often it referred to a minimal subsistence paid to soldiers, thus the use of the same Greek word in Luke 3:14, where John the Baptist tells soldiers to be satisfied with their pay and not to extort money to supplement their income. The recipient had a legal right to expect their “wages” and could bring legal action if they did not receive their justly due compensation. The context here suggests that all three aspects are part of what Paul is saying.

One sense suggests, “The subsistence which sin pays and offers is death.” Therefore, sin is a deceiver; it promises life and gives death. Secondly, it is not a single, final payment; but continues as the just compensation for sin. Thirdly, the legally owed payment for sin is contrasted with the free gift of God: eternal life in Christ. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament said: “Man has rights only in relation to sin, and these rights become his judgment. When he throws himself on God without claim, salvation comes to him.”

So, we see the radical difference between service to sin and service to righteousness in verse 6:23. The just compensation for sin is death, but righteousness leading to sanctification results in the free gift of eternal life in Christ. God freely gives to us what we cannot earn through our personal efforts; the deliverance from sin through eternal life in Christ.

So too are the consequences of alcoholism or addiction. The delusion or lie that an alcoholic can drink like other people, that somehow, someday the alcoholic will be able to control and enjoy his or her drinking “is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.” The wages of addiction are also death; jail, institutions or death as the saying goes in recovery. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous noted how many alcoholics pursue the illusion that they can somehow control and enjoy their drinking “into the gates of insanity or death.”

“No real alcoholic ever recovers control.” They are “restless, irritable and discontented” unless they have a few drinks. When they give in to the desire to drink again, the well-known stages of a drinking spree, remorsefulness for having drank, and a “firm resolution not to drink again” occurs as the just compensation for their drinking. “This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.” This downward cycle of alcoholism reflects of Paul’s description of the cycle of sin in Romans 7.

Paul knows that nothing good dwells in him, that is in his flesh. He has the desire to do what is right “but not the ability to carry it out;” he’s powerless. He does not do the good he wants to do, but does the evil he does not want to do instead. Although he delights in the law of God in his inner being, there is another law that makes him captive to the law of sin dwelling in him. “Wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

The plan for recovery and the plan for salvation strike out in different directions at this point. Theologically, salvation aims high—for eternal life in Jesus Christ. Twelve Step recovery, seeking to be inclusive, does not require a belief in or surrender to Christ, and thus cannot give eternal life. If Christ is not the object of your faith, it isn’t “the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16).

Saving faith must have Christ as its object. Faith in the god revealed through the 12 Steps must lead to faith in Christ who died for us. This faith in Jesus Christ is a free gift, available “for all who believe.” It is a manifestation of the righteousness of God by which he has passed over our former sins. “It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

If you’re interested, more articles from this series can be found under the link for “The Romans Road of Recovery.” “A Common Spiritual Path” (01) and “The Romans Road of Recovery” (02) will introduce this series of articles. If you began by reading one that came from the middle or the end of the series, try reading them before reading others. Follow the numerical listing of the articles (i.e., 01, 02, etc.), if you want to read them in the order they were originally intended. This article is 10th in the series. Enjoy.

11/2/21

The Plan for Salvation and Recovery

“This is a Program of Total Abstinence.” (Narcotics Anonymous, 5^th edition, p, 81)

Addiction recovery based upon the Twelve Steps makes a distinction between abstinence and recovery, where abstinence is simply not using drugs or alcohol, and recovery is the result of combining abstinence with the change that occurs when an addict or alcoholic applies the Twelve Steps to their life. There is a ‘formula’ used to capture this, abstinence + change = recovery. This simple formula recognizes that mere abstinence without change is a ‘dry drunk’ that involves ‘stinking thinking.’ The desire to get high or drunk remains and will manifest itself in behavior and attitudes consistent with those the person did during their active drinking or drug use. A merely abstinent alcoholic or addict acts, talks, and feels like they did when drinking or drugging.

Change that is not based upon abstinence is not sustainable. It will not lead to recovery. Yet, you can sometimes achieve radical changes in addiction-related thinking, feeling and behavior without total abstinence. There can be a drastic reduction in the harmful effects of active drug and alcohol use. But for recovery, a change of heart and soul is needed—a progressive spiritual growth process that diminishes the need and desire for the mind altering and mood changing effects of drugs and alcohol.

Continuing to use drugs and alcohol, even in moderation, while working to change the need and desire for the high is like taking an antibiotic only until you feel better, and not for the full course of the required treatment. You only manage to diminish the harmful effects, which can return even stronger without a complete eradication of the original infection. Using drugs and alcohol is part of the problem; and simply diminishing the need and desire for getting high or drunk without concurrent abstinence cannot eradicate an addiction. Abstinence plus change equals recovery. As the Blue Book of Narcotics Anonymous says, “Complete abstinence is the foundation of our new way of life.” In other words, recognizing the need for ongoing abstinence is a prerequisite for recovery.

