This year marks the 350th anniversary of the birth of John Bunyan, ‘the immortal dreamer’. Despite the existence of numerous Bunyan biographies, studies of Bunyan characters, and editions of Bunyan’s allegories, the theology of the Bedfordshire tinker is little known. This is a serious lack, for Bunyan was both the author of no less than 59 titles and a thoroughly Reformed divine. The fact that he was unlearned in the academic methods of the ‘schools’ detracts nothing from the depth and soundness of his theology. Bunyan learned all he knew from a prayerful study of the Scriptures, a few choice books, local ecclesiastical tradition, and close contact with life in Puritan rural England. Indeed, it was the uniqueness of his personal spiritual experience of the Truth, coupled with his keen observation of 17th century life and character, which stamp his writings with that peculiar vigour, freshness and richness of imagery which has endeared him to thousands of readers over the years and in many lands. In this series of articles, we shall endeavour to trace the leading features of Bunyan’s theology, following the outline provided by Dr R. L. Greaves in his recent study of the Puritan preacher.
Bunyan’s God
Because his religion was intensely experimental and only barely intellectual, Bunyan made no attempt to systematise the attributes of God. When he mentions them, it is only to tell us that they are ‘inconceivably perfect and infinite, not to be comprehended by things in earth or things in heaven’, and that ‘though by the Word we may distinguish, yet may we not divide them, or presume to appoint them their places in the Godhead’, for ‘wisdom is in His justice, holiness is in His power, justice is in His mercy, holiness is in His love, power is in His goodness’. When he distinguishes them, it is primarily to express his own sense of awe in contemplating them: ‘the Name of God is dreadful to us,’ he writes, ‘specially when He is discovered to us by those names that declare His justice, holiness, power and glory’. In particular, His holiness can ‘not give way for such unclean wretches’ as we are ‘to abide in His sight’, and His justice ‘once offended, knoweth not how to show any pity or compassion to the offender’, and will inflict eternal punishment ‘unless infinite satisfaction be given to it’.
It was a terrifying sight of the holy justice of God which first drove Bunyan to seek refuge in His mercy. Hence mercy became to him a peculiarly precious attribute. ‘If there had been no mercy,’ he cries, ‘there had been no redemption’. Similarly, his remarks on God’s grace spring straight from his own experience: ‘There is nothing in heaven or earth’ he writes, ‘that can so awe the heart as the grace of God. ‘Tis that which makes a man fear, ’tis that which makes a man tremble, ’tis that which makes a man bow and bend, and break to pieces’. Likewise, when he speaks of the love of God, it is usually in terms of sense rather than of description. It is, he says, ‘better felt and enjoyed than talked of’.
If any attributes loom larger in Bunyan’s thinking than others, they are justice and mercy. Accordingly, he depicts Prince Emmanuel setting up the white flag of mercy on Mount Gracious, ‘to give notice to Mansoul that He could and would yet be gracious if they turned to Him’, and the red flag of wrath on Mount Justice, in the care of Captain Judgment, ‘whose scutcheon was the Burning Fiery Furnace’. By this imagery, Bunyan would teach us that God’s mercy could never favour those whom His justice opposed. Hence a way must be found by which justice would be executed for sin, and mercy bestowed on the sinner. The solution was the atonement made by Christ as His people’s Substitute.
Redemption Accomplished
‘Mansoul is mine by right of purchase. I have bought it, O Diabolus, I have bought it to myself . . . Nor did I do this to the halves; my Father’s law and justice, that were both concerned in the threatening upon transgression, are both now satisfied, and very well content that Mansoul should be delivered’. And as grace in the Father ‘moved Him to give Christ a ransom for sinners’, so grace in the Son constrained Him ‘to do this great service for man’. Jesus Christ is therefore the only One ‘from whom, by, or through whom, the grace of God doth come to us’. ‘What grace was manifest in Thy condescension!’ he exclaims; ‘Grace brought Thee down from heaven; grace stripped Thee of Thy glory; grace made Thee poor and despicable; grace made Thee bear such burdens of sin . . . Grace was in all Thy tears; grace came bubbling out of Thy side with Thy blood’. Grace is thus the fountain, as well as the fruit, of the atonement.
