Pilgrim Existence

A Consideration of the Bible in The Pilgrim's Progress

BALMER H. KELLY
Professor of Biblical Theology, Dean
Union Theological Seminary in Virginia

Bunyan... stands a great deal closer to us than many interpreters of Scripture

who may be nearer in time by centuries.

A N ARTICLE which places in juxtaposition the Bible and The

* Pilgrim3s Progress must carry not only the usual disclaimer of
exhaustiveness but also, either at beginning or end, some sort of explana-
tion or justification. I find the justification myself in the simple fact that
they both are "great55 books and in truth "good" books and therefore
deserve wider reading and understanding than is common today. More-
over, each does explain and interpret the other to a remarkable degree,
so that The Pilgrim's Progress is among the most important works of
biblical interpretation in the history of the church. It has, however,
more than historical importance. Like Luther's Commentary on Gala-
tiansy to which Bunyan himself was deeply in debt, like Milton's Paradise
Lost, like Barth's Römerbrief, its treatment of the meaning of the biblical
revelation has a kind of transhistorical significance, and even in our own
day of vast knowledge about the Bible, perhaps especially in our own
day, it can inform our understanding.
For at root The Pilgrim's Progress is precisely a great work of biblical
interpretation. Where the other monumental religious writing of the
same age, Paradise Lost, is essentially an interpretation of Christian faith
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 Pilgrim Existence
Interpretation

in harmony with Scriptural truth and forms of thought, The Pilgrim's

Progress is an interpretation of Christian life and experience in terms of
Scriptural truth and symbolism.1
Bunyan himself makes abundantly plain the focus of his work on Chris-
tian experience, its basis in Scriptural truth, and its allegorical form in
biblical metaphor in the "Apology" which he intended to serve as a guide
for the reader. The work began as he was "writing of the way and race
of saints in this our gospel-day."2 It offers justification of its "feigned"
form not only in the obvious need to devise ways to capture the interest
of readers, but especially in the "shadows, types, and metaphors" by
which God's "gospel laws" were held forth. Thus God speaks
. . . by pins and loops
By calves and sheep, by heifers and by rams,
by birds and herbs, and by the blood of lambs.8
Moreover, the prophets used to set forth truth by "metaphors" and, most
importantly for the whole allegory,
. . . whoso considers
Christ, his apostles too, shall plainly see
That truths to this day in such mantles be.
It was from the imagery of the Bible itself, especially including the
New Testament parables, that Bunyan understood that allegory or dark
figure, far from concealing truth, actually gives rise to the luster and
ray of light that "turn our darkest nights to days."
As for the "profit" or meaning of the book, in the Apology it is clearly
about "the man that seeks the everlasting prize," showing how "he runs
and runs," along with those who "set out for life" but who "lost their
labor." Its intent is not to chronicle but to convert, to describe a journey
i. Although the parallels and relationships between Paradise Lost and The Pilgrim's Progress
have been noted frequently ever since they were written, one of the most comprehensive and
the most creative is Roland Frye's God, Man, and Satan (Princeton, Princeton University
Press, i960). See especially the Introduction, pp. 3-17.
St. No effort will be made to footnote the quotations from The Pilgrim's Progress. The
"standard edition" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928) is not available to most readers, and the
number and style of printings are so various that identifiable citation is virtually impossible.
Nor is it greatly needed, since the form of the narrative affords convenient reference points.
"Race" here is to be understood as a synonym for "way."
3. The references here, of course, are to various features of the Passover and of the sacrificial
forms.