Terence Gorski, in Understanding the Twelve Steps, noted there were four tasks to completing the First Step. First, you admit that the use of alcohol or drugs has caused major problems in your life. Second, you admit the you are powerless to control the use of alcohol or drugs. Third, you admit your life has become unmanageable as a result of alcohol or drug us. And fourth, you admit that you are powerless to manage your life effectively as long as you continue to use alcohol or drugs. “When you have completed all four of these tasks, what decision do you have to make? What’s the only rational decision left. . . . You have to stop drinking.”

Things were starting to make sense. It was like a large jigsaw puzzle slowly being put together. The picture was beginning to appear. I started to feel good about being clean and having complete abstinence from all mind altering or mood-changing chemicals. (Narcotics Anonymous, p. 198)

Where does an addict or alcoholic go from here? If they are convinced by working through the First Step or living through the unmanageability of an active addiction that they are powerless over alcohol and drugs, they are right where addiction wants them to be. They have no hope; there appears to be no help. They crave another drink . . . joint . . . pill . . . fix . . . whatever. Their options are to die quickly or slowly; with or without their drug of choice. Psalm 86 says, “How long will your wrath burn like fire? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?” “Forever” and “no one can” are the only possible answers. But there is a Second Step: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

I took my last drink one week into my second treatment. I was overcome by the obsession to drink after a hot day of fishing. The only thing I could find was a bottle of liqueur with about an ounce left in it. I guess I needed that last drink to show just how powerless over alcohol I was. In my heart, I surrendered. I couldn’t drink, and I couldn’t not drink. I hoped there was a Higher Power that could restore me to sanity, because I am sure couldn’t. (AA Grapevine, vol 62, no, 9)

The significance of this “Higher Power” is as essential for recovery as Jesus Christ is for salvation; but they are not the same thing. The ability to “worship according to one’s own understanding of the spiritual” was referred to as the saving grace of the 11th Step:

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Any kind of prayer and meditation is very difficult for many in early recovery. In the 11th Step there is a reaffirmation of “the freedom to worship according to one’s own understanding of the spiritual.” By the time anyone joins A.A. to address their alcoholism, he or she has been “out of touch” with spiritual things for a long time. For them to suddenly accept all that they had been rejecting would be almost impossible. “The principle of freedom embodied in the 11th Step opens the door to any individual seeking spiritual help by whatever path and through whatever concepts he himself prefers” (AA Grapevine, vol. 3, no. 4).

Although it is not the same path, this plan for recovery runs parallel to the plan of salvation.

God’s Plan for Salvation and Recovery

In Romans 6:1, Paul asked if we should continue sinning as a way to experience more of the grace and righteousness of God, then immediately answered with an emphatic denial: by no means! Through 6:11 he proceeded to describe our union with Christ; how we were baptized into His death (6:4) so that we too can walk in newness of life (6:4). Christ died to free us from sin (Ro. 6:6). Because if we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him and be free from sin (6:7-8). Just as Christ died to sin, once for all, and lives to God, we should also consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (6:9-11).

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (Romans 6:12-14).

When Paul exhorts us to not let sin reign in our bodies (Romans 6:12), he is telling us to abstain from sin. Because if we do sin, we open the door to be ruled by sinful passions (Romans 1:28-31). Since we are powerless over sin, we cannot control or resist our craving for more. There is no possibility for compromise. We cannot simply have a small taste of it every once and awhile. If we continue to sin, we will be ruled by our desire for it. In his commentary on Romans, Robert Mounce warned, “Sin continues in force in its attempt to dominate the life and conduct of the believer.”

Paul then more specifically exhorts us to not allow any part (or member) of us to be an instrument or weapon for unrighteousness; but to instead present our members as instruments for righteousness. See also Romans 12:1, where his exhortation is for us to present (the same Greek verb) ourselves as “living sacrifices.” There cannot be a corner or part of our being that is given over to sin. It will eventually lead to sin reigning in our “mortal bodies,” forcing us to obey its desires. In the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Martin Hawthorne said: “Union with Christ (Rom 6:2–11) compels behavior which is consistent with it (Romans 6:12–23).”

The fact that Paul commands us to not allow sin to reign in our mortal bodies means that it is possible for us to do so. Otherwise, it is a taunting mockery to command an individual who is powerless over sin to not sin. Such a command would only reinforce the despair and hopelessness of being under the dominion of sin (or addiction). Even though we have all sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), sin will not have dominion over us because we are not under the law, but under grace (Romans 6:14).

