Pastor Paul Taylor of Rivers Crossing Community Church (Mason, Ohio) repeats erroneous information on the history of the Enneagram

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Someone just called my attention to a sermon on the Enneagram in a church called the Rivers Crossing Church. Never heard of the guy. I repeat what he says with running commentary just because it is so typical of the false things often said.

When the pastor was informed of the problems related to his historical claims a couple of days (not by me but by another) he responded with the following theologically dubious brush off:

"While we don’t want you to ignore the convictions that the Holy Spirit has given you, we also encourage you not to let your convictions become an obstacle to what God is doing in the lives of others."*

This raises the obvious question: If the convictions really do come from the Holy Spirit, then how can expressing them get in the way of God's work?

In any case, the email he brushed off included a warning that the claim about Evagrius was false, which was a statement about history not a conviction from the Holy Spirit.  

Anyway, just for the record, here is what he said along with my running commentary between the lines of his unbroken narrative:

Pastor "Some Christians can be really apprehensive of anything that’s not in the Bible, so they freak out and get scared"

Me: That’s not why Christians are concerned about the Enneagram. He had earlier insinuated that it was because they confused it with the Pentagram  Neither is true of at least most of those who raise legitimate concerns.  

Pastor: "So I want to defuse all of that fear, perhaps you have it, many world religions claim the roots of the enneagram"

Me: No they don’t. No world religion claims that!

Pastor: "no one knows for certain where it comes from,"

Me: Well, we know with maybe 98-99 percent certainty where it comes from. At least we know that there is no good reason whatever to suppose it came from anywhere beside Gurdjieff and Oscar Ichazo. We are, however, certain where it does not come from: Evagrius of Pontus.

Pastor: "I traced it through a lot of Christians who believe it comes from the 4th century from a monk named Evagrius Ponticus"

Me: You give the impression that you are talking about tracing it through Christians going back through history, but really you are going back at most to 1996!

Pastor: "and that he really, he did alot a writing about the seven deadly sins"

Me: Evagrius never mentions seven deadly sins. He does speak of eight evil thoughts, passions.

Pastor: "and Scriptures, and talks a lot about these nine unique personality types"

Me: Evagrius never speaks of the nine personality types of the Enneagram.

Pastor: "that we as human beings form in our social environment to learn to process the world around us."

Me: On the previous two lines: You are claiming to represent what Evagrius said but are actually simply uncritically echoing  the psychological theories of New Age teacher Oscar Ichazo. Here is a quote from Ichazo on the idea:

"Ichazo: A person retains the purity of essence for a short time. It is lost between four and six years of age when the child begins to imitate his parents, tell lies, and pretend. A contradiction develops between the inner feelings of the child and the outer social reality to which he must conform. Ego consciousness is the limited mode of awareness that develops as a result of the fall into society. Personality forms a defensive layer over the essence and so there is a split between the self and the world. The ego feels the world as alien and dangerous because it constantly fails to satisfy the deeper needs of the self." (Sam Keen, “‘We Have No Desire to Strengthen the Ego or Make it Happy’: A Conversation about Ego Destruction with Oscar Ichazo,” Psychology Today [July 1973]: 67).

The above comes from nine minutes and 24 seconds in this video from (Aug 26, 2019).

*Email from Paul Taylor to Marcia Montenegro c. Aug 20-21, 2019.





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