Fearful Allegories:
Bunyan's Vision of the Christian Life
Nathan Vonnahme
SPIR/THEO 710
Cistercians & Puritans
Dr. Packer & Dr. Houston
Regent College
28 February, 2000
Some men by feigning words as dark as mine,
Make truth to spangle, and its rayes to shine.
John Bunyan's allegory The Pilgrim's Progress is beyond a doubt the most popular piece of literature that we have addressed in this class. "No other seventeenth-century work except the King James Bible, nothing from the pen of a writer of Bunyan's social class in any period, and no other Christian work, has enjoyed such an extensive readership." Because of the comprehensive scope if its genre, Bunyan's allegory gives us a unique opportunity to understand the Puritan ethos. As Henri Talon puts it,
to understand Bunyan is to penetrate the spiritual significance of Puritanism . . . Indeed, Professor Perry Miller goes so far as to assert that only a Puritan who is also a dramatic artist can present an adequate picture of Puritanism, and that Bunyan alone fulfils both conditions.
I hope that this brief treatment of Bunyan's masterpiece will help you to better understand the historical, theological and spiritual climate of Puritanism.
John Bunyan was born in 1628 the son of a tinker (an often itinerant mender of metal household utensils). He had a wild youth with minimal education, served in the army, and followed his father's profession. He was gradually converted to Christianity through his wife and her family, but went through an intense two to three year struggle with anxiety over his salvation. He became a member of a Baptist congregation, where he discovered his gift of preaching. He wrote voluminously (60 published works in 32 years), preached to thousands, and was imprisoned twice after the Restoration for preaching without a license--once for twelve years and a second time for six months. It was during the first prison term that he first began writing The Pilgrim's Progress.
The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory in two parts--the first, published in 1678, narrates the story of a man named Christian and his pilgrimage from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Its full title is The Pilgrim's Progress from this world, to That which is to come: Delivered under the Similitude of a DREAM Wherein is Discovered, The manner of his setting out, His Dangerous Journey; And safe Arrival at the Desired Countrey. The second part, published in 1684, tells of Christian's wife, Christiana, who with their four boys and a continuously growing group of fellow pilgrims, makes the same journey. The allegory operates on two levels: first, each character is an example of a particular quality of personality (e.g., Pliable, Mr. Fearing, Hope), and the way the characters conduct their pilgrimage instructs the reader about the virtues or dangers of that quality. The second level is the topography of the pilgrimage itself--it consists of a straight and narrow Way with only one Gate, walls which are Salvation, such topological details as a Hill named Difficulty, a (narrow) Plain called Ease, and the Valley of Humiliation, and dangerous giants and thieves plaguing different locations along the journey.
The Pilgrim's Progress is a full and intricate portrait of the Christian life, and it must be read to be appreciated. In addition, because of its important place in the history of English literature and its intriguing riddles of allegory, there are reams of literary studies and biographies to go with it. What I want to do for you, then, is briefly to, 1) present some of the most important literary features of The Pilgrim's Progress, notably, its interaction with the Bible, 2) deal with the strange historical context of an allegory written by a Puritan, 3) examine Bunyan's doctrine of fear in some detail, and finally 4) pick out a few other theologically and spiritually important, characteristically Puritan themes running throughout the book. In general, I will concentrate on the virtues, rather than the errors, of Bunyan's thought, especially noting where his thinking can inform or correct the modern evangelical church.
One of the most striking literary features of The Pilgrim's Progress is the way the main text interacts with its paratexts--the marginal notes, prefaces and afterword--and its overwhelmingly present intertext, the King James Bible. The paratexts are especially important because by them Bunyan seeks to govern the reader's interpretation of the allegory. Maxine Hancock's new book addressing the importance of the marginal notes demonstrates in detail how essential the marginal notes and Scripture references are in interpreting the main allegory--"By checking one's own interpretation against that offered by the marginal reference, the reader can immediately determine whether or not he or she has entered into the 'dream-world' of spiritual reality constructed by the narrator." The text is riddled with asterisks, italics and capitalization, making the reader pause, read the marginal notes, and contemplate the allegorical meaning behind the events in the story.
