There is nothing in the Enneagram that exposes us to true the knowledge of our utterly bankrupt evil nature and the good gifts which come only from the God Who is truly holy. The Enneagram doesn’t reveal our sinful condition, separation from God, His holiness, His love for us, and provision for salvation. 

Christians hold a general idea that the indwelling Holy Spirit will completely protect them from being deceived. This idea is taken from a portion of John 16:13:

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…

There are two fundamental problems with attempting to use the passage in this way. The first problem is the context. As with all passages in scripture, context must be considered to gain a proper understanding of the text in question. The context of this verse is the coming persecution (John 16:1-4a) of the disciples after Jesus’ departure, the work of the Holy Spirit to help them in that regard—once He is sent to them (John 16:4b-11). How would the Holy Spirit help them in that regard? Jesus explained the type of truth the Spirit would guide them into that would help them through this devastating and discouraging time ahead:

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
(John 16:13)

The disciples would need the Spirit’s presence and close guidance to keep them from falling away from their mission. (John 16:1) This is part of a much longer narrative by Jesus, which the Apostle John began in chapter thirteen. Jesus was preparing the disciples for rough days ahead and “the things that are to come.”

Second, even if this admonition was aimed not at the disciple’s immediate need but at all Christians in all times ahead, there is nothing in the context that states or implies believers will necessarily follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Christians may allow—and do allow—themselves to be deceived in spite of warnings of the Holy Spirit and the word of God. There are numerous warnings in the New Testament to believers that had been deceived.¹ Paul’s challenge to the Galatians who were believers that had been deeply deceived is direct and to the point:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.
(Galatians 3:1)

Any of us can be deceived, particularly if we ignore the guidance of the Holy Spirt and the word of God. Reading Thomas Nelson’s latest contribution to the world of the Enneagram within the Evangelical church is a reminder of the importance of guarding against deception. We do not doubt the sincerity of Meredith Boggs, the author of The Journey Home: A Biblical Guide to Using the Enneagram to Deepen Your Faith and Relations (Meredith Boggs, Thomas Nelson; January 24, 2023). However, someone can be very sincere and yet be sincerely wrong—which can lead from self-deception to having a role in deceiving still others. The Apostle Paul warns Timothy of this truth in 1 Timothy 3:13:

…while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

There are “evil people” and “imposters” (pretenders to the faith) who intentionally deceive. Then there are those deceived by these intentional deceivers, who unintentionally deceive still others. Has Meredith Boggs been deceived, or is the Enneagram truly a spiritual tool God uses to supplement the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the word of God? The reader will have to decide.

In the Introduction of her book, Boggs begins “the bottom line” with:

The Enneagram is not the gospel.²

On that, at least, we completely agree. The second one is somewhat mixed:

The Enneagram can help you grow personally and spiritually, but don’t use it to replace God’s Word. That will lead you astray more than any cult.³

Anecdotally, it may be that Boggs and others believe they have grown personally or possibly even spiritually while using the Enneagram, but correlation does not imply causation. Could someone’s marriage improve as they started talking together after being introduced to the Enneagram? Sure, that could happen. But did it improve because of the Enneagram or because they began talking to each other? The Enneagram has not been demonstrated to be a valid profiling tool. Jay Medenwaldt performed the only valid psychometric test to date, and in his General Conclusion, wrote:

Unless you’ve done graduate work in psychometrics, the scientific data probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to you (which is why there are two parts to this article). For those who have studied psychometrics, it’s a no-brainer that the enneagram simply cannot do all its proponents claim it can. Any scientist who studies personality would simply look at the reliability scores and conclude the test is not accurate enough to be helpful, and therefore, they wouldn’t use it because the potential for harm will be too high.

Medenwaldt sees absolutely no reliability in the Enneagram and, in fact, warns of its potential for harm. Medenwaldt is not the only source of research on the Enneagram. Boggs, in Footnote #1 of Chapter Two on page 16, cites:

The WEPSS (Wagner Enneagram Personality Style Scales) test has been statistically validated, and that’s the one I recommend. For more information, see the Resources section.⁴

We have no doubt someone communicated this idea to Boggs, and she believed it, but there is no evidence the claim is true. In “The reliability and validity of the Open Enneagram of Personality Scales,”  Kayleigh Kastelein wrote on page 5:

With small sample sizes, weak support from factor analysis, and low quantity of studies, there is not enough support for reliability and validity of the WEPSS for it to be considered a strong assessment of the Enneagram.

The American Journal of Psychiatry raises similar concerns in their General Conclusions:

We advise caution in integrating these concepts too quickly, as the Enneagram is more complex than this brief overview suggests. We hope to expand on this overview in future papers targeted specifically at the practical value of the Enneagram for medical education and clinical psychotherapy.⁵

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