John Bunyan, Baptist, goes Back To Luther, mostly

      While researching and translating C. F. W. Walther's 1879 Western District convention essay for a blog series, I ran across his comments on one of Christianity's most notable writers, John Bunyan, and his famous book The Pilgrim's Progress. Walther almost never gives positive remarks on a Reformed writer, so what will he say about John Bunyan's famous work? 

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The Baptist John Bunyan, the well-known author of Pilgrim’s Progress, an interesting and edifying book, but mixed with Reformed leaven, lay ill for years with the false doctrine of predestination of the Calvinists — for the Baptists were formerly strict Calvinists, and in part still are. When he was in such dire straits that he no longer knew which way was up, an old, torn but still complete book came into his hands, of which he could see that many a tear had already fallen on its pages. It was the English translation of Luther's Epistle to the Galatians. Knowing that Luther had been an extraordinarily famous man, he began to read it, and the deeper he got into it, the brighter he was illuminated by grace, until he was completely freed from all his temptations. He confessed that, after the Bible, this book was without doubt the best that existed in the world, for none was so easy to heal a wounded conscience. A Baptist had to confess this! —  [cp. All Glory To God, p. 246]

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One may note Walther's caution about "Reformed leaven" in the Baptist Bunyan. Nevertheless Walther call's Bunyan's work an "interesting and edifying book", high praise from Walther for a Baptist writer. (The full text of Walther's essay will be in an upcoming future blog series.)