Bunyan's great intertext, the Bible, makes its presence felt on nearly every line of The Pilgrim's Progress, and in this devotion to Scripture Bunyan is in the center of the Puritan movement--his conviction was that "want of reverence of the word is the ground of all the disorders that are in the heart, life, conversation, and in Christian communion," and his pastoral writing aims to increase this reverence in his readers. The Bible is the book in Christian's hand, which sets him on pilgrimage and is the source of his burden. It is the light which Christian must follow to find the Gate, and it is the sword (using Paul's metaphor) which he uses to defeat Apollyon and which Valiant-for-Truth uses to fight off the thieves Wild-head, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatick. It is also the mirror Mercy longs for, which "would present a man, one way, with his own Feature exactly, and turn it but an other way, and it would shew one the very Face and Similitude of the Prince of Pilgrims himself." and the Bible is both the map Great-heart uses to navigate the Enchanted Ground, "of all ways leading to, or from the Celestial City," and the lantern he uses to lead the party through it in the dark.
The Bible also makes its mark on Bunyan's style. His familiarity with the Bible shows itself in the very phrases he uses, with Hebraisms and Paulisms cropping up in his most ordinary prose (e.g. variations of "bowels of mercy," a Greek idiom). The narrative style of The Pilgrim's Progress, which is seen as one of the important fore-runners of the modern novel, shares many characteristics of Old Testament narrative: sparse scenery, lots of direct speech, and very little direct relation of character's thoughts and feelings. As N.H. Keeble observes, "Much of the immediacy of The Pilgrim's Progress derives from the fact that, as in drama, we hear the characters directly in dialogue. And, again as in drama, this makes for ironic misunderstandings and misapprehensions as the limited points of view of these characters lead them to misjudge both themselves and others." This type of ironic suspense, I maintain, Bunyan learned from the Old Testament narratives. Bunyan's Biblical worldview also contributes to his characterization:
Evil in The Pilgrim's Progress is a pervasive meanness, pettiness and selfishness, which yet allows a kind of friendliness: it is not a defiant amorality, nor a deliberate policy, nor a demonic power (though that is its source). We shall find nothing to compare with Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and Mephostophilis, Shakespeare's Iago, Tourneur's Vendice, Webster's Vittoria Corombona or Milton's Satan. What we do find is more familiar: the narrow-mindedness of Obstinate which has no patience with 'Craz'd-headed Coxcombs' (p. 10) . . . On the other hand, our saints are not rare exemplars: Evangelist discerns 'many weaknesses' in Christian and Faithful (p. 71) . . . These seem improbable saints and unlikely literary heroes.
This, too, Bunyan absorbed through reading biblical narratives, where no hero (save one) is ever portrayed without blemish, and sin is never glorious.
The Bible's influence pervades The Pilgrim's Progress more explicitly as well. There are allusions and quotations on every page, and the marginal notes make these more explicit to the reader. Bunyan expected his readers to know the Bible verses he cites or to do the hard work of looking them up, and they provide a constant biblical commentary on the allegory, sometimes reverberating with a phrase or playing off an idea while at other times undergirding and lending authority to the message.
Bunyan's use of the Bible was in some ways idiosyncratic to the mainstream of Puritan hermeneutics. As his spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners shows, for Bunyan the Bible was a powerful, almost personal entity, to be read reverently and above all, applied to life. Bunyan's early years as a Christian show the violent and dramatic changes in his emotional, mental and spiritual state that remembered Scriptures precipitated:
Oh! one sentence of the scripture did more afflict and terrify my mind, I mean those sentences that stood against me (as sometimes I thought they every one did) more, I say, than an army of forty thousand men that might have come against me. Woe be to him against whom the scriptures bend themselves!
