Why Pilgrim’s Progress is Better Than The Sequel: Part The Second

Conflict is the engine of fiction. . . .

The more hopeless you can render the situation, the more powerful your ending will be.

— Jerry B. Jenkins[1]

A life without tests and challenges is a life without growth and improvement.

— The Daily Stoic Jun 29, 2022

The height of bravery is to realize that you will inevitably die, and still live rightly anyway.

— Jordan Peterson[2]

If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.

— Proverbs 24:10

One reason that the first part of Pilgrim’s Progress[3] is better than the second part is that the first part is at great pains to distinguish between post-regenerate sanctification of the saved and unregenerate legalism of the unsaved. This is one thing that the defrocked antinomian Tullian Tertullian got right: “Sanctification” outside of Christ is spiritual suicide. Just ask Mr. Legality. If we take Faulkner’s qualification for the only thing worth writing about to be the human heart in conflict with itself, the first part of Pilgrim’s Progress is worth more than the sequel. This is partly because the distributed consciousness of the group means that there isn’t much conflict in the group. There are children and bodyguards. Some may say that this illustrates how each Christian’s journey to the Celestial City is not the same, but it is clear that these later pilgrims have yet to have resisted the world the flesh and the devil to the point of shedding blood. Because their experience is less harrowing than the archetypal Christian, their experience will necessarily be less inspiring by example. None of them watched their friend be burned to death in vanity fair. They skipped it because Bunyan was either being an unreliable narrator or engaged in retroactive continuity to explain that vanity fair is actually not required for everyone to go through anymore. Likewise the slough of despair has stepping stones in the second book, even though it is implied in the first part that slogging through the slough is required by every Christian.

In the first part, Pilgrim leaves the path, goes through a shortcut, and is imprisoned in Doubting Castle. He is told repeatedly Giant Despair that he should just kill himself because he will never get out. Because Giant Despair is a part of Pilgrim’s mind metaphorically, the Giant is weakened by sunlight, which relieves depression. After a long time, Pilgrim remembers that he has a key, the promises of the gospel, to the giant’s dungeon. by Pilgrim infiltrating Castles of Despair and defeating Giant Despair over and over and over until his spirit breaks completely, and he becomes a Despair Giant in a Castle of Despair himself precisely because he tried to help others out of despair. It seems so similar in some ways that it is hard to separate the true borrowed capital from the false mysticism of despair. As I have said before, I take issue with Bunyan placing Doubting Castle near a shortcut in the way. This is a strange thing for a man who was imprisoned for a decade to do. Yet it cannot be denied that Pilgrim left the path. It cannot be easily said that Bunyan did the same and was imprisoned as a result. This is a heart in conflict with itself the likes of which Pilgrim’s family in the sequel never encounter.

If you are not the protagonist of your life, then what does that make Pilgrim’s Progress? A lie? An undesirable frame of reference? Heresy? Pilgrim was the hero, not Jesus. Should Bunyan have made Jesus the protagonist instead of Pilgrim? The attempt to show the distance between the Holiness of Christ and the lowliness of Pilgrim necessitates Pilgrim being the protagonist. Saying that Jesus is the hero of your story sounds kind of knocks of Christological Gnosticism. It implies that there is nothing worth pursuing on earth, and that death is the only way for Christian be truly reunited with Christ, so the sooner the better.[4] If Pilgrim is not the hero of his story, he cannot do heroic things. He cannot fight Apollyon. He cannot apply the promises of the Gospel. He cannot share the Gospel with others. He cannot make a pilgrimage to the Celestial City. Jesus can do that. Not Pilgrim. These statements proceeding from that statement that Jesus is the hero of your life are irrational. I know how to use the subjunctive tense, but it takes away from the force of the consequences of an argument. Every choice has consequences. Jesus cannot make decisions for Christian. There is no hero in the sequel in this sense.

If Jesus is the protagonist of your life, then why is Christian the protagonist of Pilgrim’s Progress? If protagonists were unhelpful to the sanctification of the church, protagonists would be banned, and Jesus would be the only character. Having protagonists other than Jesus would encourage self-idolatry of placing oneself at the center of the universe. If Jesus is the protagonist of your life, why is he rarely mentioned in the Old Testament? It would be one thing if it were stated in Genesis 3 that all sin comes after pride, and that no sin comes without pride, but that a general proverb stating that pride comes before falls appears equivocal, and hardly universal. Having no knowledge of the original languages, I could be wrong, but emphasizing the sin of pride to the degree that encourages Giant Despair is itself sinful and unbalanced.

