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Personality Typing is a fairly
well-established practice in the modern study of psychology. Gary Thomas, a
Protestant religious leader, was inspired by work done by psychologists who use
the Myers Briggs personality-type preference
indicator. In some ways similar to the the
Keirsey Temperament Sorter, the Myers Briggs typology assists people to
locate their own personal style in terms of four dimensions. Each of the four
comprises a continuum along which one finds the degree to which one prefers to
function primarily in terms of (1) extraversion (an outer-orientation) or
introversion (an inner-orientation); (2) sensing (using data from the five
senses) or intuition (a sixth-sense orientation); (3) thinking (using intellect
and reasoning) or feeling (taking relationships and values deeply into
account); and (4) perception (flexible and impulsive) or judging (organized and
orderly). The combination of these four dimensions produces a fairly
wide-ranging set of alternative personality-style preferences.
Although inspired by the Myers Briggs
typology, Thomas proposes a typology of his own that envisions a framework of
nine "sacred pathways" -- nine ways in which different people typically prefer
to relate to God, or the spiritual dimension, or Ultimate Reality.
Thomas identifies the
following nine types:
- the Naturalist who is most
inspired to love God out-of-doors by being in a natural setting.
Examples: writers Annie Dillard
and Loren
Eisley.
- the Sensate who loves God
with the senses -- through awareness of taste, smell, touch, sight, and
sound.
Examples: there are many in the poems of Galway
Kinnell, where human sensuality is juxtaposed with family love, where
there is equal acknowledgement of the fate of the dead and of the unity of
the living; characters in the film Babette's Feast.
- the Traditionalist who
loves God through ritual and symbol.
Examples: religion scholar Huston
Smith, people who relish the Latin of the traditional Mass, the Hebrew of
the Bible, the Arabic of the Qur'an, or the Sanskrit of the Vedas, Sutras,
and Shastras.
- the Ascetic who prefers to
love God in solitude and simplicity.
Examples: (at certain times in his life) Thomas Merton and Duane Elgin (author of the
book Voluntary Simplicity).
- the Activist who loves God
through contributing toward justice and the enhancement of life in the
world.
Examples: Mahatma
Gandhi and the Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
- the Caregiver who loves God
by loving others.
Examples: Dorothy Day
and Mother
Teresa.
- the Enthusiast who loves
God with mystery and celebration. (The term 'enthusiast' is derived from a
Greek root-word which means God-filled.)
Examples: women's separatist theologian Mary Daly, poet and
men's movement leader Robert Bly,
creation theologian Matthew Fox; Pentecostalist Christians, Hasidic Jews, and
Sufi Muslims in general.
- the Contemplative who loves
God through contemplation.
Examples: (at certain times in his life) Thomas Merton, Bernadette Roberts, and
members of cloistered orders in general.
- the Intellectual who loves
God with the mind.
Examples: Maimonides,
Thomas Aquinas,
evangelical theologian Francis
Schaeffer.
Source: Gary Thomas, Sacred
Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996)
See also Beth Randall's Illuminating
Lives
To the General Orientation
page.
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