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in such fashion that the reader is made himself to be a traveler. Like
the Scripture upon which it is so firmly fixed, the book thus offers an
invitation coupled with a kind of fair warning to those who read.
The point does need to be stressed that the Bible was the primary
source for Bunyan's book, as it was indeed for his whole thought and
work. This is not at all to say that it was the only source. Macauley spoke
of "the miracle the tinker hath wrought," but in so doing he offered the
wrong kind of praise, making Bunyan himself into a wholly improbable
author and his work into an accident that happened to him, rather than
the product of creative genius which had its roots, like all such genius,
in the culture and faith all about him.
Thus the secondary sources of The Pilgrim's Progress are surely to be
sought, for example, in Bunyan's own sensitive awareness of life in an
English village and its countryside in the seventeenth century. Among
other commentators, R. H. Coats4 describes the sights that would have
lain in the neighborhood and among the mile or so journey from Elstow
to Bedford: the gloomy prison, the orchards, the pillory, the Roman
highway, the robbers and other "sturdy rogues," and the yearly fair at
Elstow. He remarks as well on the importance of Bunyan's early experi-
ence in the army as indicated by his frequent and exciting use of military
figures and incidents. Like these influences, of course, and underlying the
whole of his life and thought and work, was Bunyan's own spiritual
experience, including his long struggle with the sense of sin, his prone-
ness to despair, and his faith in grace abounding.
One must surely look also to the entire literary and cultural context
of the seventeenth century, with its fondness for allegory and for the
tales of chivalry, its popular understanding of pilgrimage, and especially
its considerable literature which parallels the form of Bunyan's book.
Bunyan himself in The Holy War admits that "some say the Pilgrim's
Progress is not mine," and that charge was inevitable because close
similarity to extant works made plagiarism seem likely. The charge has
been repeated in the centuries since.5 Extensive surveys show that direct
4. John Bunyan (London, Student Christian Movement, 1927). This is an excellent study
book, written in a lively style.
5. For an extensive and sensible treatment see J. B. Wharey, A Study of the Sources of
Bunyan's Allegories (New York, Gordian Press, 1968). Wharey's treatment centers on Deguile-
ville's Pilgrimage of Man and Richard Barnard's The Isle of Man. Henri Talon, the superb
French interpreter of Bunyan in John Bunyan (Eng. trans, by Barbara Wall, London, Rock-
liffe Publishing Corporation, Ltd., 1951) has a comprehensive discussion of possible parallels.

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Interpretation

resemblances are few and direct borrowing improbable, if not impossible.

But even so it would be no more credit to Bunyan to deny him a part
in what was a rich and varied literary tradition than it would to remove
him from the Puritan and Separatist theology which he did not directly
study but which he undoubtedly did take in from his entire surroundings.
One has the impression that in the matter of sources there are so many
possibilities with such great variety, that the one great single factor that
did influence Bunyan's work and his use of all other sources gets over-
looked. As a single and somewhat informative example there is hardly
a writer on Bunyan who does not comment upon the intriguing dowry
Bunyan's wife brought to their marriage : two books of practical religion,
The Plaine Man's Pathway to Heaven Wherein every man may clearly
see whether he shall be saved or damned, by Arthur Dent, and The
Practice of Pietie, directing a Christian how to walk that he may please
God, by Lewis Bayly. And certainly Bunyan himself tells us that he read
these books and found in them things that not only were "pleasing" to
him but which ultimately led him "to Church.5'
But alongside these comments must be placed for perspective the multi-
tude of testimonies to the Bible. In Bunyan's writing neither these books,
nor his particular evangelical experiences, such as the conversation of
the "poor women" which opened up for him first of all the joy of faith,
nor the reading of Luther, holds first place as formative. It is always
Holy Scripture. He was, he says, "never out of the Bible." It was his
home. In the home there were many individual and special influences
but the home itself, which shaped the man and his writing, was the
Word. This is so much so, and so obvious, that it tends to get overlooked
in much the same way that in examining the two books of practical de-
votion brought by his wife, one tends to forget that not only did she also
obviously bring a Bible, but that her husband already had one in his
heart and in his head, so that his reading, as well as his later writing,
was already done through the window of the Word.6
There are various levels at which one becomes aware of the paramount
importance of the Bible for The Pilgrim's Progress. The simplest, and
6. The point is made quite well by Coats, Bunyan, and Richard L. Greaves in John
Bunyan, Courtenay Studies in Reformation Theology, 2 (Abingdon, The Sutton Gourtenay
Press, 1969) where on page 154 he quotes Bunyan's "I have not writ at a venture, nor
borrowed my Doctrine from libraries. I depend upon the sayings of no man. I found it in
the Scriptures of Truth, among the true sayings of God."

