Derek Thomas: The Pilgrim’s Progress

welcome to reformation bible college we're here in the hanson rare book room and this rare book room houses several collections including a collection of john bunyan's works and several editions of pilgrim's progress well we brought in dr derek thomas to give us a special lecture on pilgrim's progress let's go over now to the library and hear from dr thomas welcome uh it's good to see you again and it's always a joy to be here at rbc and ligonier and i i saw the rare book room when it was maybe halfway done and so tonight was the first time for me to see it in all of its magnificent beauty it it really is something very very special well in my dream the man began to run he hadn't run far from his own door when his wife and children noticed what he was doing and cried out to him come back come back the man put his fingers in his ears and ran on life life eternal life well this begins a road trip it'll take two volumes to uh un cover the entire journey for christian and for his wife christiana and therefore children and it's in it's in two parts and pilgrim's progress uh was the most published book in the english language uh second only of course to the bible up until maybe three generations ago the statistics suggest that right into the early part of the 20th century pilgrim's progress especially part one was the most read book uh in english well let's drop into the 17th century into the 1640s in england there's a civil war taking place round heads on one side uh cavaliers on the other side parliamentary forces uh the forces of the king charles the first and in westminster abbey in the summer of 1643 in the jerusalem chamber 50 to 100 divines will talk about who they were and and the makeup of them in a moment uh sat and deliberated on a daily uh basis to produce in 1645 uh the westminster confession of faith the larger catechism the shorter catechism uh the directory for the public worship of god uh a treatise on the form of church government and much else besides let's move from london for a minute to bedford bedford is a small town it's still relatively a small town in bedfordshire in the middle of england and um stirrings are taking place uh civil war has broken out uh there have been rumors of a civil war between the king and the parliament between the king and the largely puritan backed forces in england from roughly 1638 but by 1643 this civil war has truly begun there's a rise of independency from the church of england unthinkable in the previous century in uh the 1500s the 16th century that would have been unthinkable but now uh in the middle of the 17th century there are uh there are churches and and christians who are independent of the church of england with its control from westminster and the control especially by the king from the time of henry viii and his sense of divine right to rule uh supreme uh over uh the church of england this is puritan england on the rise since the elizabethan settlement in the 16th century and by puritan not a term of complement when it was first implied but puritan was a term used to demonstrate their separation their purity their separation from the world and worldliness and for their separation from the episcopal church of england with its book of common prayer revised as it had been in the previous century by queen elizabeth the first the puritans and it's a broad term and we'll we'll cover the breadth of it in a moment but the puritans thought that the reformation in england just hadn't gone far enough it hadn't gone as far as it had in germany it hadn't gone as far as it had in uh in holland uh it hadn't certainly hadn't gone as far as it had in scotland uh an independent uh country at this uh at this point uh the church of england was erastian that is to say it had connections with the state with the civil government and with the king in particular and for the puritans that was oppressive it was unbiblical uh it was anti-reformation and they wish to withdraw they wish to separate from that in four years time in 1649 charles the first the king would have his head chopped off in the center of london in a public square there were puritans present richard sibbs was there and we are told fainted when he saw the king's head drop to the floor these are turbulent times and charles the first for whom cavaliers were waging war on his behalf against parliamentary uh forces uh was was uh he was a he was a great king he was all for pump and ceremony and and and ritual and and and so on um but the one issue that the puritans disliked about him was his um aristocratic rule and and government over the church of england in 1645 when the divines finally brought about the westminster confession of faith the westminster assembly would it would carry on for another seven or eight years dwindling down and down in forces uh until 1653 or so but by 1645 a year and a half after they had begun most of their work um was done john bunyan was just a teenager he was 17 years old he was a tinker braziler that is to say a peripatetic metal walker if you if your pot or pan had a hole in it bunyam was the person uh who would come and fix it and he would come to your home and and and fix that pot or pan uh he lied about