But could not ‘the promise and God’s grace, without Christ’s blood . . . have saved us?’ For Bunyan, even the possibility of God being merciful to sinners without an atonement was unthinkable. ‘How can He pardon’ he asks indignantly, ‘without He be presented with that satisfaction for sin that to all points of the highest perfection doth answer the demand of this infinite and eternal justice?’ ‘The justice of God is so pure, that if it be not completely satisfied in every particular, it giveth nothing but curses’. When Christ, therefore, ‘stood before God in our sins’, grace and justice were reconciled in the salvation of sinners. ‘Our salvation is grounded in justice, because merited by blood’.
But for whom did Christ die and make satisfaction? Bunyan’s reply is emphatic. He ‘reconciled to God in the body of His flesh, as a Common Person, all and every one of God’s elect’. Bunyan’s belief in a limited, rather than a universal, atonement, is strikingly expressed when he writes: ‘All the elect did mystically hang upon the cross in Christ’, and ‘the blood of Christ is sprinkled upon the elect for the justice of God to look on’. Though Christ’s death was sufficient to save all, it was intended to save only some.
Redemption Applied
Bunyan saw the Christian life as a journey along the way of salvation, beginning with a departure from the City of Destruction, continuing through the Wicket Gate, on to the Palace Beautiful, and culminating in a glorious entry into the Heavenly Jerusalem. This journey involved two deliverances: first, ‘from the guilt of sin . . . to be set free therefrom before God’; second, ‘from all those hazards that we run betwixt our state of justification and our state of glorification’. No sinner, however, will set out on this journey unless he has been chosen to it, for ‘the Father, by His grace, hath bound up them that shall go to heaven in an eternal decree of election’. This decree includes both the end and all the means which God makes effectual to lead to that end. A specific number of sinners, therefore, being ‘chosen in Christ to salvation’, are certain not only to begin this journey, but also to reach their destination, having survived all hazards. The rest God leaves ‘in their sins to perish by His judgments’.
(a) Effectual Calling
The question arises as to how this journey is begun, and this hinges on the state of man’s will. ‘The will, which way that goes, all goes: if it be to heaven or hell’. If the will is free, it will lead the soul to heaven by its natural inclination — this is Pelagianism; if it can cooperate with offered grace, it will share with God the task and honour of taking the soul to glory — this is Arminianism; but if it is in complete bondage to sin, and unable to take one step towards heaven, how can the soul even begin its journey? For Bunyan, who was a strict Calvinist, the answer lay in the sovereign potency of divine grace. ‘I am not a Free-willer’ he states unequivocally, ‘I do abhor it’. ‘The soul, where grace is wanting, is not at liberty to act simply, but is biased by the power of sin’. Not until the Word of God, ‘attended with an arm that is omnipotent’, enters the soul, can the elect sinner begin his journey for heaven. This Word, by which the dead sinner is quickened and enabled to go on his way rejoicing, is ‘Jesus Christ held forth to us, and offered to be our righteousness’. Bunyan believed in the Free Offer of Christ in the Gospel, ‘without money and without price’. ‘The waters (of grace) are common’, he exhorts, ‘but you must come to them’, and where the Spirit is given, sinners ‘shall drink it in by vehement thirst, as the parched ground drinks in the rain’. And ‘when this living water is received, it takes up its seat in the heart, whence it spreads itself to the awakening of all the powers of the soul’. It is not ‘the over-heavy load of sin, but the discovery of mercy; not the roaring of the devil, but the drawing of the Father, that makes a man come to Jesus Christ: I myself know all these things’. Bunyan learned by experience that ‘salvation is of the Lord’. Not all men, however, are effectually called. Some ‘despise the offer of His grace’. The penalty for this refusal is eternal damnation, where the condemned sinner will be forced to acknowledge: ‘The fault was mine, His grace I did refuse’. Nevertheless, his damnation is due not merely to his own sin, but also to his having the sin of Adam imputed to him, and ultimately, to his eternal reprobation, for in the last analysis, God ‘had a mind to damn him for his sins, and therefore would not let him see nor have a heart to repent for them, lest he should convert, and his damnation, which God had appointed, should be frustrate’.
