As we approach a book like Pilgrim’s Progress, it should be with humility and a prayerful expectancy.
It is - after the Bible itself - probably the book that has outsold every other published Christian book… ever (excluding liturgical books such as the Book of Common Prayer)! It is considered by many scholars as one of the most important books ever written. It has never been out of print, and is currently available in over 200 languages It has been on the ‘must read before I die’ lists of many of the world’s great thinkers and leaders, from Benjamin Franklin to Spurgeon (who claimed to have read it over a hundred times) and C.S.Lewis; with one contemporary scholar at least arguing that it should be required reading ‘for all Christians of all denominations of all ages’.
John Owen, a contemporary of Bunyan, and likely the greatest theologian the English speaking world has ever produced, told Charles II he would gladly give up all his learning if he could preach like Bunyan.
Simply from a literary perspective it signalled the birth of a whole new way of writing, betraying the aesthetic instinct of Biblical Christianity, and its impulse to the development of culture and literature. From a Christian perspective it is one of the most insightful books of pastoral theology at the Church’s disposal. It is saturated in the Bible’s way of thinking, exposes the dynamics of the soul, and lays out the reality of Christian experience so compellingly that it resonates with the disciple of Christ in any age and in any culture. When originally published, the book became an instant best seller, and by his death, Bunyan was preaching to congregations of thousands.
For us it has an added advantage. In writing the foreword to another Christian Classic (On the Incarnation), C.S. Lewis highlights the value of reading books from a different age:
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books [or ideas, practices, etc.] that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it ... We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century … lies where we have never suspected it. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books.
Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than we are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction…
As we read this classic over the next few weeks, it is worth doing so slowly, prayerfully, and with an anticpation that the Spirit will use a book so packed with Biblical insight and imagery, to help us understand ourselves, our God, our pilgrimage… and to correct and rebuke us where our thinking on such matters is skewed or inadequate. It promises to be an exciting season!
