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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3336 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 26, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Do you have a favorite Gospel of the New Testament? It has been suggested that the four Gospels correspond to the four Keirsey MBTI temperaments (SP artisans, SJ guardians, NT rationalists, NF idealists) and were written to be persuasive to different audiences:

"The reason there are four Gospels in the Bible has, since antiquity, been argued by Christians to be be because there are four different kinds of people. The Gospel of Mark portrays Jesus as an action-oriented doer, or as we would say, an SP type. The Gospel of Matthew recounts Jesus's heritage and lineage within the Jewish community and shows us why he is the rightful heir to the messianic throne, just as it focuses intensely on the proclamation of laws in the Sermon on the Mount; that's to say, the Gospel of Matthew shows Jesus as an SJ type. Then there is the Gospel of Luke, which recounts the story in a more critical and detached way, emphasizing abstraction and intellectualism, or as we would say, Jesus as an NT type. Finally there is the Gospel of John, which emphasizes the spiritual qualities of Jesus. It is much more ideal-oriented, concerned with identity, and contains more theological deliberations than the other three. This Gospel shows Jesus as an NF type."

Conveniently, you can also draw a parallel here with the four Hippocratic temperaments (sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic).

Funnily enough I like the Gospel of Luke the most out of all of them (and have read them as a non-Christian so am not biased here) and I'm an NT type so chalk that as 1 piece of anecdata supporting your hypothesis.

I don't like John, that one reads like it was written by a cult fanatic.

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