It sometimes seems more appropriate to speak not of Bunyan's use of the Bible but the Bible's use of Bunyan! Accompanying this dramatic receptivity to the Scriptures was a habit of thinking about them one verse at a time, and he described vividly how, when struggling with anxiety about committing the unforgiveable sin, individual verses would battle within him:
And I remember one day, as I was in divers frames of spirit, and considering that these frames were according to the nature of several scriptures that came in upon my mind; if this of grace ["My grace is sufficient for thee"], then was I quiet; but of that of Esau ["for ye know, how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears," Heb 12:17-17], then tormented. Lord, thought I, if both these scriptures should meet in my heart at once, I wonder which of them would get the better of me. So methought I had a longing mind that they might come both together upon me; yea, I desired of God they might.
Well, about two or three days after, so they did indeed; they bolted both upon me at a time, and did work and struggle strangely in me for a while; at last that about Esau's birthright began to wax weak, and withdraw, and vanish; and this, about the sufficiency of grace prevailed with peace and joy. And as I was in a muse about this thing, that scripture came in upon me, Mercy rejoiceth against judgment. James ii. 13.
Where this relationship with the Bible separated Bunyan from many of his more educated Puritan contemporaries was in its tendency towards allegorization. For Bunyan, each individual verse of Scripture was expressly written for application to life and experience, and this attitude tended to lead him toward allegorical interpretation, because each individual verse had to be applied to each individual life. My favorite example, repeated in both Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim's Progress, is Bunyan's treatment of the Levitical dietary laws. We find Faithful and Christian discussing the character of Talkative, who knows all the right theology but practices none of it:
Faith. This brings to my mind that of Moses, by which he describeth the beast that is clean. He is such a one that parteth the hoof and cheweth the cud; not that parteth the hoof only, or that cheweth the cud only. The hare cheweth the cud, but yet is unclean, because he parteth not the hoof. And this truly resembleth Talkative; he cheweth the cud, he seeketh knowledge, he cheweth upon the word; but he divideth not the hoof, he parteth not with the way of sinners; but, as the hare, he retaineth the foot of a dog or bear, and therefore he is unclean.
This of course brings up the question, "what was a Puritan doing not only using allegorical interpretation, but writing allegory?" Because of their Reformed heritage, literalism was one of the central convictions of the Puritans. Thomas Luxon, in his book Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in Representation, delves deeply into the relationship between Puritanism and allegory. He asserts,
As Luther and Tyndale accused the pope of locking up the Word with the mystifying "keys" of allegories, tropologies, and anagoges, so English Puritan sectaries accused their bishops and their king of distorting the Word for political and pecuniary ends. Literalism, even at times a kind of hyperliteralism, was the rallying cry of advanced Puritanism.
This climate of literalism made Bunyan justifiably nervous about publishing The Pilgrim's Progress, and so, after waiting for several years and getting mixed reviews from his friends, he decided to publish it "to prove then who [of his friends] advised for the best," prefacing it with a long, rhymed Apology which carefully answers some of the expected objections to his allegorical mode.
Luxon sees in Bunyan an acknowledgment that allegory is central to Christianity, and he argues that Bunyan brought to a head some of the most persistent problems of Reformed epistemology and hermeneutics. Luxon sees Reformed literalism as deeply schizophrenic, and its emphasis on typology rather than allegory merely a dodge--
I call it a dodge because it is largely a euphemism for allegory designed to mask Protestantism's continued commitment to allegorical structures of thought and representations of reality or truth even as it constituted itself under the antiallegorical banner of the one true literal sense of God's Word.
Christianity, maintains Luxon, is innately allegorical because of its immanent/eschatalogical emphasis, where "Christ's kingdom and the glorified body it promises are both literally 'now' and literally 'not yet.'" Just as the Jews of the Old Testament served as types and allegories of Christ and his kingdom, so the church and each individual Christian are still but pointers to an eternal, spiritual reality.