(b) Faith, Justification and Repentance
The exhibition of Christ in the Gospel is made effectual by the Holy Spirit to beget faith in the heart of His elect. ‘God mixeth it with the Word, when He absolutely intendeth the salvation of the sinner’, so that, as Luther says: ‘faith taketh hold of Christ, and hath Him present, and holdeth Him inclosed, as the ring doth the precious stone’. In particular, it enables the sinner ‘to look’ away from all creature-righteousness ‘to the perfect righteousness of Christ for life’. Hence, God makes a man righteous by ‘putting the righteousness of God upon him’, and this righteousness being received by faith, ‘we are justified by faith . . . by the righteousness of faith, that is, by that righteousness that faith embraceth, layeth hold of, and helpeth the soul to rest upon, and to trust to, for justification’. Thus God ‘justifies us, by bestowing upon us, not by expecting from us. He justifies us by His grace, not by our works’. The language of the believer, therefore, on his journey to heaven, is always that of Christian: ‘As for this coat that is on my back, it was given me by the Lord of the place whither I go, and that . . . to cover my nakedness with. And I take it as a token of His kindness to me, for I had nothing but rags before’. To be clothed in this garment is to be freed from the guilt of sin, the condemnation of the law, and the eternal wrath of God.
Henceforth, faith is the great ‘principle of life by which a Christian lives’, the great ‘principle of motion by which it (i.e. the soul) walks towards heaven in the way of holiness’. With this great truth in mind, Bunyan gives Captain Credence (who is not a native resident of Mansoul but one of Emmanuel’s officers, and whose colour-bearer is Mr Promise) complete command over the captured town: ‘I have made thee the Lord Lieutenant over all the forces in Mansoul, so that from this day forward, all men in Mansoul shall be at thy word, and thou shalt be he that shall lead in, and that shall lead out, Mansoul . . . and at thy command shall the rest of the captains be’.
Like faith, repentance is a life-long principle of grace in the heart, by which the believer, having received a change of mind about sin, turns ‘from nature to grace, and . . . from the imperfections which attend a state of grace, to glory’. He will not stop in the middle chambers of Solomon’s temple, but will go right on to the top of the stairs, climbing every step with a contrite spirit, self-loathing, and hatred to sin.
(c) Sanctification and Perseverance
It was Bunyan’s deep conviction that true ‘grace leaves no power, faculty, or passion of the soul unsanctified’. So we find Emmanuel commanding ‘that the image of Diabolus should be taken down from the place where it was set up, and that they should destroy it utterly . . . And that the image of Shaddai His Father should be set up again, with His own, upon the castle gates’. The Father and the Son, by the Spirit, accomplish the sanctification of the justified sinner by ‘possessing him with a principle of righteousness’ which, branching out into all the graces — especially faith, repentance, love, obedience and hope — purifies him from sin, and produces holiness of heart and conduct, which is the pilgrim’s path to eternal life.
In view, however, of the numerous hazards bestrewing the way, how shall the pilgrim ever arrive at his heavenly destination? The Palace Beautiful provides the answer: ‘Interpreter took Christian . . . into a place, where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it always, casting much water upon it to quench it: yet did the fire burn higher and hotter . . . This fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart; he that casts water upon it, to extinguish and put it out, is the devil; but in that thou seest the fire notwithstanding burn higher and hotter, thou shalt also see the reason of that: so he had him about to the back side of the wall, where he saw a Man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire’. Thus Christ secretly pours the oil of His grace into the believer’s soul, preserving him from destruction, and enabling him to persevere. Our preservation is as much of grace as is our justification and our sanctification.
For Bunyan, this preservation is guaranteed by the intercessory work of Christ within the veil, as His people’s covenanted Great High Priest, for ‘the durability of His intercession proves that the covenant, in which those that come to God by Him are concerned and wrapt up, is not shaken, broken, or made invalid by all their weaknesses and infirmities’. After all, he points out, the door of the ark was shut by God, not Noah, and ‘if God shuts in or out, who can alter it?’ With the destination assured, Bunyan urges that ‘true Christians should persevere right on, and not turn back, whatever they meet with in the way’.