his age and uh was conscripted uh into the parliamentary forces uh to fight in the civil war i don't think he ever saw a battle uh he saw the results of battle uh at 17 uh he would have seen some of the great battles of the civil war and he would have seen he would have seen the results of them the men who lost their arms and lost their legs and with horrendous injuries without the benefits even of contemporary analgesics and antibiotics and he would have seen men with limbs being amputated and and dying of disease a long and and painful death by 16 the late 1640s um bunyan married now he joined the parliamentary forces partly because his father's wife his mother uh died uh while he was a teenager and his father remarried very very quickly and the relationship seems to have soured and uh so so bunyan uh in his teenage years uh escapes from the home it's a familiar narrative in any century uh in our own not least uh in uh the 17th century by the late 1640s when bunyan is in his early 20s he's 20 21 or so he's he's um he's uh he's out of the war uh he gets married um we don't we don't know her name he marries her he has four children two boys and two girls the first daughter mary was blind she died in her teenage years when bunyan will be in prison uh extraordinary of of all that we know about john brennan we have no idea what his first wife's name was he came across a preacher this man made it much his business bunion rights and he's talking here in an autobiographical account of his own conversion in a book that's almost as famous as pilgrim's progress grace abounding to the chief of sinners this man made it his business to deliver the people of god from all those hard and unsound tests that by nature we are prone to he would bid us take special heed that we took not up any truth upon trust as from this or that or any other man or men but cry mightily to god that he would convince us of the reality thereof and establish us therein by his own spirit in the holy word uh this man this preacher that bunyan is writing about is a baptist a calvinistic baptist baptist of reformed convictions a growing emergence of such baptists in the 1630s and 16 40s and he later will become in cromwell's era in the next decade the rector of saint john's formerly a church of england but but now an independent congregation but still called saint john's in bedford and that man's name was john gifford john gifford had fought in the civil war and he had fought not on the side of the parliament that bunyan had joined but he had fought on the side of the royalists on the side of the king extraordinary and and this is uh john gifford who uh was john bunyan's mentor he is the man who brought john bunyan humanly speaking to know the gospel and to know jesus christ and to be converted i mentioned john gifford because john gifford plays an enormous part in pilgrim's progress there are characters in parts one and part two of pilgrim's progress that are clearly based on the character of john gifford bunyan's first preacher and friend the character of evangelist for example in pilgrim's progress who appears almost immediately in part one and and and with christian and and and and helps him especially uh deal with mr legality uh right off the bat law and gospel uh there's the very grave person uh that christian sees in the house of interpreter uh painting and uh this this this man has a a a bible uh in his hands with a a book in his hands uh and it's and it's a representation of john gifford or in the second part of pilgrim's progress mr greatheart interpreters uh fearless leader for christiana and the four boys well gifford died in 1555 not long after bunyan's conversion banyan was born in 1628 and in 1649 the year of the regicide the year the charles the first head was cut off parliamentarians had won the civil war bunyan got married he was as i say 20 or 21 and though we do not know her name she brought to the table two books lewis bailey's practice of piety and arthur dents plain man's pathway to heaven uh two very typical puritan books uh about the nature of the christian life and the need for godliness and holiness and and perseverance and commitment to uh the word uh of god he was not a christian when he got married he tells us such in grace abounding he was a sabbath breaker he was caught playing a game called tip cat on the sabbath day and a voice from heaven which said wilt thou have thy sins and go to heaven or have thy sins and go to hell wilt thou wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven and have thy sins and go to hell he'd been in the army he had fought well maybe not fought but he had seen battles and mixed with soldiers and he had learned to cast and two women called him out uh they were outside of their homes and they called him out and it was like the voice of god in the early 1650s bunion was soundly converted it was a long and difficult process it was similar to luther's and bunyan in that process came across luther's commentary on galatians and particularly his comments on the second chapter of galatians and the doctrine of justification by faith alone in christ alone apart from the works of the law he was received into gifford's congregation and in 15 in 1653 he