Is the Enneagram Like Meat Offered to Idols?

By Marcia Montenegro, October 2022

One of the defenses used for the Enneagram is an appeal to the passage about meat sacrificed to idols (1 Corinthians 8; 10:24ff). However, consulting the Enneagram is not comparable to meat offered to pagan gods, for these reasons:

Meat is Spiritually Neutral

1. Meat is spiritually neutral and is part of creation, coming from animals made by God
2. The Enneagram is not spiritually neutral. It is a tool designed by men who were in the occult and did spirit contact. Claudio Naranjo, who is credited with the Types of the Enneagram, states that he received much of the information for the Types from his higher authorities, which are his spirit guides. So this came from spirit contact.
3. The Enneagram was used originally as a Gnostic tool allegedly depicting the cosmos and later became a tool that supposedly could reveal the pure essence (occult), divine self (New Age), or True Self (Perennial Wisdom) of a person. Its origins, nature, and purposes are spiritual.

Meat is Food

1. Meat is food, not a tool.
2. The Enneagram is a supposed tool that tells you about yourself (whether the original way which is that your Type is a false construct hiding the True Self, or the pseudo-Enneagram method that allegedly is about personality).
3. Meat is real food, not fake or pseudo-food.
4. The Enneagram is invalid as a tool. It has no credibility in the field of psychology and has failed the psychometric test. It is in actuality a pseudo-tool. Therefore, the Enneagram is not a personality assessment, nor is it even a diagram that leads one to the True Self, nor is it a valid tool for anyone about the self or anything else. The Enneagram is a deceptive pseudo-tool and ineffective at yielding any truth or authentic information.

The Conscience Vs. Truth Issue

1. Eating food offered to idols is a matter that involves violating your conscience (1 Corinthians 10:25) or that of another (v.28), because eating this food is not sinful in itself, but doing so may injure the conscience of someone because the meat has been offered to false gods. We are not to violate our conscience nor urge others to violate their conscience, or ignore how our actions may do so. (See Romans 2:14-15 about the God-given conscience).
2. Due to the nature of and use of the Enneagram as a spiritual tool, and because it is not neutral, the criteria for the Enneagram is not conscience, but rather truth. Also at play is God's denouncement of spirit contact, which plays a large role in the formation of the Enneagram. Spirit contact is not a matter of conscience, but is an activity condemned by God.
3. The Enneagram promotes a false history and a false agenda about finding the True Self, a pagan concept contrary to Scripture. So the criteria for the Enneagram is truth vs. falsehood. It is not a conscience issue.

The Fallacy of Category Error

1. Putting the Enneagram on the same level as the food offered to idols is a category error.
2. Note that the passage in First Corinthians is about eating food offered to idols, not offering food to idols, which would be honoring or worshiping the false gods represented by the idols. There is a distinction between eating food offered to idols and offering the food to idols.
3. Using the Enneagram is more akin to the act of offering food to idols because it is intricately interwoven with Gnostic, occult, and New Age practices and beliefs.
4. The Enneagram's very nature and purpose rests on and was developed through Gnostic, occult, and New Age worldviews with no input from valid psychological studies or testing. It is worthless in the field of psychology, and seems to work by the same principles as astrology (Barnum effect, confirmation bias, subjective validation, self-deception, and more).

The conclusion of this comparison is that the Enneagram and meat offered to idols is not a valid analogy.

Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for God's wrath is coming on the disobedient because of these things. Therefore, do not become their partners. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light-- for the fruit of the light results in all goodness, righteousness, and truth-- discerning what is pleasing to the Lord. Don't participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them. Ephesians 5:6-11

 

 

 

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