We are not doomed to the eternal powerlessness and unmanageability of sin if we believe that Christ can save us from our body of sin and death (Romans 7:24-25). There is a power greater than sin and therefore Paul can command us to not sin. According to John Murray in his commentary on Romans, “Deliverance from the dominion of sin is both the basis of and the incentive to the fulfillment of the exhortation.”

Again, the parallel to recovery is clear. The addict or alcoholic must fully abstain from mind altering, mood changing substances. They can’t “present” themselves again to drugs or alcohol. If they do, they open the door once again to eventual domination by or slavery to addiction and its passions. Surrender to God in the Third Step means that after we present ourselves to him, we are no longer subject to the slavery of alcoholism or addiction—as long as we remain abstinent with God’s help in working the Steps.

If you’re interested, more articles from this series can be found under the link for “The Romans Road of Recovery.” “A Common Spiritual Path” (01) and “The Romans Road of Recovery” (02) will introduce this series of articles. If you began by reading one that came from the middle or the end of the series, try reading them before reading others. Follow the listing of the articles (i.e., 01, 02, or 1st, 2nd, etc.), if you want to read them in the order they were originally intended. This article is 9th in the series. Enjoy.

10/5/21

Is the Enneagram Spiritually Neutral? Part 3

Despite claims of having an ancient origin, the Enneagram as it is known today originated with George Gurdjieff, a Russian philosopher, mystic and spiritual teacher, who introduced it to the West in 1916. Gurdjieff thought it could be used to disclose all knowledge and reveal the secrets of the cosmos. As the Enneagram of personality, it has become a popular ‘tool’ for personality assessment and spiritual growth and even found its way into the Christian church. Unfortunately, it seems many Christians are unaware of, or explain away the evidence of its occult origins and nature.

Marsha Montenegro Critiques the Enneagram

Attempts to sanitize the Enneagram of personality by claiming it was stolen from Christianity and is based on biblical principles are false. Marsha Montenegro, a former astrologer who was involved with various New Age, occult and Eastern beliefs and practices before coming to Christ, said its theories of personality are based on esoteric teachings and an occult worldview. Its Gnostic initiation or awakening “is an occult counterfeit of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and His regeneration of the believer upon faith in Christ.” See her website, Christian Answers for the New Age (CANA) for several articles on the Enneagram.

The clear origin and purpose of the Enneagram is to initiate a Gnostic spiritual awakening to one’s alleged true divine Self, which is in itself an occult initiation. This is the claim and goal of virtually all occult and New Age teachings. The purpose of such initiation is a shift in consciousness, a change in the way one views reality — God, the world, others, and self.

The kind of Christianity claimed by Gurdjieff is a Gnostic distortion of Christianity. “Gurdjieff, his predecessors in Theosophy, and those who followed the various offshoots of Theosophy and related groups usually referred to themselves as Christians and believed they had discovered the ‘true’ Christianity.” Many who follow New Age belief systems or use ‘tools’ like the Enneagram will claim to be mystical or esoteric Christians.

Alisa Childers has a 13-minute video interview on her YouTube channel with Montenegro on how the Enneagram became part of Christian culture. Montenegro reviewed how Gurdjieff taught about the Enneagram to his students, including P.D. Ouspensky. Gurdjieff never wrote about the Enneagram, but Ouspensky did. Oscar Ichazo came across the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky on the Enneagram and incorporated his own understanding of the Enneagram as a “picture of Ego fixation.” Each of the nine points of the Enneagram corresponded to an Ego fixation—something your Ego becomes fixated upon. Ichazo’s view was that your Ego, who you seemed to be outwardly, was a cover up for the true inner essential self.

“Your essence is actually pure and untouched by anything bad, or anything wrong.” This pure essence has been covered up by false ideas you’ve had about yourself via personal experiences, what other people have told you, how we have been conditioned by these things. This is the Ego, the false Self. “This in an idea that is very common in Jungian thinking and the New Age as well.” The belief is that there is this pure, untouched Self.

Ishazo taught that you should find your Ego fixation, and when you understand that it is not really you, “you can see this pure Self at the center of who you are.” The Enneagram still was not being taught as reflecting personality. Claudio Naranjo, a psychiatrist and spiritual seeker, was a student of Ichazo’s at Arica. He learned the Enneagram from Ichazo. Naranjo claimed that he received the Enneagram types that we now associate with the Enneagram from automatic writing. This is a form of spirit contact, where you open yourself up and let “whatever spirit or entity use your hand to write out things.” Naranjo said the types were partly from his observations, but mostly from automatic writing.

Catholic and Evangelical Critiques of the Enneagram

Montenegro is not the only person cautioning Christians to reject the Enneagram because of its occult, Gnostic origins and nature. In “The Enneagram—A History (Part 1)” Brandon Medina said while the Bible says nothing about the Enneagram by name, it has a lot to say about origins, practices, numerology and identity—“all of which make up the enneagram as a whole.” The Bible instructs us to not do as the pagans or unbelievers do. Simply put, the Enneagram has no biblical foundation and is rooted in occult practices.