was 25 years old and and within a couple of years uh gifford is dead and bunyan young man in his twenties he had left school when he was probably 11 or 12. he had no education he certainly hadn't been to cemetery he hadn't read a great deal but he becomes the preacher in this church in bedford in 1659 and of course during the 1650s after the civil war is ended cromwell the commander-in-chief becomes uh the lord protector it's never a good thing when a soldier becomes the king the ruler and there are all sorts of states in our world today who can tell you that's not a good thing and it wasn't a good thing in the 1650s that decade was the only decade that england has ever been a republic and it would all come to a crashing end when when cromwell dies his son takes over his son did not possess his father's gifts for sure and and by 1660 uh the monarch charles ii um the son of charles the first uh is on the throne and everything turns 180. well in 1660 as you can imagine when the restoration of the monarchy takes place there's revenge there are acts um the clarendon code the acts of uniformity there were several of them uh puritans were not allowed to preach in the church of england unless they were formally trained and and formally set apart so bunyan would have them open the door the windows of the church and he would preach through the window there were laws about the so-called five-mile act that no congregation could gather for public worship within five miles of this congregation and be preached to by someone like bunyan and so they would walk five miles put down a stake and they would cross over to the other side and and they would have their service in in the woodsworth bunyan was arrested and the judge in his trial is a judge who has spent 12 years in prison by the hands of the parliamentarians who had won um the civil war cromwell's men had put this judge in prison for 12 years and now he was bunions judge bunyan would eventually spend 12 years in prison well during his imprisonment in bedford in a bedford jail he had remarried they had had a child still born and now within a year or so of that marriage uh bunyan is in uh prison she would work valiantly over the next uh 10 12 years visiting the houses of parliament pleading with judges and so on to try and get him uh released and raising of course bunions for children it's during his imprisonment uh probably uh late into his imprisonment in the second half of his imprisonment he begins to write pilgrim's progress he thought he was going to die in prison the law suggested that he would be hanged and in 1662 and 1663 he wrote uh i will pray with the spirit it's a lengthy treatise it was attack on it was an attack on the book of common prayer now why would he oppose why did the puritans oppose the book of common prayer because god alone is lord of the conscience and have left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men and there were things in the book of prayer rubrics and bowing and kneeling and and facing in a certain direction and priests investments and candles and and all of those things which were extraneous to the word of god he would eventually uh write a great deal this man with very little learning uh no schooling no university uh education but he would write eventually uh over 60 books or or or treatises two million words and all with a quill pen he's famous for the so-called ocular catechism a visual aid styled as it is after um the much praised ocular catechism of william perkins earlier in the very first decade of the 1600s and the order and causes of salvation and damnation bunyan called it it was very very popular calvinism dominated the first half of the 16th century uh in england and and and by now uh it is uh on the wane when charles ii takes the throne in 1660 calvinism is on the wane and and there is revenge uh for the puritans well the bedford gentry regarded bunyan as a subversive mainly because he didn't abide by authority and his very claim that preaching was his vocation was to the bedford gentry proof of his subversiveness his vocation they kept on insisting was a tinker not a preacher bunyan was a puritan he was committed to reformed theology and piety all of life was holy to the lord the source was scripture scripture alone christ alone faith alone apart from works he wasn't trained in the great universities of oxford and cambridge he was in the parlance of the 17th century a mechanic a mechanic he was an exceptional puritan oxford university press published a collected uh his collected writings 17 volumes just a few decades ago maybe maybe 30 or 40 years ago they published collected writings of john bunyan 17 volumes doctrinal theological allegorical controversial 2000 pages 2 million words and when he preached in bedford hundreds of people came to hear him and when he preached in london after his release from prison thousands came to hear him john owen who had been the chaplain to oliver cromwell on the parliamentary side in the civil war and and and afterwards uh as the um eventually the dean of oxford uh university uh by the 1660s john owen is in the court of charles ii there is a survivor for you he was on the wrong side of the civil war but he's in the king's court in the 