65
 most fundamental, is the frequent citation of Scripture, or the obvious
use of Scriptural language and metaphor. In such places it is likely that
Bunyan meant the reader to consult the Bible for greater light, much in
the same way that the New Testament writers give direct or implied
quotation of the Old Testament. A good example is the phrase "pins
and loops" already quoted from the opening Apology. Quoted in this
article it perhaps stands out, but one wonders how many modern readers,
including this particular writer, would instinctively recognize the quota-
tion from Exodus 26:5. It is perhaps as good an example as any that
could be cited, because it does emphasize our distance from the whole
seventeenth century and the gulf that separates the man schooled in the
Bible from the man who may be schooled in all else, and the consequent
difficulty the latter has in comprehending the former.
To go further, one can find the same kind of manifold biblical imagery
and vocabulary that was designed to be identified in many pages of
The Pilgrim's Progress. Not on all, for some of the narrative is simple,
direct, and lively action, where the vocabulary and the imagery are
dictated more by the author's creative literary skill than by his memory.7
There are others where he is more the expositor, commenting upon Scrip-
ture in homiletical, Calvinist language. But still the Scriptural language
and references are predominant.
For example, at the outset of the journey, after reading "his book"
Pilgrim utters the New Testament cry, "What must I do to be saved?"
and answers Evangelist's question, "Wherefore dost thou cry?" by words
from Hebrews, "I perceive . . . that I am condemned to die, and after
that to judgment" (Heb. 9:27). To this Bunyan has him add the per-
ceptive comment, "I find that I am not willing to do the first, not able
to do the second."
In the ensuing conversation of several lines there are quotations from
Matthew 3:7, Matthew 7: ißf., and possibly Psalm 119:105. Immedi-
7. In any treatment of Bunyan's sources and dependence on the Bible, care must be taken
lest his creative talent suffer. Thus Talon's words, "Bunyan was already a novelist. In The
Pilgrim's Progress he wrote two novels—two dissimilar novels: a novel of character and action
in the first part, and a novel of manners in the second. The first part of The Pilgrim's Progress
prefigures the dramatic novel in which time reveals the man; the second foreshadows those
novels in which the characters live, it would seem, only so as to assert themselves as moral
typed—as in Dickens' overcrowded canvases, for example" {Bunyan, p. 220). See also
Coats {Bunyan, pp. 8grT.) for the place of The Pilgrim's Progress in the history of English
prose fiction, and Talon {op. cit., pp. 184ÎÏ.) on Bunyan's realism.

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 Pilgrim Existence
Interpretation

ately thereafter, when Christian begins to run he looks not behind him, a
reference to Genesis 19:17, as is indicated by the somewhat irrelevant
"but fled towards the middle of the plain," In the following conversation
between Christian and Pliable, on a single page, there are quotations
from Titus (1:2), II Timothy (4:8), Revelation (21:4) and in the
brief account of the company of heaven, as might be expected, at least
six others.
Again, as would be expected, in the account of the wonders Christian
sees in the House Beautiful there are places where the language is almost
entirely conflated Scripture quotation, although even here Bunyan some-
times interrupts for his perceptive and even semihumorous comment.
Here also is evidence of Bunyan's delight in the concrete objects of the
biblical narrative and history, the "furniture55 and the "engines55 of the
house, including the hammer and nail with which Jael slew Sisera, the
lamps of Gideon, and David's sling and stone; and in these we sense
again something of the origin of the author's own facility in concrete
imagery and his parabolic skill.
Or again, in the account of the pilgrims5 visit to Vanity Fair, whereas
the metaphor of the Fair itself, with its Britain-row, French-row and
the like, was certainly suggested by the familiar yearly village fairs of
Bunyan's day, he draws out the meaning in Scriptural idiom. Beelzebub
was the chief lord of the fair and had indeed showed the Prince of
Princes himself street to street and thus, "all the kingdoms of the world"
(Matt. 4:8f.). The reaction of the people to the advent of the pilgrims
and to their raiment and languages recalls I Corinthians 4:9^, just as
the failure by the men of the world to comprehend the language of
Canaan recalls I John 4:5. (Indeed, the whole incident reflects parts of
First John.) The pilgrims5 words in answer to the charges made against
them are from Psalm 119:37 and Proverbs 23:23.
Near the end of the first part of The Pilgrim's Progress there is a con-
versation between Christian and Hopeful that reveals Bunyan's delight
in the vivid, concrete, and basically Anglo-Saxon language of Scripture,
to which reference has already been made. As Christian describes Great-
Grace—incidentally assuming that the readers will know not only who
David and Peter are but also Heman and Hezekiah, and why they are
mentioned in this connection, for example, Peter's having been afraid of