Supporters claim the Enneagram was stolen from Christianity, but history does not back this up; they propose the numbering system is ancient, but facts don’t back this up; and they teach your identity is found in your Enneagram number, but the Bible doesn’t back this up. In fact, the Bible says that our identity is found in Jesus and that He, not the Enneagram, began a work in us which He will complete.

Mitch Pacwa, a Jesuit priest who has studied the enneagram, said in “Enneagram: A Modern Myth,” that the Enneagram system is inherently pantheistic. The Enneagram itself is very symbolic, starting off with a circle that symbolizes the world or the cosmos; the oneness or wholeness of all beings. The circle also symbolizes the number one, for one cosmos. Inside the circle are two other drawings; one is a triangle that is used to signify “god.” Notice that “god” is contained inside the cosmos. God is contained by the universe, rather than the fundamental Creator-creation distinction of Christianity.

Some Enneagram proponents claim that the Enneagram is a 2,000-year-old Sufi system from Islamic mystics who lived before the time of Christ. Pawca pointed out how this was impossible because Sufism is a part of Islam, which is from the 7^th century AD. He did state that Gurdjieff learned the Enneagram from the Sufis, who used it in Central Asia when he came across a group living in Central Asia during his travels. They used it for fortune telling through numerology.

The Sufis picked it up and used it as a symbol of the 9 stages of enlightenment: You move from your “ego” into your essence. What do they mean by essence? Your essence is that same being within you that has the same image as God. So your inner being has the same divine nature as God has. So it’s a very pantheistic and monist system. But it’s through very rigorous cleansing yourself of your ego and getting into your essence.

More Harmful than Helpful

Writing for The Gospel Coalition (TGC) in February of 2018, Kevin DeYoung wrote a critical review of The Road Back to You by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile, which was published by InterVarsity Press (IVP) in 2016. He thought on the whole, The Road Back to You would be more harmful than helpful for Christians who attempt to use it as a tool for spiritual growth. He observed that although the authors argued that the Enneagram does not smuggle the therapeutic under the guise of the theological, “The book is awash in therapeutic language.”

Every chapter talks about some combination of forgiving myself, finding my true self, becoming spiritually evolved, being healed from wounded messages, dealing with codependent behaviors, and pursuing personal wholeness. This is not the language of the Bible. We hear nothing about fear of man, the love of the praise of man, covenantal promises, covenantal threats, repentance, atonement, heaven or hell. When faith is mentioned it’s described as believing in something or someone bigger than you.

The spirituality of the Enneagram in The Road Back to You has little resemblance to biblical spirituality, according to DeYoung. In its discussion of the Fall, humanity’s sinful rebellion against God is said to be that “we’ve ‘lost connection’ with our God-given identity.” Their definition of sin, following that of Richard Rohr, is that “sins are fixations that prevent the energy of life, God’s love, from flowing freely.” There is nothing here about sin as lawlessness or spiritual adultery or “Sin as cosmic betrayal against a just and holy God.”

It has no doctrine of conversion, because the human condition described has no need for regeneration. Referring to their discussion of Enneagram personality type for “Fours,” DeYoung quoted the authors as saying “Fours arrived on life’s doorstep with the same equipment everyone else did. The kingdom is inside them too. Everything they need is here.”

This is not evangelical spirituality. It’s no wonder the book does not interact with Scripture (except for referencing the story of Mary and Martha) and quotes mainly from Catholic contemplatives like Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, and Ronald Rolheiser, while also referencing “spiritual leaders” like the Dalai Lama, Lao-Tzu, and Thich Nhat Hahn. You don’t have to be a Christian to benefit from the Enneagram journey in this book, because there is nothing about the journey that is discernibly Christian.

In “The Enneagram—A History (Part 3),” Brandon Medina countered the claim of Beth McCord, the founder of Your Enneagram Coach, who says “[The Enneagram] is a tool to help bring transformation. The Gospel is the transformation.” McCord views the Enneagram as a spiritually neutral tool with a significant appeal to Christians. If someone were to say to her that it’s not in the Bible, she’d respond: “Well, the Myers-Briggs isn’t in the Bible. You know, there’s lots of things that aren’t in the Bible but are still helpful.”