But Luxon's treatment, though complex and erudite, seems to ignore the more subtle distinctions the Puritans themselves had concerning literalism and allegory. J.I. Packer quotes James Durham on the interpretation of the Song of Songs,
"I grant it hath a literal meaning, but I say, that literal meaning is not . . . that which first looketh out, as in historical Scriptures . . . but that which is spiritually . . . meant by these allegorical and figurative speeches, is the literal meaning of this Song . . . for a literal sense (as it is defined by Rivet out of the school-men) is that which floweth from such a place of Scripture, as intended by the Spirit in the words, whether properly or figuratively used, and is to be gathered from the whole complex of expressions together . . . as in the exposition of parables, allegories and figurative Scriptures is clear."
But, Durham notes, this is quite different from the illegitimitate allegorising of which the medievals were guilty; for "there is a great difference between an allegorical exposition of Scripture and an exposition of allegorical Scripture." Durham expounds allegorically only when he has reason to think that it is an allegory that he is expounding.
It is this more nuanced approach to allegory that Bunyan used in interpreting the Bible, and which he assumed his readers would use in interpreting his work--allegories should be read allegorically, and types should be interpreted typologically, but the primary focus of interpretation should be on the author's intention.
Luxon's insights are important and complex, and he cuts to the quick in his observation that Christians use allegory to damn and devaluate others, including the Jew, the world, the "old self," and even all earthly living. In this sense, words of Gaius in Part Two are ominous in their ramifications:
"So let all ministring Doctrines to thee in this Life, beget in thee a greater desire to sit at the Supper of the great King in his Kingdom; for all Preaching, Books, and Ordinances here, are but as the laying of the Trenshers [dishes], and as setting of Salt upon the Board, when compared with the Feast that our Lord will make for us when we come to his House."
However, it is possible to rein in allegorical overapplication by proper use of literalism, and literal and allegorical modes, employed properly, can inform each other. Though he often erred on the side of overapplication, Bunyan did discover in his struggle with fear of unforgivable sin, there are limits to how the Bible can be applied to our lives, and close attention to the witness of the whole canon and to the "scope and tendency" of each verse show us how the Scripture can be applied. In the end, Bunyan found that the verse about Esau's rejected repentance did not apply to his situation, and he was restored to security in God's salvation.
So then, the Puritans were not universally against allegorical interpretation, but why did Bunyan in particular write allegory? In "The Author's Apology for his Book" prefacing The Pilgrim's Progress he claims, first of all, that it began as an accident:
WHEN at the first I took my Pen in hand,
Thus for to write; I did not understand
That I at all should make a little Book
In such a mode; Nay, I had undertook
To make another, which when almost done,
Before I was aware, I this begun.
And thus it was: I, writing of the Way
And Race of Saints, in this our Gospel-Day,
Fell suddenly into an Allegory
About their Journey, and the way to Glory,
In more than twenty things which I set down;
This done, I twenty more had in my crown,
And they again began to multiply,
Like sparks that from the coals of Fire do flie.
Nay then, thought I, if that you breed so fast,
I'll put you by your selves, lest you at last
Should prove ad infinitum, and eat out
The Book that I already am about.
In defense of his allegorical mode Bunyan reasons that it is lawful for him because it is first used in Holy Scripture. On the title page of the first edition, under the full title appears the simple justification, "I have used Similitudes, Hos. 12. 10." This text in the King James version reads, "I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets."
Finally, Bunyan also seems to have had a natural penchant for allegory. He recounts how once before his conversion,
another thought came in my mind; and that was, whether we were of the Israelites or no? For finding in the scripture that they were once the peculiar people of God, thought I, if I were one of this race, my soul must needs be happy. Now again, I found within me a great longing to be resolved about this question, but could not tell how I should: at last I asked my father of it; who told me, No, we were not. Wherefore then I fell in my spirit, as to the hopes of that, and so remained.
