John Calvin's Enneagram Test
On Self-Examination in the Christian Life
I was first introduced to the enneagram in 2016 when The Litgurists dedicated a two-hour show to introducing the tool to its widest audience yet. At the time, I didn’t think too much of it. It wasn’t until I started hearing others talk about it more that I revisited the episode and finally “got it.” After that, I was hooked.
It wasn’t too long after that, that I gathered a small group of friends of mine at my house and had one of my friends who was the most well-versed in the enneagram at the time lead us through discovering our types. The best teachers of the enneagram will tell you that the best way to discover your type isn’t to take an online test; it’s to have an expert lead you through it in a personal, bespoke process where your intuition reveals your type to you. All of us—except for one—left that night with numbers attached to our names. Some of us would later realize that we mistyped ourselves that night. That night they might have been sure they were a 2, only to realize later they were a 9. Regardless, the magic of the enneagram was quickly evident. We now had our souls in shorthand.
As the enneagram hit critical mass, it quickly became seen not just as a tool of self-discovery but a paint-by-numbers form of self-expression. The power of simply saying, “I’m a 3w4,” and the other knowing what that meant made it feel so easy to finally be seen for who we are. That’s what makes the enneagram so appealing. You can bare the depths of your soul to someone and be seen by them without the years of work it takes to get to know someone. It’s a relational cheat code.
While the tool helped us both discover and express ourselves, it became increasingly wrapped in hyperbolic, spiritual-therapeutic language. To the point where, as Jake Meador points out, it came to occupy a status that is at least equal to or greater than the gospel as the power for transformation. “With the help of the enneagram powered by the Gospel, you can be transformed.” The enneagram can transform you. Oh yes, powered by the Gospel, of course.
The enneagram rose in popularity around the same time Emotionally Healthy Spirituality did, its primary thesis being, “you can't be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.” It sought to help people become more aware of their emotions to surrender their emotions to God, not be ruled by them, and mature in Christ. EHS provided the “why” and “what”. The enneagram served as a “how” to the EHS project. But where EHS attempted to help people mature their emotions, the enneagram simply validated their emotions. It almost became a spiritualized StrengthFinders test where people could learn their emotional strengths and weaknesses, ignore their weaknesses, and lean into their strengths.
John Calvin thought self-knowledge was indispensable. At the beginning of his Institutes, he famously wrote, “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.” While Calvin acknowledges the chicken-and-egg situation, the therapeutic self doesn’t see a dilemma. The prevailing wisdom is to look within, and by peering into the Self, we will see the face of God.
There’s a good side of self-knowledge that helps us see both our gifts and our sins that can turn us toward God, and help us love our neighbor better. The enneagram fits here as a tool to help us do that. There’s another kind of self-knowledge that says, “I am my own and this is me. Affirm it, conform to it, or get out of my life.” This is the dominant voice in society that pushes us to have a distorted sense of self-ownership at the expense of formation and relationships.
Whether Calvin ever fully makes up his mind on the order of things, he makes it clear that the face of God is not to be found by looking inside ourselves.
“It is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself. For (such is our innate pride) we always seem to ourselves just, and upright, and wise, and holy, until we are convinced, by clear evidence, of our injustice, vileness, folly, and impurity. Convinced, however, we are not, if we look to ourselves only, and not to the Lord also - He being the only standard by the application of which this conviction can be produced.”
When we look inward toward ourselves, all we see is our righteousness. For some of us, we may not see righteousness but only see our brokenness. Whether we see all the ways that we are right or all the ways that we are wrong, either way, we see a distorted version of ourselves that is blind to the big beautiful picture of who we are in Christ.
By looking to God first, we see our sin and folly. The contemplation of God and the contemplation of Self work in tandem, like two peddles on a bike. As we look at God and see his perfect holiness, we look back to ourselves and see our broken sinfulness, so we look back at him and see his perfect love, and look back at ourselves and see our utter dependence, and look back at him and see his empowering Spirit who comforts and guides us, and look back to ourselves and see the ways we are not following Christ in fellowship with the Spirit, so we look back at him and we see his grace, and we look back at ourselves and offer up gratitude.
The enneagram, at its best, aids in this type of self-contemplation. It helps us see our unique tendencies toward sin, our unique bend and warp away from the will of God. By seeing our unique sinfulness, we can ask the Lord for unique grace. “Father, I know I seek worth in achievement and status. Help me to rest in your love, be content in my low place, and live a life of humility.”
But when the enneagram becomes a bespoke means of self-actualized alt-spirituality, it convinces us all that we’re on a journey of emotional self-awareness all the while leading us to the very narcissistic tendencies we rightfully call out in others. It allows us to see the speck in someone else’s eye (“they’re such an unhealthy 8”) while giving us a permission slip to ignore the log in ours (“I’m just a stressed out 3”).
There is no shorthand for the soul. The enneagram can never be more on the forefront of our conscience than the character of Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, the ordinary means of grace, and the Spirit’s sanctifying work in our life. There will never be a more powerful tool for transformation than the Spirit working through Scripture, the Body of Christ, and the mundanity and suffering of our actual lives.
Yes. Thanks, Ian. It can be a tool to better love others and to know our patterns of sin. But we must watch out for how it can become a vehicle for sinful notions of self-expression and self-actualization.