Medina concluded the Enneagram was not needed as a spiritual tool for Gospel transformation. He quoted Romans 8:13-14, “For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” And then he quoted 2 Corinthians 3:18, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this come from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

But by far the gravest danger is the view held by Russ Hudson, co-founder and president of The Enneagram Institute and co-author of several bestselling enneagram books with Don Riso, “The Enneagram is less about nine types of people and more about nine paths to God.” This is anathema to what the Bible states: that there is only one way to God and that way being Jesus. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians writes, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ”; we read in Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved”; and then Jesus in John 14:6 says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Not Spiritually Neutral

In his daily blog, Richard Rohr said the enneagram is used to discern spirits, to help recognize your False Self, and lead you to encounter your True Self in God. Once you see your True Self for what it is, you are no longer attached to it; and it no longer blocks you from realizing your inherent union with God. “The whole Enneagram diagram is called ‘the face of God.’ If you could look out at reality from nine pairs of eyes and honor all of them, you would look at reality through the eyes of God—eyes filled with compassion for yourself and everyone else!”

Medina commented that if no other evidence has convinced you to avoid the enneagram, hopefully the claim of it being about nine paths to God should demonstrate that the Enneagram is another gospel, based on the teaching of men “who seek to teach there is another path to God.” There is nothing that can redeem the Enneagram as a spiritually neutral tool that Christians can use to grow in their faith and relationship with God. I don’t agree with Joe Carter that the Enneagram is a harmless fad which will fade away in a few years. Nor is it something that can be left up to the conscience of the individual Christian.

Using the Enneagram simply as a diagnostic tool or for personal classification does not place the matter in league with eating food sacrificed to idols. Rather, its use is something the Bible warned us against in passages like Romans 16:17-18:I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.

“Is the Enneagram Spiritually Neutral?” is a three-part series, this being the third article. Part 1 and Part 2 can be found on this website. Part 1 concentrated on the origin of the Enneagram symbol with George Gurdjieff. Part 2 followed how the Enneagram became the Enneagram of personality under Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo. I am grateful for the research and thoughtful discussion by Brandon Medina in his own three-part series on the Enneagram, which I largely followed in what I wrote in my own articles. Links to his series of articles are: The Enneagram—A History (Part 1), (Part 2) and (Part 3). For more critique on the Enneagram from a Christian perspective, try the Enneagram page of article links on Monergism.

09/28/21

Is the Enneagram Spiritually Neutral? Part 2

The Enneagram of personality was developed by two men, Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo. In “The Enneagram — A History (Part 3),” Brandon Medina said Ichazo and Naranjo each played a key role in reimagining the Enneagram. As a result, the modern Enneagram, the Enneagram of personality, is not being taught and practiced the way George Gurdjieff conceived it, “as a tool which can reveal all knowledge and by which the secrets of the cosmos are laid bare.” Medina suggested that you could say that the Enneagram created by Gurdjieff died with him.

In Part 1, we looked at some of the history behind the Enneagram, noting how Gurdjieff drew it from ancient sources, possibly from the Babylonians. The Law of Three and the Law of Seven in the Enneagram were noted to be the philosophical foundation of the Fourth Way, a method he developed for humans to switch from the temporal to the immortal—in order to experience the “real world.” Here, while looking at “The Enneagram—A History (Part 2),” we will see how the efforts of two men transformed the Enneagram into a mystical personality test.

Ichazo and His Scientific “Discovery”

Oscar Ichazo was born in Bolivia in 1931. At the age of nineteen he joined a study group that experimented with techniques of altered consciousness. “I had contact with Indians and they introduced me to psychedelic drugs and shamanism while I was in my early teens.” Roughly one year later he was introduced to the writings of both George Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky, a student of Gurdjieff. Ichazo said in 1950 he was invited to a closed study group that included Theosophists, esoteric Rosicrucians, and a sect of mystical Christians called Martinists, where he took part in long discussions about the work of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. “I first pointed out to this group that all the ideas proposed by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky could be traced to certain forms of Gnosticism and to specific doctrines of the Stoics, the Epicurians, and the Manichaeans.”

Ichazo began to research Eastern tantra and the Holy Kabbalah. He traveled to Tibet and India to study yoga, alchemy, I Ching Kabbalah, Buddhism, Zen and Sufism. “Ichazo claimed to have received insight and instruction from Metatron the prince of the archangels and students whom Ichazo trained at his Arica Institute were guided by their own spirit guide, the Green Qu ’Tab, once they reach a higher state of development.” After waking from “a divine coma” he was in for seven days, he realized he had been entrusted to bring a special new accelerated method of spiritual work to the West.

The Enneagram with Riso-Hudson Type Names

Most Enneagram practitioners attribute the nine personality categories and their corresponding numbers on the Enneagram figure to Ichazo. He said the Enneagram of personality came to him in a vision and was his sole invention. He also introduced several other Enneagrams, which he called enneagons, for a total of one hundred and eight. The only differences were the terms surrounding the Enneagram figure, not the figure itself. He claimed direct revelation of all 108 Enneagram types.

I never considered them my invention, but a discovery as scientific discoveries are, with exactly the same qualifications of being verifiable and objective. . . [They] reflect something real in human nature itself. We feel the categories have been discovered rather than invented.