67
a "sorry girl"—there is included an extensive quotation, first from Job
41:26-29 and then, somewhat gratuitously, from Job 39:19-25. The ex-
citing verbal picture of "Job's horse55 is surely introduced here simply
because of its poetic, imagistic language, which so closely paralleled Bun-
yan5s own form of speech.
Along with direct quotation and allusions which the author obviously
expected the reader to recognize, there is a second level of Scriptural
usage in The Pilgrim's Progress. These are the places where Scripture
is either assumed or where it is alluded to in a more indirect fashion. As
an example of such assumption, one may take the whole notion of the
progress itself as a kind of basic biblical image, coming directly from the
Letter to the Hebrews but, as is clear in the book, with many implications
drawn from the wanderings of the Children of Israel, from the journey-
ings of Abraham, from the "travels55 of the Lord, and in fact from the
whole of the biblical history. So, too, the various stages of the journey
have not only a kind of psychological soundness8 but are primarily given
and arranged by what the author took to be the right, that is, the Scrip-
tural stages of Christian experience.9
But especially noteworthy is the substructure of indirect allusion, where
no important interpretive point seems to be made, but where the allusion
apparendy comes as a kind of instinctive expression of the author5s famili-
arity with Scripture, its language and its content. Thus, as Coats points
out,10 Christian weeping before the Cross probably suggests Zechariah
12:10. So also the curious conclusion to the journey through the Valley
of the Shadow of Death, where Christian overtakes Faithful by intense
effort, so that the "last was first."
Or again there is the strange incident of the man of black flesh who
catches Christian in a net, which is finally "explained55 in some fashion
by a reference to Proverbs 29:5, "A man that flattereth his neighbor
spreadeth a net for his feet," although, as is frequently noted, this Flat-
terer is left strangely undeveloped in character or place in the allegory.
In the Second Part there is even more extensive allusion. In the mar-
velous interludes in the inn with Gaius (the "host55 of Romans 16:23)
8. For a typical treatment see M. Esther Harding's Journey into Self (New York, Longmans,
Green and Co., 1956).
9. Here the influence of Luther and particularly his Commentary on Galatians was strong,
overriding the traditionally Calvinistic vocabulary.
10. Goats, Bunyan, p. 85.

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the whole conversation and narrative turn on biblical allusion. There is