In his autobiography Bunyan doesn't mention how he finally came to the conclusion that the Church was identified with Israel, but it is obvious that he did, as the end of his preface to Grace Abounding demonstrates: "My dear Children, The milk and honey are beyond this wilderness. God be merciful to you, and grant that you be not slothful to go in to possess the land." His penchant for allegory found expression not only in The Pilgrim's Progress, but in its sequel The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, in The Holy War, which some have said would be the best allegory in English had not Pilgrim's Progress been written, and in numerous other allegorical writings. In fact, of the three volume compendium of Bunyan's works, one whole volume is composed of allegorical works.
In reading The Pilgrim's Progress and Grace Abounding, the biggest difference I sensed between Bunyan's experience and mine was in his theology and spirituality of fear. The Pilgrim's Progress is full of fear, and it is one of the main tools Bunyan uses to develop the plot. Christian's fear of his city's destruction makes him fly from his home and gets him stuck while crossing the Slough of Despond; and when he gets through the Wicket-Gate he says, "I rejoyce and tremble." At the house of Interpreter he sees things which put him in "hope and fear," yet at the top of the Hill Difficulty, he has to "shake off" the fear which Mistrust and Timorous encourage. Throughout both parts of the allegory, the characters encourage each other to look on signs of terrible judgment (even the torture of Mistrust and Timorous in Part Two ) for "help for time to come." They are scaring themselves into the kingdom of heaven. Christian observes that "the Ignorant know not that such convictions that tend to put them in fear, are for their good, and therefore they seek to stifle them," and goes on to delineate why this is so:
1. They think that those fears are wrought by the Devil (though indeed they are wrought of God) and thinking so, they resist them, as things that directly tend to their overthrow. 2. They also think that these fears tend to the spoiling of their faith, (when alas for them, poor men that they are! they have none at all) and therefore they harden their hearts against them. 3. They presume they ought not to fear, and therefore, in despite of them, wax presumptuously confident. 4. They see that these fears tend to take away from them their pitiful old self-holiness, and therefore they resist them with all their might.
Grace Abounding confirms that Bunyan shared these attitudes, and his intense struggles with salvation are taken by many modern interpreters as signs of mental disorder. He, however, saw it as ultimately positive. For example,
I would often also think on Nebuchadnezzar; of whom it is said, He had given him all the kingdoms of the earth. Dan. v. 18, 19. Yet, thought I, if this great man had all his portion in this world, one hour in hell-fire would make him forget all. Which consideration was a great help to me.
Because fear is such a strong theme in The Pilgrim's Progress and in Bunyan's life, and because it is something which modern readers tend to think of very differently than Bunyan did (is this partly because we fear fear like "the Ignorant"?), Bunyan's doctrine of fear is worth examining here in some detail.
The year after the first part of The Pilgrim's Progress was published, Bunyan published a long treatise on The Fear of God. Its six chapters exhaustively cover "the object and reasons of fear," "the rule of fear, and its several kinds," "the true character of the fear of God," "the effects of Godly fear," "the privileges of those that fear the Lord," and "the use of this doctrine."
The proper object of fear is of course God, and his character demands it. Not only is he himself to be feared, but his Name, his Word, and his worship must be treated with reverence. It is fear that begins with and accompanies the process of conversion, as all the characters in Pilgrim's Progress demonstrate. Fear of judgment for sin is the work of the Holy Spirit as a spirit of bondage, and
this fear goes not away until the Spirit of God doth change his ministration as to this particular, in leaving off to work now by the law, as afore, and coming to the soul with the sweet word of promise of life and salvation by Jesus Christ. Thus far this fear is godly, that is, until Christ by the Spirit in the gospel is revealed and made over unto us, and no longer.