He later modified this statement, saying he did not receive the enneagons from anyone. “They came to me, 108 in all, as in a vision, showing their internal relationships with complete clarity.” Ichazo said that not only was he the initiator of the Enneagram of personality, but also “the 108 enneagons and the entire system in all its terms have been developed by me, only and exclusively.” He began teaching a group of fifty-five students in Arica who sought to reach their human potential (striving to switch from the temporal to the immortal—in order to experience the “real world”) by listening to a series of his lectures and using a variety of spiritual practices based on mystical and meditative traditions.

Naranjo and What Came to Him

Claudio Naranjo was a Chliean psychiatrist born in 1932. He was also introduced to the Enneagram and Ouspensky in his teens. In 1962, Naranjo was at Harvard as a visiting Fulbright scholar, where he participated in Gordon Alport’s Social Psychology seminar. He became a close friend of Carlos Castaneda and was part of Leo Zeff’s psychedelic therapy group in 1965-66. While taking a pilgrimage after the death of his son, Naranjo returned to Chile and became a student of Ichazo’s at the Arica Institute.

Naranjo corroborated Ichazo’s claim about how he received the enneagons. He said it was his own reading of Ouspensky and the Fourth Way that led him to Ichazo. “My main interest in learning from Oscar Ichazo was a conviction that he was a link to the Sarmouni—the school behind Gurdjieff.” But like Ichazo, Naranjo muddied the water as to the origin of the Enneagram of personality, initially saying it was Ichazo who introduced him to the Enneagram during Ichazo’s series of lectures.

Later, he seemed to suggest Ichazo cared very little for the Enneagram. Referring to Ichazo, Naranjo said, “He didn’t talk about the enneagrams of personality more than two hours during our year with him.” Naranjo said if Ichazo was credited as the ‘seed’ of the enneagram movement, “I should rather compare myself to the gardener who has watered the plant.” He claimed it was he, Naranjo, who put into words what Ichazo had the barest understanding and description of. Naranjo has also stated the psychological types of the Enneagram came to him by a process of ‘automatic writing.’

Naranjo sites his ‘automatic’ writing while Ichazo has said that a person “may receive instructions from the higher entities such as Metatron, the prince of the archangels, who has given instructions to Ichazo.” It was the contradictory claims of origin between the two and specifically the supernatural claims of inspiration made by both men which would later become a problem regarding ownership for Ichazo, Naranjo, and Arica.

Naranjo brought the Enneagram of personality to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Esalen was an experimental center of esoteric ideas that had a crucial role in the human potential movement. Naranjo’s connection to Esalen was through his being an apprentice of Fritz Perls, and part of the early Gestalt Therapy movement, where he conducted workshops as a visiting associate at Esalen. One of Naranjo’s students at Esalen was a Jesuit priest, Bob Ochs, who took what he had learned about the Enneagram of personality to Loyola University in 1971.

The Enneagram Goes to Church

There Ochs taught the Enneagram of personality to several priests, including Don Riso, Mitch Pawca and Gerry Hare, who later taught it to Richard Rohr. In time, Don Riso left the priesthood and cofounded The Enneagram Institute with Russ Hudson. Pawca eventually abandoned the Enneagram, concerned it was introducing New Age beliefs into Catholicism. He wrote Catholics and the New Age in 1992 and “Enneagram: A Modern Myth.” Within the chapter, “Occult Roots of the Enneagram,” Pawca said:

The books by Gurdjieff’s disciples and articles about Oscar Ichazo prove they practiced occultism and that occultism is interwoven with the enneagram itself. Therefore, I believe Christians need to be aware of the enneagram’s occult origins so they can prevent occult traces from infecting their faith in Christ Jesus.

Lastly, there is Richard Rohr, who would become one of the key figures to popularize the Enneagram of personality within evangelical churches. He is a Franciscan priest who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He’s published over thirty books, including: The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective and Discovering the Enneagram: An Ancient Tool a New Spiritual Journey. He wrote the Foreword to The Sacred Enneagram by Christopher Heuertz. Ian Cron and Susan Stabile, co-authors of The Road Back To You, along with Heuertz are friends and students of Rohr. The Sacred Enneagram and The Road Back to You are two of the most popular and widely read books on the Enneagram of personality within evangelical churches.

Medina noted how the competing claims of the supernatural origin of what they taught led to problems regarding ownership of the Enneagram of personality for Ichazo, Naranjo and Arica. The origins debate only became worse as students of both Ichazo and Naranjo disregarded non-disclosure agreements they signed and began to teach and write about what they had been taught. “In an attempt to stem the tide Naranjo went so far as to say that if these techniques were used or published outside of his training they would lessen in effect.” Yet, Naranjo failed to make those attending his public meetings sign a nondisclosure.