Gaius5 speech on behalf of women, with line after line of reference to the
places of women in the gospel history. There is the lengthy menu for the
pilgrims5 supper: a "heave-shoulder55 and a "wave-breast55; a "bottle of
wine55 as "red as blood55; a "dish of milk55 well crumbed; a dish of "butter
and honey,55 the Lord5s dish when he was young; "apples,55 which al-
though they had once been the means of beguiling are now to be eaten
by those who are "sick of love55; and finally "nuts,55 which provide an
allusion to Song of Songs 2:3 and also a kind of closing riddle on the
symbolic character of the meal. Examples of this kind could be multi-
plied. Here it is enough to say that such allusions serve as a kind of inte-
grative factor of style at the same time that they provide stimulation to
thought and, as the author hoped, to Christian experience.
The most important aspect of this study and a rich field for study and
further investigation is Bunyan's interpretation of Scripture, the third
level. The reference here is not to his obvious knowledge of biblical fact
and imagery, not even to his use of Scripture, but to his understanding of
the meaning of revelation. And here it seems to me Bunyan is long over-
due for a revival of interest because he stands a great deal closer to us
than many interpreters of Scripture who may be nearer in time by cen-
turies. For Bunyan's understanding of Scripture, as it focuses on Christian
life and experience, "teaches about God through the acts, experiences
and aspiration of men.5511 Although the theology of The Pilgrìm's
Progress can be described12 in itself and can be related to biblical truth,
the fact is that for Bunyan the Bible is primarily a message about life,
and hence theological studies of the book can be paralleled by equal num-
bers of psychological ones.
In Christian's struggle with Apollyon, to choose a single example,
there is a classic expression of the struggle, not against the demands of
an exterior law or morality but against conscience itself. Although Bun-
yan5s imagery is never more elaborate than it is here in his description of
the "foul fiend,55 it is clear that he is describing the Christian conscience,
as it condemns and judges. Bunyan did not make a specific notation here,
but it seems clear that he was interpreting the passage in I John 1:5—
2:2, for the accusations of the conscience-fiend and the answers that the
11. Frye, God, Man, and Satan, p. 172.
12. See especially Greaves, Bunyan.

69
man of faith must give follow in the order of the biblical passage. One
feels here, moreover, in strong form the kind of existential understanding
that in fact permeates the entire work.
That is certainly the case with the pattern or the program of the
book. It ought not to be necessary, but experience has taught that it is,
to point out that in Bunyan's day a "progress55 was not a kind of Dewey
or Coué, progressive, step-by-step betterment (although this was certainly
the way the Victorian interpreters who delighted in the book understood
it) but a simple "journey.55 Captain John Smith, in 1610, writes that he
"made a progress on the James River,55 and earlier the Virgin Queen
and her court made "progress55 from London to Canterbury.
Pilgrim's journey was no unrealistic and gradual sanctification. In a
deep sense Christian was the same man at the end as he had been at the
beginning, a point made powerfully by Bunyan in the fear and the doubt
that seize the majority of Pilgrims at the threshold of victory. Even more
strongly, and in typical metaphor, the point is made when Chrisian sees
that there is a door to Hell hard by the gate of Heaven. It is then that
one is meant to see, as has been seen by Bunyan's best interpreters, that
there is also a door to Heaven hard by the gate of Hell.
Bunyan understood Christian life in Scriptural terms as a kind of exist-
ence between the possibilities of Heaven and Hell, always drawn by the
hopeful possibility of Heaven and moved by the fearful possibility of
Hell. Both possibilities are described in the most realistic and concrete
external symbols, but both are essentially within the Pilgrim self. De-
cision naturally plays a dominant role in Christian experience, the
decision to go ahead, frequently not because of any clear or logical
reason, but simply as an act of faith. Faith is to go ahead, however falter-
ingly. Whether one runs or only "makes shift to scrabble on" it is the
movement that identified the authentic life.
Resemblance to S0ren Kierkegaard is to be seen, of course, in this
understanding of faith, and as well, as Frye points out,13 in many other
features of the Allegory. Talon also draws the parallels between Bunyan
and Kierkegaard, particularly in the fact that
before Kierkegaard he demonstrated that the man who is really alive is the man
who is moving forward; he may stumble, but he gets up again; he is fervent
13. See Frye, op. cit., pp. 991"., 137.

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and full of will; he is very much here and yet at the same time he is elsewhere,
because his gaze is fixed on a horizon that is always receding.14
In the literary tradition of the Western World there are few treatments
of the life of faith and the nature of faith itself that can match Bunyan's
in any respect. To deal with his subject, even Bunyan had finally to
assemble a whole company of pilgrims, whose experiences run from the
little of Little-Faith and Mr. Fearing to the great of Greatheart and
Valiant-for-Truth, from the mustard seed to the large tree. The straight
line that runs from Paul to Augustine to Luther, to Bunyan, and to
Kierkegaard is in the deepest sense the biblical word, setting forth the
truth of human existence, and finding in that word the key to ultimate
truth.

14. Talon, Bunyan, p. 142.

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 ^ s
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