The most significant sense of progress in Pilgrim’s Progress is its overarching theological theme: sanctification. While there are various debates about the exact point in the story at which Christian is saved, this question misses the larger concern of the story. Bunyan wasn’t writing in a time in which the evidence of salvation was in the documentation of the exact day and hour at which one “receives Jesus in one’s heart.” Bunyan’s Calvinist belief emphasized not the moment of salvation but the work of ongoing sanctification that is evidence of salvation. Anyone can raise a hand, repeat a
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