The second point here is crucial, and the source of much pain in Bunyan's life, as well as in characters like Mercy and Mr. Fearing. Bunyan elaborates,
that fear that is wrought by the spirit of bondage is good and godly, because the ground for it is sound; and I also conclude, that he comes to the soul as a spirit of bondage but once, and that once is before he comes as a spirit of adoption: and if therefore the same fear doth again take hold of thy heart, that is, if after thou hast received the spirit of adoption thou fearest again the damnation of thy soul, that thou art out of Christ and under the law, that fear is bad and of the devil, and ought by no means to be admitted by thee.
The Christian should always be on guard against false fear (which Timorous represents, and with which Satan assaults Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death), and the fear that perfect love casts out (1 Jn 4:18) is of this sort.
After conversion, though, the Christian is called not to a lack of fear but to a pure fear of God, which is in fact nearly identical with faith: "No faith, no fear of God; devils' faith, devils' fear; saints' faith, saints' fear." The fear is based on both God's judgments and his mercy:
Quest. But would you not have the people of God stand in fear of his rod, and be afraid of his judgments?
Answ. Yes, and the more they are rightly afraid of them, the less and the seldomer will they come under them; for it is want of fear that brings us into sin, and it is sin that brings us into these afflictions. But I would not have them fear with the fear of slaves; for that will add no strength against sin; but I would have them fear with the reverential fear of sons, and that is the way to depart from evil.
"There is mercy with thee" ; this the soul hath sense of, and hope in, and therefore feareth God. Indeed nothing can lay a stronger obligation upon the heart to fear God, than sense of, or hope in mercy (Jer 33:8,9).
Bunyan goes on to list no less than fourteen effects that "flow from" a proper fear of God: 1) reverence for God and his word, 2) watchfulness, 3) holy thinking and conversation, 4) reverent worship, 5) self-denial, 6) singleness of heart, 7) compassion and mercy, 8) "hearty, fervent, and constant prayer," 9) willingness to give everything to God, 10) humility, 11) hope, 12) good works, 13) delight in the commandments and hatred of sin, and, 14) enlargement of heart. He follows this list up with a list of promises in the Bible for those who fear God, and two examples should suffice here:
Take that other blessed word, and O thou man that fearest the Lord, hang it like a chain of gold about thy neck. "As the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him," Psa. ciii. 11. If mercy as big, as high, and as good as heaven itself will be a privilege, the man that feareth God shall have a privilege.
Dost thou fear God? "The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him," Psa. cxlvii. 11. They that fear God are among his chief delights. He delights in his Son, he delights in his works, and takes pleasure in them that fear him. As a man takes pleasure in his wife, in his children, in his gold, in his jewels; so the man that fears the Lord is the object of his delight.
Finally, in expounding "the use of this doctrine," Bunyan draws all sorts of good applications, pointing out again the necessity of loving fear,
If by the fear that thou hast, thy heart is not united to God, and to the love of his Son, Word, and people, thy fear is nothing worth.
Many men also are forced to fear God, as underlings are forced to fear those that are by force above them. If thou only thus fearest God, it is but a false fear; it flows not from love to God: this fear brings not willing subjection, which indeed brings the effect of right fear; but being over-mastered like an hypocrite, thou subjected thyself by feigned obedience, being forced, I say, by mere dread to do it, Psa lxvi. 3.
and showing the ironic bravery of true fear:
Truly to fear, and to abound in this fear, is a sign of a very princely spirit; and the reason is, when I greatly fear my God, I am above the fear of all others . . .
Your ranting boasters, that are ignorant of the nature of the fear of God, count it a poor, sneaking, pitiful, cowardly spirit in men to fear and tremble before the Lord; but whoso looks back to gaols, and gibbets, to the sword and burning stake, shall see, that there has been seen the most mighty and invincible spirit that has been in the world.
He ends with a series of railing indictments against hypocrites, whose chief error is lack of fear, which "sanctifies the whole duty of man."
I really enjoyed reading The Fear of God and highly recommend it to you, but my goal here is to introduce you to The Pilgrim's Progress. This comprehensive understanding of deitiphobia should now inform some of the other themes I'd like to touch on.