1660s charles ii apparently chastised him because he said that he loved bunyan and charles ii rebuked him for his love for this this this barbarian this tinker and john owen is said to have replied that he would give up all his learning if he could preach one sermon like john bunyan well clearly bunyan was a man who suffered one of the great mottos of the puritan era written in 1646 by a puritan by the name of john geary uh in a in a tract the character of an old english puritan and he coined the latin uh phrase vincent key patatur meaning he who suffers conquers he who suffers conquers he was arrested because of his unlicensed preaching he was arrested because of the so-called conventionals that he gathered together and he wrote pilgrim's progress part one it was published he was released briefly and then after some months he was rearrested and put back in prison again and in pilgrim's progress part one there's a moment in the allegory where the author says i awoke from my dream and then i fell asleep again and dreamt some more and that is the indication that all that's written up to that point was written during that first part of his imprisonment and the second half actually it's more like the second um tenth of it uh is written during uh that second period of his uh it was wildly popular it was published he was released from prison in 1672 and part one of pilgrim's progress was published six years later in 1678 and it was wildly popular like no other book in the 17th century and it was so successful it made him income for sure income that he had never made during the 12 years he had spent uh in prison but it made part two absolutely necessary part one tells the story of christian his journey from the city of destruction to the celestial city part two picks up the narrative about his wife in the allegory his wife and four children the four boys brennan himself had two boys and two girls but in the allegory it's four boys christiana and the four boys they go through the same journey they pass through the same places that you see in part one but in many ways part two is even better than the first part although i think only one in a hundred who's read part one has actually read part two of pilgrim's uh progress he was urged by john one and others to write that second part to finish off the story partly because others under pseudonyms to cash in on the success of the first part there were there are at least three part twos that we know of written by those uh by by uh folks that we don't even know their names uh and written just for the purposes i think of making some money and so it was urgent uh that bunyan published part two which he did in 1684 four years before his death what is pilgrim's progress well it's a book it's an allegory it's a story it's a road trip it's a travel dialogue it's very much like lord of the rings or the hobbit in its style though more allegorical than the hobbit and the lord of the rings perhaps less sophisticated than the hobbit and lord of the rings but it's a it's a road trip a journey with characters and at each stage there are gospel issues emerging it's a narrative about conversion and the necessity of conversion and indeed part one got bunion into some difficulties why does evangelists tell christian do you see john wicket meaning narrow john wicket gate why doesn't he send him immediately to the cross why send him first of all to the narrow gate why does why does christian in part one have this burden on his shoulder for so long something that even spurgeon criticized and the answer is not that bunyan was trying to say that this is the norm as is often understood it was simply that this was an autobiography this was the manner in which he came to christ that burden fell not instantly for john bunyan but after a struggle of several years much like martin luther if there's one thing that pilgrim's progress emphasizes that is relevant for the age in which we live it's that the christian life is a battle a battle against the world and the flesh and the devil a battle against napoleon and one of the most graphic and moving parts of part one of pilgrim's progress is john bunyan's description of his engagement with apollyon you want to know something of the devil's wiles as paul refers to them in ephesians chapter 6 well bundyan i think has the measure of it it's full of wonderful and extraordinary characters and reading it will equip you not just now or for next week or next year but for the entire journey that lies ahead of you as a christian the description of crossing the river and then to the gates of the celestial city and the very very moving section in the very final paragraph of pilgrim's progress where one has crossed managed to cross the river but tries to enter the celestial uh city only to find that the entrance leads straight to hell and you're not expecting it unless you know it's coming it's one of those jaw-dropping moments right at the end of pilgrim's progress i first read pilgrim's progress when within a year or so being converted i was 18 at university when i was converted and i read my wife's best friend at the time she wasn't my wife then gave me a copy for my birthday of a leather-bound edition of pilgrim's progress