My old review of Pilgrim's Progress is too long, but I want to comment on it without deleting it. Goodreads should let up on the wordcount nazi thing and allow long reviews to be posted on goodreads--and then release such reviews as books. Or not. Anyway, I totally forgot I'd written that review of Pilgrim's Progress, in my freshman year at college no less! That would have been before I even got into social Trinitarianism, FV dark, and Doug Jones, and when I was into neo-Calvinist culture-making and Lordship!
I can't delete the above, but I want to see if I still object as much as I once did. Here are some thoughts:
Objectio #1: I think it's stupid to critique for being episodic; you can be episodic and great--vide Don Quixote. I still think that Presbyterians need to get out more and read more fiction and that the sequel, though better than 90% of all sequels, is still way weaker than the first because Bunyan doesn't have to work as hard inventing things. Even so, the sequel still works: even the children, who lack individual personalities, have a collective personality that seems to fit quite well and one can sense Bunyan drawing upon his experience as a pastor in his portraits of Mr. Fearing, Feeble-Mind, and Despondency. It seems that his depression which so afflicted his preconversion life was externalized in most depressed parishioners!
Objectio #2: I still basically agree with all this. In fact, what struck me the most about re-reading Pilgrim's Progress is the semi-Catholic "penitence" period. Make no mistake: some realization of sin and repentance is necessary for salvation, but I think codifying such feelings into a stage-by-stage process does not describe either most Christians or even most of the characters in the New Testament. As a friend put it, when Peter preaches at Pentecost and cuts the people to the heart, there are no stories of people struggling with how God could forgive them. Assurance is a natural problem and guilt is a natural part of the Christian life and of non-Christian conversions, but great feelings of it are not necessary and I think Bunyan would reject the salvation of many without sufficient proof.
Objection #3: I think I would offer different critiques here, ones that were more narrow. Certainly, the Christian life is an individual one in certain respects and Paul compares it to a fight and to a race, with the crown received indeed being eternal life. I am suspicious of talking about the church as salvation; we'd need to distinguish between visible and invisible and institutional and so-forth to get this straightened out, but I would still say that salvation is not about getting helicoptered into heaven and just holding down the fort until then, which is what the theology points to. I would say that if Pilgrim's Progress errs anywhere, it focuses more on loving God than on loving one's neighbor, and that's mainly because of the vehicle Bunyan has chosen. Though there IS a community in part two, the focus is more on getting there and on avoiding sin than on actually producing good works.
What about the gnosticism? First, I would say that "gnosticism" is a misnomer. Gnostic (or Platonic) theology has less to do with it, and in fact it has to do more with Catholic bifurcations between nature and grace. Second, I'm more sympathetic to Bunyan's truly deep thoughts about not looking to the things of this world and looking to those of the world to come. I was also very much struck on this reading by how much material stuff is in the Pilgrim's Progress. In fact everything has been turned from spiritual INTO material stuff, and in fact it goes with Bunyan's rejection, not of the material, but of artiface vs. nature. Vanity Fair is a work of gaudy artiface, contrasted with the Valley of Humiliation, the Delectable Mountains, and Beulah. Even so he does not romanticize nature, giving good pictures of frugal households: the Interpreter's house and the Palace Beautiful notably which are noted for their dainties and meats. So I suppose I have to retract all the gnostic-speak with one exception: I still think his descriptions of heaven go on a bit too long and are not as good as Dante or the book of Revelation.
Reading it in the middle of a Richard Hooker translation project is especially illuminating and Bunyan's narrow sectarianism does come out, but Lewis was right: the seriousness of the mortal situation is what made Bunyan so great. And compared to Grace Abounding, this stuff is tame.
In fact, Bunyan is almost a Marxist! Nearly all the good guys are simple, lower-class, Bible-thumping sorts, and all the bad guys like Worldly Wiseman, By-Ends, Formalist and Hypocrisy, and so on are all rich and external conformers. This makes Doug Jones' critique so ironic and in fact the biggest criticism I would make of the book is Bunyan's concept of "the world." I think that the early church fathers, the first Reformers, and 20th century Evangelicals are all under persecution and it's damaged our theology. The antithesis threatens to mean that the mainstream culture will always oppose the faith (or at least the faithful distinctively outside that mainstream) and that therefore when the two come into conflict, we can know pretty well in advance who's right simply by consulting the tribe. History does not bear this out: Christians have been wrong on all sorts of issues and all tribes and denominations have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The "world" means the world of unbelief and we apply the typology properly, not when we see two cultures in conflict, but when we suffer for the sake of Christ because of a "company" that blacklists us. That "company" need not be in the majority or even the dominant element in society. It might be an insidious minority trying to stir up trouble. Bringing this back to Pilgrim's Progress, I think Bunyan makes a lot of great hits on his enemies, often hitting their patterns of speech and hypocritical externalism dead center. I think that if we looked in the Anglican church of his time, we would draw the same conclusions as he did.
Nevertheless, I say, his bias against the Church of England sometimes comes across as mere partisanship; his attacks on externalism seem uncharitable; his hatred of gaudiness and ceremony sound like the grumblings of the man who sees no reasons for all this pomp and show; and his insistence on standing for the word of God despite all concerns about public peace are ominous and sometimes obstinate.
Even so, I think it's a great book and it's great because literature to be great need not be precisely theologically accurate. Great literature must capture life with as much clarity as possible. In fact, Bunyan's partisanship is one of his greatest strengths. I still like what I wrote about the allegory not being primarily valuable as a didactic, except perhaps in the theological bits (which I actually like very much). However, I do not go to Pilgrim's Progress to be edified, but delighted and this time around I was struck by how clever the book is, especially in the first part.
If you talked to a Jew or even a Catholic, pilgrimage meant going to the city of Jerusalem to sacrifice in the Temple or kiss the saints' relics; no more of that now. Bunyan has turned it all into a permanent journey from which there will be no return. We wander through "the wilderness of this world" and we hope to reach the promised land. In the first part, the invention is non-stop: Despond, Sinai, archers at the Gate, hill difficulty, the lions, Apollyon, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair (how many books spawn both a literary classic AND a magazine), Giant Despair, and the river of Death itself are all visual, memorable, and often strange twists or extrapolations of small Biblical phrases. Even the second part, for all its repetitiveness, invented the muck-raker.
Bunyan also says in the introduction of the second part that his prose is difficult to imitate and there are so many wonderful words in here and even a few insults (how could I forget that he called Hopeful a clamshell head?) that are so true to life. Okay, the characters are allegorical, but they so often talk as if they weren't and their language is so homely that it betaketh itself most lovingly to the mind.
So the allegory is somewhat deceptive, behind the labels are the realities of Bunyan's current day. One cannot get into the Pilgrim's Progress without breathing, at least for a little, the air of the Sixteenth century. I can't think of any better recommendation on which to end this little reflection than to urge you to get a copy of Alan Parry's illustrated Dangerous Journey and to read it aloud to your kids. Not only is it a beautiful copy, but it will give your kids an opening into another time that is rarely so accessible. Lewis said that Bunyan got an education simply by pursuing the Christian faith; I think reading Bunyan will do the same.