The centrality of fear in Bunyan's theology (and I suspect he was representatively Puritan here) had important consequences for the way he viewed the gospel. First of all, the Good News, for Bunyan, included a stern word of judgment--it was bad news before it was good news, to use Frederick Buechner's phrase. Bunyan says, "The method of God is to kill and make alive, to smite and then heal." Christian, burdened himself, evangelizes Pliable and Obstinate this way:
You dwell, said he, in the City of Destruction, (the place also where I was born) I see it to be so; and, dying there, sooner or later, you will sink lower then [sic] the Grave, into a place that burns with Fire and Brimstone: Be content, good Neighbours, and go along with me.
The proper first response to the gospel is intense guilt, as the characters in The Pilgrim's Progress demonstrate repeatedly, and as Bunyan also displays in his autobiography. The ground of this guilt is the fear of God and the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and it is not to be avoided but to spur the sinner toward God and to glorify him. Bunyan, in reference to his own extreme experience of guilt, observes, "where guilt is most terrible and fierce, there the mercy of God in Christ, when showed to the soul, appears most high and mighty." Holy guilt lays the groundwork for the experience of mercy, which when properly received engenders holy fear.
For if God shall come to you indeed, and visit you with the forgiveness of sins, that visit removeth the guilt, but increaseth the sense of thy filth, and the sense of this that God hath forgiven a filthy sinner, will make thee both rejoice and tremble.
Even after entering the Way and experiencing conversion, Bunyan's characters continue to suffer intense guilt when they lose their gifts or stray from the path. This guilt is a product of the seriousness, reverence and fear of God which characterized the Puritans as a movement and gave them their keen sensitivity to conscience.
This brings us to the topic of conversion. N.H. Keeble suggests that the entrance into the Wicket-gate represents conversion, but it seems that Bunyan prefers to be a little more ambiguous. Christian is called "Christian" (rather than his given name "Graceless") as soon as he hears the gospel from Evangelist and reads the Book in his hand, yet he carries the burden through the Wicket-Gate and the house of Interpreter, until he comes to the Cross. As Packer puts it, for Bunyan
... conversion is a complex, often long-drawn-out process that advances by stages from conviction of sin and need as its beginning to assurance of salvation as its climax. It involves learning the key gospel truths, internalizing them in a life-shaping way, and being so changed at heart that revulsion at sin, desire for God, love for Christ and eager hope of being with him in heaven become basic to one's being.
The Puritan way was to extend the term conversion to cover the whole process of being effectually called, and Bunyan is a typical Puritan at this point. Where some evangelists today lay all their emphasis on the moment and mechanism of a human decision, this Puritan evangelist (for such Bunyan pre-eminently was) stressed the need to realise that one is in God's hand for the entire process, and humbly to seek continuance of the process till God gives assurance that it is done. The difference is something we need to think about.
At first glance, The Pilgrim's Progress seems to paint a mostly individualistic portrait of the Christian life. On closer investigation, however, this seeming individualism is more a result of one of the most important realities of the community journey: every Christian's pilgrimage is different, though they walk the same road. Christian's journey is often solitary, but more often he is accompanied or entertained by friends, and Faithful or Hope is with him most of his way. Hope expresses his thankfulness for Christian's company after a rebuke in the Enchanted Ground,
I acknowledge myself in a fault, and had I been here alone, I had by sleeping run the danger of death. I see it is true that the wise man saith, Two are better than one. Hitherto hath thy Company been my mercy; and thou shalt have a good reward for thy labour.
