John Bunyan

1628-1688 · English (Elstow and Bedford, Bedfordshire) · Puritan Practical Divinity, Calvinist Soteriology, Allegory, Spiritual Autobiography, Nonconformity

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.

John Bunyan (1628 – 1688) was a tinker's son from Elstow, outside Bedford, who learned to read and write at a village school, served as a boy soldier in the Parliamentary garrison at Newport Pagnell, and came home to the same trade. His first wife brought two books of practical piety as nearly her whole portion, and he went through years of torment: a voice from heaven in the middle of a game, texts that seized on him and let him go, the fear that he had sold Christ and could never be forgiven. He told it all in *Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners* (1666), and he told it plain, because…

Topics John Bunyan addresses

• spiritual autobiography in Grace Abounding
• the unpardonable sin and Esau's fate
• temptation to sell Christ
• Thy righteousness is in heaven
• imputed righteousness of Christ
• the law as covenant of works and covenant of grace
• election and the free offer of the gospel
• justification by faith against Latitudinarian moralism
• the Quaker light within versus the historical Christ
• Christian's burden and the Cross
• the Slough of Despond
• the House of the Interpreter
• Vanity Fair and the martyrdom of Faithful
• Doubting Castle and Giant Despair
• Ignorance and the false way to heaven
• similitude of a dream and the line of allegory
• Christiana, Mercy and Mr. Great-heart
• The Holy War and the siege of Mansoul
• Mr. Badman and the reprobate life
• emblem verse for children
• open communion against strict Baptists
• praying with the Spirit against set forms
• imprisonment and obedience to conscience
• Solomon's Temple spiritualized

Questions to put to John Bunyan

Grace Abounding and the Converted Soul

• What were you actually going through during those years of terror before you found assurance?
• How did the fear that you had committed the unpardonable sin — the sin God will never forgive — finally break?
• What do you mean when you say your righteousness is in heaven?
• Why did you write your spiritual struggles down so plainly, including the most shameful temptations?
• What's the difference between a genuine assault on the soul and what some would call a troubled or melancholy mind?

Justification, the Two Covenants, and Free Grace

• What do you mean by imputed righteousness — how does Christ's goodness become mine?
• What's the difference between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace?
• Why do you think trying to earn God's favour through a good life is actually the most dangerous mistake a person can make?
• How does free grace make a person holy rather than leaving them with no reason to live well?
• If God has already chosen who will be saved, how can the invitation 'come, and welcome' be genuinely meant for every sinner?

The Pilgrim's Progress and the Art of Allegory

• Why did you choose to tell the gospel as a dream and a journey rather than as a sermon or a treatise?
• What does Christian's burden stand for, and why does it fall specifically at the Cross?
• What kind of person is Ignorance, and why does he end up in hell even though he seems confident he's going to heaven?
• What's happening in Vanity Fair, and what does Faithful's death there mean for the rest of the story?
• How should a reader know when to take the details of the allegory literally and when to look past them to the doctrine underneath?
• Why did you write a second part following Christiana rather than simply leaving the story with Christian's arrival?

Preaching, the Spirit, and the Written Word

• What gives an unlearned tinker the right to preach the gospel?
• Why did you argue so hard against the Quaker idea of an inner light, and what did you think was at stake in that dispute?
• What's wrong with praying from a set form of words rather than from the Spirit?
• How do you think Scripture should be read and opened — what's the method you actually use?
• Why does it matter to you that Christ was a real bodily man who was born, died, and rose in the flesh?

Suffering, the Church, and Life in the World

• Why did you refuse to promise to stop preaching, even when it meant staying in gaol for twelve years?
• How do you draw the line between obeying the king and obeying God?
• Why did you insist that a church should not divide over the question of water baptism?
• How do you see the place of women in the congregation — what are they owed and what are they called to?
• What does Mr. Badman's life teach about how a person slides into ruin without any single dramatic fall?

Converse with John Bunyan on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in John Bunyan's own writing, cited to the page.