The personality of the Messiah

What is Jesus’ Myers-Briggs personality profile? Rather to my surprise, it turns out that lots of people have tried to answer this question.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaire was created as a systematic approach to classifying people’s personality based on categories originally proposed by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

The Mormon Matters website has a completely charming article that attempts to analyse Jesus’ personality in terms of the Myers-Briggs types and concludes he’s an INFP – an Introverted, iNtuiting, Feeling, Perceiving type.

If this seems a little flippant for you – pay attention Anglican Vicars: the Sermons That Work website has a pre-written sermon that discusses Our Lord’s Myers-Briggs type and informs the flock that he’s likely a INFJ – an Introverted, iNtuiting, Feeling, Judging type.

Profiling Jesus seems to have become a minor passtime in some circles. In fact, Yahoo! Answers has a thread where people were discussing the possibilities. The thread is marked as a ‘Resolved Question’ (!) with the best answer being voted as ENFJ – an Extroverted, iNtuiting, Feeling, Judging type.

Anecdotal evidence! I hear you cry. Fear not, there is some peer-reviewed data on the personality of the Messiah.

The Journal of Psychology and Theology published a paper entitled “Students’ perceptions of Jesus’ personality as assessed by Jungian-type inventories” back in 2004. You can read the full text online, but the abstract alone is pure joy:

The present study was the first phase of an exploration of college students’ perceptions of the personality of Jesus Christ as assessed by two Jungian-type inventories, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers, 1998) and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (Keirsey, 1998), which categorize personality along four dimensions: Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Judgment/Perception. Along with an overall exploration of students’ perceptions, the present study focused on whether students were likely to make self-based attributions in their perceptions of Jesus’ personality. Results indicated that students perceived Jesus to be an Extravert Feeler and made self-based attributions along the Sensing/Intuitive dimension, with 43% perceiving Him to be an Intuitive-Feeler and 37% perceiving Him to be a Sensing-Judger. Perceptions of Jesus as a Judger or Perceiver were divided, with those placing more importance on modeling Jesus more likely to see Him as a Judger, and those placing less importance on modeling Him perceiving Jesus as a Perceiver.

Since we’re already working on his Myers Briggs profile, I wonder if someone would hazard a guess at how he would score on the… oh stop it already. You’ll only give Dan Brown ideas.

Link to study on students’ MBTI profiles for Jesus.