Following this, Christian and Hopeful strike up a conversation in order to stay awake, and Bunyan's marginal notes are emphatic: "To prevent drowsiness, they fall to good discourse. Good discourse prevents drowsiness." Throughout the book pilgrims encourage each other with conversation, primarily the sharing of their salvation stories, and through these stories they grow to know themselves and God better. Bunyan classifies edifying conversation too as one of the fourteen effects of the fear of God:
There flows from this fear a holy provocation to a reverential converse with saints . . . it is the natural effect of this godly fear, to exercise the church in the contemplation of God, together and apart. All fear, good and bad, hath a natural propenseness in it to incline the heart to contemplate upon the object of fear, and though a man should labour to take off his thoughts from the object of his fear, whether that object was men, hell, devils, &c., yet do what he could the next time his fear had any act in it, it would return again to its object. And so it is with godly fear; that will make a man speak of, and think upon, the name of God reverentially (Psa 89:7); yea, and exercise himself in the holy thoughts of him in such sort that his soul shall be sanctified, and seasoned with such meditations.
But for all of his occasional companions, Christian is still a lone pilgrim, stopping now and then to stay with a community of believers. It seems like Part Two was written partly to balance this perspective, and it is Christiana and her companions who have the easier journey, for on the dangerous way there is safety in numbers, and in the protection of her guide Great-Heart. The Christian life is both an individual journey and a group march.
Finally, Part Two also goes to great pains to show how women, children, and the weak undertake pilgrimage, and not just heroes.
Art thou in thine own thoughts, or in the thoughts of others, of these last small ones, small in grace, small in gifts, small in esteem upon this account; yet if thou fearest God, if thou fearest God indeed, thou art certainly blessed with the best of saints.
The stories of Little-faith in part one, of Mr. Fearing, who only reaches Mount Zion because "Yet he would not go back," of Mr. Feeblemind who resolves "to run when I can, to go when I cannot run, and to creep when I cannot go," and of his friend on crutches Mr. Ready-to-halt, are delightful reminders that the weak are specially loved by God and deserve special care from his people--a convicting message for those of us who would rather minister to the strong and healthy, forgetting that
'Tis good also that we desire of the King a Convoy, yea that he will go with us himself. . . . if he will but go with us, what need we be afraid of ten thousands that shall set themselves against us, but without him, the proud helpers fall under the slain.
The Pilgrim's Progress is the only work of its kind, and its continual popularity among Christians of every type testifies to its success in portraying the Christian life. One of its crowning strengths is its complexity and the looseness of its allegory--Christian and Christiana are representative Christians, but their experiences are not meant to map one on one onto every Christian life. The details of characterization and dialog contribute to a feeling of realism that lends more weight to the allegory. And, like the best stories, it transcends itself, inviting the reader to participate in the larger Story.
This Book will make a Travailer of thee,
If by its Counsel thou wilt ruled be;
It will direct thee to the Holy Land,
If thou wilt its Directions understand:
Yea, it will make the sloathful, active be;
The Blind also, delightful things to see.
Bunyan, John. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. London: The Religious Tract Society 1907.
-----. The Fear of God. Swengel, PA: Reiner Publications 1967.
-----. The Pilgrim's Progress. N. H. Keeble, Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1984.
-----. The Works of John Bunyan. George Offer, Ed. 3 vols. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth 1991.
Hancock, Maxine. "Bunyan's Use of the Bible, Structure and Luther." Audio tape #2765E from her "Theology as Literature" class (1998). Vancouver: Regent College 1998.
-----. The Key in the Window: Marginal Notes in Bunyan's Narratives. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing 2000.
Hill, Christopher. A Tinker and a Poor Man: John Bunyan and His Church, 1628-1688. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. 1988.
Luxon, Thomas H. Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in Representation. Chicago: U. Chicago Press 1995.
Packer, J. I. A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. Wheaton: Crossway 1990.
-----. The Pilgrim's Principles: John Bunyan Revisited. St. Antholin's Lectureship Charity Lecture 1999.
Talon, Henri. John Bunyan. Barbara Wall, Trans. London: Rockliff Publishing Co. 1951.
Whyte, Alexander. Bunyan Characters. 3 vols. Edinburgh/London 1893.