and i have it to this day and and many others my challenge to you [Music] is have you read pilgrim's progress have you read it from cover to cover no my challenge to you is have you read both parts of pilgrim's progress it would be like only ringing reading one part of the trilogy that is tolkien's lord of the rings how could you possibly do that well this is just a teaser or a taster it's one of the great books one of the great books in english literature let alone in christian literature here's a man who was thoroughly reformed in his uh in his doctrine in his soteriology here's a man who understands the evil of the world and the difficulty of the task to persevere the need to persevere even to the end it's gripping it's going to help you uh on your journey and i would suggest that it becomes one of your lifelong companions that you take with you on the rest of your journey i trust from here to the celestial city by faith alone in christ alone apart from the works of the law we're going to have some questions from our audience it's come to my attention that there's something called bunions hymn could you tell us a little bit more about that yes indeed uh it's in part two of pilgrim's progress it's a great question it's a wonderful character again based after john gifford the preacher through whom bunyan came eventually to faith this character is called mr valiant for truth uh you know who's mr valiant for truth well it's dr spruill it's uh john macarthur you know they're mr valiant for truth it's steve lawson you know they're they're mr violin for truth they stand up for truth against all odds and uh mr valiant for truth is a wonderful character in uh part two of pilgrim's progress and he sings this hymn uh who would true valor see let him come hither one here will constant be come wind come whether there's no discouragement shall make him once relent his first avowed intent to be a pilgrim who so beset him round with dismal stories do but themselves confound his strength the morris no lion can him fright he'll with a giant fight but he will have a right to be a pilgrim hob goblin or foul fiend can daunt his spirit he knows he at the end shall life inherit then fancies fly away he'll not fear what men say he'll labor night and day to be a pilgrim well in my teenage years i wasn't a christian i went to a secular uh state school grammar school six in the in the sixties um it was it was seven years of latin uh but and and assembly every morning with prayers and and a reading of scripture and we sang this hymn we sang it hundreds of times but no idea uh that it was from pilgrim's progress but but so this is a very familiar hymn from from my teenage education school years i wasn't aware that john bunyan had a catechism much less an ocular catechism can you tell me a little bit about it and post organized yes that's a great question so this ocular catechism so i i need to go back to the late 1590s and into the 1600s william perkins the systematic theology professor let me call him that at cambridge university a calvinist with a capital c a supralibserian with a capital s for another occasion uh meaning meaning he he was he was a calvinist and and a someone who believed in sovereignty to the nth degree uh and so if you would uh if you wanted to be a minister uh in the early 1600s you had two places to go you could go to cambridge or you'd go to oxford and in both places you would get calvinism but if you went to cambridge you would get calvinism out of your ears and perkins published this ocular catechism [Music] showing the way of salvation for the elect and the way of damnation for the non-elect going through all of the stages from calling to regeneration to faith and repentance and and sanctification and eventually through all kinds of struggles to glorification there were many many of them but perkins is one that we still remember and bunyan wrote one when he was in prison bunions is more experiential perkins is theological bunion is more experiential and the proof texts for the various parts as you as you go through life from being an unconverted sinner to finally making it all the way to heaven or if you're on the other side uh from an unconverted sinner all the way to hell the proof texts at each stage are are quite funny because some of them i i think mean something entirely different from what bunion is is suggesting that they mean but those characters i mean this is an age before books uh before books were available in in homes and very few people had had a copy of the bible in their home when when bunyan uh began preaching the only place that you'd find a printed bible uh would be in in the church uh so these catechisms uh these ocular catechisms and and uh they would be printed in you know this sort of size were wildly popular as a way of teaching theology and as a way of teaching for bunion experiential theology sound theology biblical theology dr thomas my question um is you you spoke of uh bunyan coming to christ at about 18 i believe or 20 around 20 years old and that his pastor basically passed away when he was 25. uh you said no education so could you speak to the fact that a man with virtually no education steps into a pulpit and does what bunyan did to the