Mystic Experience and Conversion

35 thoughts
last posted April 6, 2014, 6:33 p.m.

1 earlier thought

0

John Bunyan was of the opinion that one could not be saved without a mystic revelation of Christ.

In the dialogue between Christian and Ignorance, most commentators (in my experience) focus on the discussion of what, exactly, is saving faith, but at the very end Bunyan tacks on this very bold exchange:

Hope. Ask him if he ever had Christ revealed to him from heaven?

Ignorance. What! You are a man for a revelation! I do believe that what both you and all the rest do say about that matter, is but the fruit of distracted brains.

Hope. Why, man! Christ is so hid in God from the natural apprehensions of the flesh, that he cannot by any man be savingly known, unless God the Father reveals him to them.

Ignor. That is your faith, not mine; yet mine, I doubt not, is as good as yours, though I have not in my head so many whimsies as you.

It’s been a long time since I read it, but this is one of the things about Pilgrim’s Progress that made the strongest impression on me when I realized what Bunyan was claiming.

33 later thoughts