Much like what happened with Ichazo and Naranjo, attributions of conflicting origins were made by the various authors. Riso claimed a contemporary originship of Ichazo and Naranjo and not an ancient one as was claimed by Gurdjieff only to later change his position; Speeth and Palmer claimed an ancient origin which was developed by Gurdjieff and the Sufis. Though Palmer does agree with Ichazo’s claim that he developed a “new tradition” apart from the context [of] Sufi, Christian, and Gurdjieff into “an eclectic new age spiritual growth context.” No one can seem to agree if it is new or ancient, or new but ancient, or ancient but new. Because of the violation of the non-disclosure agreement as mentioned above, Arica would bring a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement; and in an ironic and amusing turn of events the very people whom broke the non-disclosure agreement they signed with Arica later made their students also sign non-disclosure agreements which they summarily ignored and broke. The books which quickly followed began to remove Arica, Ichazo, and Naranjo as originators of the Enneagram while some sought to ‘Christianize’ it.

There are now over 30 books by Christian publishers on the Enneagram of personality. IVP, InterVarsity Press, has books by Suzanne Stabile, Alice Fryling, Sean Palmer, and others. Zondervan publishes works by Christopher Heurtz. Thomas Nelson publishes Enneagram books by Beth McCord and Matthew Stephen Brown. There are dozens of Christian Enneagram coaches, like Beth McCord, the founder of YEC (Your Enneagram Coach), who provide “courses, coaching and community to help you discover your best self, using the tool of the Enneagram through the lens of the Gospel.”

Is the Enneagram of personality a ‘tool’ Christians can use? According to Beth McCord, you can see yourself “with astonishing clarity with the Enneagram through the lens of the Gospel, so [you] can break free from self-condemnation, fear, and shame by knowing and experiencing the unconditional love, forgiveness, and freedom in Christ.” We’ll examine this claim in the light of Scripture and look at a biblical critique of the Enneagram and the Enneagram of personality in Part 3 of this article.

09/21/21

Is the Enneagram Spiritually Neutral? Part 1

The Enneagram, or the Enneagram of personality, seems to be everywhere these days. Within the Christian church, it is marketed as a method of spiritual enlightenment, a tool for personal transformation and development, and a fusion of psychology and spirituality. Christian publishers have fallen over each other to publish books on using the enneagram for becoming more like Jesus; uncovering your true, God-given self; and finding your unique path to spiritual growth. And yet, it is rooted in occult practices and has similarities to Gnostic, Eastern and New Age beliefs.

Brandon Medina, writing in “The Enneagram — A History (Part 1)” for Theology Think Tank, said the Enneagram is alleged to be a tool that helps the person who uses it to discover their Enneagram number, which supposedly represents both the person’s personality and the area of in the person’s life that is hindering their spiritual development. “The number defines and identifies who you are and where you struggle.” This description refers to the modern sense and use of the Enneagram, the Enneagram of personality, but the Enneagram itself has earlier, and some claim, even ancient sources.

Most scholars and writers attribute the origin of the Enneagram to George Ilych Gurdjieff, who introduced the Enneagram image to the West in 1916. Gurdjieff suggested he borrowed the symbol and its philosophy from “ancient sources.” In the above linked article, Medina traced Gurdjieff’s vague references of the origins of the Enneagram back to a possible Babylonian origin. He said: “We could continue along the bunny trails and down the rabbit holes in an attempt to find an exact origin but I believe the information above is enough to at least point to a far ancient though unspecific beginning which is anything but Christian or biblical in origin.”

Gurdjieff and the Enneagram

Gurdjieff was an Armenian mystic who taught esoteric spiritual philosophies based on knowledge he gleaned from his journeys, which he described in Meetings with Remarkable Men. In “The Enneagram — A History (Part 2),” Medina said Gurdjieff was influenced by several religions: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufism. His teachings aimed at the transformation of humanity’s inner substance and he emphasized secrecy and confidentiality within his groups. Gurdjieff believed that so-called ‘normal’, non-esoteric psychology was at such variance with what was involved in reaching a higher level of awareness, “that his students would only retard their own progress and stir up hostility and misinterpretation by discussing the work of the group outside of it.” Marcia Montenegro said in “The Enneagram GPS,” that “Gurdjieff held that man is not aware of true reality and needs an awakening of consciousness.” Medina quoted Gurdjieff as saying:

The knowledge of the enneagram has for a very long time been preserved in secret and if it now is, so to speak, made available to all, it is only in an incomplete and theoretical form of which nobody could make any practical use without instruction from a man who knows.

