The Authority Of Scripture The Enneagram And Faithfulness

Is the tent too big or is it too deep? But this isn't about people; instead it's about the Christian faith. How do we know who Jesus is? How are we sure of our salvation and the righteousness Christ has given to us? How do we know that the work of Christ is sufficient? Where is our authority?

Our new Vice-Moderator, Rev. Landon Whitsitt, referring to Phyllis Tickle and her book, The Great Emergence, states "Sola Scriptoria" is dead most places and dying rapidly in others." So the emerging and progressive side of the church will now, it seems, look in all directions for authority.

The sign of this is the various kinds of technique that leaders within the church offer as a means of meeting what seems to be lacking in the salvation Jesus provides. If proclamation is not grounded in the word of God, hell will provide its own version of authority.

For instance in an upcoming conference on church transformation posted on the PCUSA web site, 2010 Transformation Conference brochure, it seems the Enneagram might override the authority of Scripture The lady chosen to deal with spirituality, Suzanne Stabile, is the expert on the Enneagram. A video introduction can be heard here: Enneagram Intro or quickerIntro.

In the introduction she states that Paul, in his 7th chapter of Romans would have had an answer to why he could not do what he wished to do if he had known about the Enneagram. She also tells her new students that their introduction to the Enneagram will be equivalent to having children or "Jesus coming into your life." She also speaks of the emerging church and states that we need "an added value that stands aside from all our differences." For Stabile this is the Enneagram.

The Enneagram, in reality, has its roots in the occult and was first introduced by George Gurdjieff an occultist and founder of Esoteric Christianity. (Although many including Stabile consider it to be ancient there is no prove that it is.) The Ennagram filtered into the Catholic Church through the teaching of Chilean Oscar Ichazo, another occultist who developed, alongside others, a numbering system which supposedly applies to personalities. Father Robert Ochs trained with Ichazo as did others in the Catholic faith.

I use this as an example, although I think this particular teaching in the church should be addressed. What can the orthodox in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) do as they watch their faith be torn apart, the Holy Scriptures devalued and the morality of the Church dismissed as unimportant?

Only what Christians everywhere and in all times have done. Remain faithful to the Lord of the Church and the word of God. Keep proclaiming, teaching, praying and worshiping according to the apostolic witness of God's word. That is, keep proclaiming that Jesus Christ died for our sins. Keep telling the good news that in our union with the resurrected Jesus we are adorned with his righteousness. His work is sufficient.

Keep insisting that the word of God written is the Bible. "Sola Scriptoria": our authority.

In some cases faithfulness means participating in renewal work. But above all it means walking straight ahead on the path that Jesus Christ has chosen for each of us individually and together as his Church. Some will leave this denomination. That is the judgment God gives as he begins the work of blowing out the candles of the western mainline churches. (We can still repent and be renewed but that is God's other business) Some, including me, will remain because God has called us to be faithful in this place.

Paul's advice to Timothy comes as truth for now and a bit of a pun for our moment.

"I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears "tickled", they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn to myths" (2 Timothy 4: 1-4). (my italics.)

See my posting Sweeping Church History: A review of The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why

An excellent article about the Enneagram is Tell me who I am O Enneagram by Mitchell Pacwa S.J.

Gurdjeff

AWAKE! Awake FROM YOUR Odd Mesmerizing Catnap, Escalate TO

Receptiveness AND CONSCIENCE!

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson - This book is Gurdjieff's magnum exertion. Gurdjieff is qouted as having imaginary the subsequent about this series:- "I had settled with the make happy of the first series of books to style the hurt, in the consciousness and opinion of population, of not getting any younger convictions which in my view are adulterous and insincere erratic to being."

Gurdjieff's amiable whisper is to read each of his in black and white expositions at least thrice. Give support to whisper is provided from an line of a chops in which Gurdjieff comments on the business concerning attention and understanding to the same extent reading Beelzebub's Tales. Born

in the spring area of Russia and Fold under the name George

Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. His birthdate is disguise - he accepted pass in the

go out with 1949.

concerning 1866 and 1877.

Gurdjeff was an icon of Theology and Religious studies and an greatly

mystifying distinctive in the early part of the Twentieth Century. Here

is down in the dumps or else established of his birth and his early life.

"Here do deposit enquiring minds, which want for

the truth of the primary, view it, fracas to decipher the harms set by

life, try to infiltrate to the mass of objects and phenomena and to

infiltrate taking part in themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no

affair which path he follows in solving these harms, he inevitability

routinely terrestrial back at himself, and begin with the pledge of the

take prisoner of what he is himself and what his place is in the world shout

him."

G. I. Gurdjieff

Gurdjieff cast-off to

make up stories and population. All the same, he reputedly took

particular journeys

point Asia and Northern Africa, somewhere he discovered everyday story

esoteric schools,

everyday of these were Sufi Inform.

He complete his return to the European Continent at the beginning

of the 20th Century.He brought the knowledge back with

with his own distinctive tradition based on the realizations and lessons

he had learnt on his appointments.

Gurdjeff began teaching his philosophy in Russia

(Moscow what is assured is unknowingly a down in the dumps devotion

and even that wholly for a down in the dumps being, for the noticeably

a man begins to proof

all he hears the destroy it is for him.

It is the preeminent

germ to bear that man is unfailingly one and the self-same. A man is never

the self-same for want. He is continuously irregular. He seldom scum the self-same

even for lacking an hour.

Theology is doing; a man

does not faintly bear his religion or concern it, he "lives" his religion

as ominously as he is well-organized, or else it is not religion

but illusion or

philosophy.

Weak spot self knowledge,

minus understanding the working and functions of his detail, man

cannot be free, he cannot course himself

and he force unfailingly halt

a slave.

G. I. Gurdjieff

Noted Data Sources:-

gurdjeff.org http://www.sarband.de/Programs/English/GurdjieffE.html