If the full armor of God does not involve the use of weaponry, then why is Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress portrayed with a sword, in mortal combat, with the devil? Tanks are called armor, but they also shoot non-defensive giant bullets. Armor generally contains both armor, and weapons. I doubt that Paul described the sword of roman legionnaire for nothing. Legionnaires generally fought wars; with weapons; while wearing armor. Christian wore armor. Paul said to put on the whole armor of God. The Bible is a sword. These are all metaphors that Paul used to describe necessities of the Christian life that Bunyan applies to pilgrim engaging in mortal combat. In the sequel, any combat is more muted and mundane, as the bodyguard of the group is not the hero. The pilgrims in the second part are just coasting on Pilgrim’s achievements, but not in the same way that Pilgrim depends on Christ.

Sometimes I wonder if the sometimes rejection of portrayals of Batman as dark is a form of rejecting the awareness of God’s glory and man’s evil. A hero is judged by the strength (and depravity) of his rogues gallery. Pilgrim’s Progress wasn’t nicknamed Dangerous Journey because of how much fun Pilgrim had. A journey with no obstacles ceases to be a story. In this way, Superman often reflects in a way a Docetic view of Christ in His incarnation: a being with no limitations and no pain. Batman often reflects Christ’s actual incarnation with pain and suffering due to limitations put on Him to be the perfect sacrifice. Batman in the moral center of the DC universe, and the further removed from Christianity he becomes, his mission becomes aimless drudgery with a distorted view of justice. For now, Superman is Arminian positivity about man’s nature. Batman is Calvinistically pessimistic about man’s nature, and this is the closest analogue that most people get to pilgrim. Like Batman, if Pilgrim had no obstacles, he would be superman. His children have few obstacles, so their journey is far less dangerous by comparison.

𝐈𝐟 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞, 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐁𝐮𝐧𝐲𝐚𝐧 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐏𝐢𝐥𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐦 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐬 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐥 𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐨? 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐲?

One of the values of Pilgrim’s Progress is that merely stating that Pilgrim is not the main character of his life doesn’t really mean a lot. Pilgrim still has stuff to do and endure pain to reach the Celestial City of God. If God’s asei divine nature is emphasized too much, Christ becomes distorted into a Docetic ghost who never feels pain. If His human nature is overemphasized and a television show is made of Him, he becomes merely animated guts. The modern analogue for Pilgrim’s Progress more than Batman may be Berserk, considered widely to be the greatest manga ever made, and is often compared to the work of Gustave Doré. In Berserk, the protagonist Guts has two natures, so he is a part of two worlds. Forgetting that either of those exists can have deadly consequences and usually does for everyone around him. This is indirectly another way that the work of Kentaro Miura reflects that of Gustave Doré. Doré occasionally depicts the Damned in Hell as shocked that they can’t see through Dante, because he isn’t a Docetic ghost like they are. He has his mortal shell intact even though he is walking through Hell. Unlike Guts, Dante is often shocked by the acquaintances that he finds there working out their Damnation in pride and hatred of God. In Berserk, Guts isn’t shocked by the monstrously deformed nature of popes or similar clerics. There is some indications that Miura read parts of Revelation because there seems to be a reference in his work to it. There is little in fiction that can rival the darkness of Christ’s appearance in Revelation 14:14. There is no doubt that Bunyan, who was said to bleed Scripture, read Revelation. Pilgrim leaves the City of Man, except now it is called the City of Destruction. Christ didn’t carry Christian to the Celestial city in Pilgrim’s Progress. He had to walk, despite how Christians may joke about being carried. He had to walk one step at a time. This inevitably leads to pain.

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[1] Jenkins, Jerry B. “How to Write a Novel: 12 Simple Steps from a Bestseller.” Jerry Jenkins | Proven Writing Tips, October 13, 2023. https://jerryjenkins.com/how-to-write-a-novel/.

[2] “Jordon Peterson Biblical Series III: God and the Hierarchy of Authority.” YouTube, April 26, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8bGIIXQlqk.

[3] Bunyan, John, and William R. Owens. The Pilgrim’s Progress. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008.

[4] Philippians 1:21.