Gurdjieff believed there have been three traditional modes of transposing our identity from the temporal (bound by time and space) to the immortal. They were the way of the fakir (the way of struggle with the physical body); the way of the monk (the way of faith, the emotional way); and the way of the yogi (the way of knowledge, the way of mind). He concluded that while these work, they only work by severe asceticism and seclusion, which are not feasible to achieve in a modern society. His answer to this problem was the Fourth Way, which works on all three: body, emotions and mind at the same time in order to achieve balance. In Gurdjieff Unveiled, Seymour Ginsberg explained:

As we become more balanced, we can be self-conscious more easily because we are less identified with our body, our thoughts, or our emotions. When we no longer identify with these features of temporal life, we discover that we are free of all fears and all desires. We then stand in essence, not in personality, and essence is immortal.

The philosophical foundation of the Fourth Way is the Law of Three and the Law of Seven. The basic structure for the Law of Three is that for every action there are three required forces: active, passive and neutral. Gurdjieff called these forces affirming, denying and reconciling. They correspond to the triangle within the Enneagram as follows: affirming or active force (6), the denying or passive force (3) and the reconciling or neutral force (9). Christian mystics see imagery of the Trinity within the Law of Three; Hinduism sees Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu; Alchemy sees mercury, sulfur and salt. Until the third force interacts with the first two, nothing happens. Ginsburg said:

We can think of this process as movement along a parabola. The ‘descending’ arc of the parabola represents the ‘descent’ of spirit, an infinitely rapid, vibratory state, which represents infinitely fine matter, into grosser and grosser states until at the bottom of the parabola there is an infinitely slow vibratory state, which represents infinitely dense matter. The return arc of the parabola represents just the opposite, the ‘ascent’ of matter into spirit. It is sometimes called the path of return (to unity). Gurdjieff called human beings, ‘third-force blind,’ and this is because the third force is a property of the real world, the world as seen from the standpoint of Endlessness in complete non-identification. The real world can be experienced only in the state of objective consciousness. It is the fourth state of consciousness of which we are not conscious but toward which we work. It is the state in which we are completely free of all identification.

In contrast to the Enneagram of personality, notice that Gurdjieff intends for you to detach from your personality, not find it.

The Law of Seven or the Law of Octaves dives deeply into music and music theory. “While the Law of Three is one of forces, the Law of Seven is one of scales on which cosmic and global laws are attached.” Most people who use the Enneagram are unaware that each of the points are tones on the octave you move through before moving on to the next. “The law of octaves involves the complete process of the note ‘do’ going through a succession of tines until it reaches the complete process of the note ‘do’ of the next octave. The ‘do’ must pass through 7 tones which represent the Law of Seven.”

The so-called experts of the Enneagram wrongly ask people, or tell them through test results, what their enneagram number IS. They believe this number has a static, unchanging value. For example, in “How the Enneagram System Works” the Enneagram Institute mistakenly claims “that people do not change from one basic personality type to another” and “no type is inherently better or worse than any other.” These claims are the opposite of what was taught about the Law of Seven by P.D. Ouspensky, a student of Gurdjieff. When he introduced the Enneagram to Ouspensky, Gurdjieff said: “In order to understand the enneagram it must be thought of as in motion, as moving. A motionless enneagram is a dead symbol; the living symbol is in motion.”

When the Law of Three and the Law of Seven are combined with their lines of connection by the numbering sequences of each, the Enneagram in its final form is produced. The 3, 6, and 9 lines represent the Law of Three; and the 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, 7 lines represent the Law of Seven. Gurdjieff said, “The Enneagram is the fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language which has as many different meanings as there are levels of men.” He added:

All knowledge can be included in the enneagram and with the help of the enneagram it can be interpreted. And in this connection only what a man is able to put into the enneagram does he actually know, that is, understand. What he cannot put into the enneagram makes books and libraries entirely unnecessary. Everything can be included and read in the enneagram.

Yet, the Enneagram Institute disagrees, saying:

Although the Enneagram is probably the most open-ended and dynamic of typologies, this does not imply that the Enneagram can say all there is to say about human beings. Individuals are understandable only up to a certain point beyond which they remain mysterious and unpredictable. Thus, while there can be no simple explanations for persons, it is still possible to say something true about them. In the last analysis, the Enneagram helps us to do that—and only that.

Medina concluded that unfortunately for Gurdjieff the Enneagram has been popularized as a personality test that helps you discover who you are and who you can be, and “not as a tool to reveal the future of all knowledge.” Today it is a journey of self-discovery that helps you uncover your true, God-given self and your unique path to spiritual growth, rather than an explanation of all things in the universe. In Part 2 of this article, we’ll look at “The Enneagram — A History (Part 2)” by Brandon Medina and see how the Enneagram became the Enneagram of personality.

Faith Seeking Understanding

Charles Sigler, D.Phil.

Category Archives: Thinking God’s Thoughts