point where a man like john owens is envious of his preachy can you address that in an era of academia is really so emphasized that's a great great question and and various people studying the 17th century have made have drawn different conclusions christopher hill who's one of the great scholars of the 17th century uh drew a sort of marxist conclusion uh this was the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and and bunyan is always blue color and and he's always emphasizing his lack of learning i think in the end it's in his interest to do so because it creates a kind of fascination uh the truth of the matter is uh that bunion was unique you could draw the conclusion uh therefore you don't need to go to seminary therefore you don't need rbc uh you can go straight from high school actually you could you could have gone straight from 12 to gospel ministry and and we know people i know people uh in in non-denominational churches here in the united states who've done just that uh who have absolutely no seminary education whatsoever and i think that would be the wrong conclusion when you read some of bunyan's theological works they are extremely difficult when bunyan for example writes about the issue of law and gospel and john owen or was it luther it might have been luther who said that he who knows the difference between law and gospel is a theologian and it was certainly an issue in the 17th century but it's an issue right now it's always an issue it's an issue for paul in in galatians chapter 2 law and and gospel and when you read bunyan right he had no formal education but he certainly had a grasp of the english language he had a grasp of english grammar uh he had a grasp of literature he doesn't quote like like owen does he doesn't quote the church fathers or augustine or aquinas or calvin or bunyan the only person i think bunyan ever quotes is luther uh and sometimes he of you will say things like you know the only book i've ever read is luther's commentary on galatians i don't think that's actually true he probably had read more than he's letting on but he was gifted this is a this is a this is a gifting of the holy spirit that god can raise up um an individual in extreme cases like spurgeon who who likewise had not had a seminary education um but spurgeon would go on to to um found a a school of study for preachers so he wasn't opposed to learning i do think that bunyan makes more of his lack of learning in the interests of i think gaining at its worst level gaining sympathy but but i think it's in his interest to do so but he was a much smarter person than he makes himself out to be thank you hello um my question is you said that the pilgrims progress book was a very popular book up until the 20th century my question is what about that book made it so popular i think from its most basic level it's just a cracking good story i mean it's it's it's a really good story uh both parts and actually in my opinion the second part is is a much better story than the first part the first part gets a little confused around christian's conversion because he's bunion is writing an autobiographical description that is not the experience of everyone my conversion was sudden and dramatic i can tell you it was in december the 28th in 1971 at about 11 o'clock at night i mean i can be that specific but my wife can't tell you a single day in her entire life when she didn't believe she was raised in a presbyterian home she went to church twice on sunday and sunday school she sat her on the piano singing hymns with her mother on sunday afternoon she went to midweek meetings at the church she never remembers a single day that she didn't believe in jesus and and so each of our conversion stories are probably going to be different it but but that doesn't matter that's not the point the point is are we trusting in jesus christ and in him alone for our salvation that's the point the manner in which that comes about comes about experientially will differ from person to person john the baptist was converted in his mother's womb saul of tarsus was an adult when he was converted samuel once again was probably converted in his mother's womb um so each each one of us has a different narrative as to how we actually came to christ well thank you uh for those wonderful um questions uh deep and thoughtful uh as they were and i trust it's given you a love for john bunyan and for his wonderful book pilgrim's progress well thank you dr thomas for being with us and for wedding our appetites to either read it for the first time or to return to it so thank you could you all join with me in thanking dr thomas for his time you

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Keywords: derek thomas, the pilgrim's progress, christian, christianity, the christian life, the world, the flesh, the devil, the world the flesh and the devil, dr derek thomas, john bunyan, the life of john bunyan, rare book room series, reformation bible college, bible, college, bible college, academic lecture, dr. derek thomas, reformed, reformed theology, theology, god, jesus christ

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Length: 46min 47sec (2807 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021