(d) The Two Covenants
Among the many hazards to which the Christian pilgrim is exposed, doubts, fears, and spiritual desertions play no small part. Bunyan’s personal experience of these things led him to examine the exact nature of the relationship between the believer and his God, in order to clarify those marks which distinguish him from the unbeliever or the Gospel hypocrite. This relationship he understood best, like most of his Puritan contemporaries, in terms of the Biblical scheme of covenants.
By nature, we are all included in the Covenant of Works, made by God with Adam our representative head in Eden, the terms of which promised life upon perfect obedience to the law and threatened death upon disobedience. This law being engraven on our hearts, we naturally turn to it for justification, even when our first parent’s ‘breach of the law’ has broken that covenant and forfeited all right to life by it. But ‘it is forced, as it is just, to pass sentence of condemnation on everyone that in every particular fulfils it not’. The Mosaic law, being but an enlarged republication of the law originally given to Adam, serves precisely the same function towards sinners of mankind, for as ‘the chief and most pure resemblance of the justice and holiness of the heavenly Majesty’, it doth hold forth to all men the sharpness and keenness of His wrath’. This is why, when ‘Christian turned out of his way to go to Mr Legality’s house for help . . . his burden, now, seemed heavier to him than while he was in his way. There came also flashes of fire out of the hill, that made Christian afraid that he should be burned’. In his attempt to impress this truth upon children, Bunyan quaintly draws our attention to a ‘fair and comely’ Moses who can by no means whiten the blackness of his wife’s skin, adding:
‘The law is very holy, just and good,
And to it is espoused all flesh and blood:
But this its goodness it cannot bestow
On any that are wedded thereunto’.
Our only hope, therefore, lies in the Covenant of Grace, for ‘the king and His Son foresaw all this long before, yea, and sufficiently provided for the relief of Mansoul . . . This Son of Shaddai, I say, having stricken hands with His Father, and promised that He would be His servant to recover Mansoul again, stood by His resolution . . . The purport of which agreement was this: to wit, that at a certain time prefixed by both, the King’s Son should take a journey into the country of universe, and there in a way of justice and equity, by making of amends for the follies of Mansoul, He should lay a foundation of her perfect deliverance’. And since ‘all the conditions’ of this covenant ‘are already fulfilled for us by Jesus Christ, . . . every promise that is a new covenant promise if there be any condition in it, our Undertaker hath accomplished that for us’, so that what was a covenant for Christ becomes a free gift to us. Being grounded in ‘the unchangeable purpose of God, and the efficacy of the obedience of Christ’, this covenant is everlasting and unbreakable. ‘My sins’ wrote Bunyan with evident comfort, ‘break not the covenant: but them notwithstanding, God’s covenant stands fast with Him’. ‘The way’, therefore, ‘to prove ourselves under grace’ is by believing in Jesus Christ . . . to triumph over the devil, sin, death and hell’.
This would have satisfied any Antinomian as a solution to the doubts and fears of the deserted believer. Not so Bunyan. ‘The doctrine of the new covenant’ he affirms, ‘doth call for holiness, engage to holiness, and maketh the children of that covenant to take pleasure therein. Let no man therefore conclude . . . that the doctrine of the Gospel is a licentious doctrine’. Hence, Emmanuel counsels Mansoul to ‘make thyself by my law straight steps for thy feet’. While no longer the ground of our acceptance, ‘the whole law, as to the morality of it, is delivered into the hand of Christ, who imposes it now . . . as a rule of life to those that have believed in Him’. On this point, as on virtually all the forementioned doctrines, Bunyan’s teaching is that of the strict Calvinistic Puritans, the Covenants, and the Marrowmen. By distinguishing the morality of the law from its ministration on Sinai, Bunyan gives us to understand that the clearest evidence of being in a state of grace is the possession and practice of commanded holiness in heart and life.
The Palace Beautiful
(a) The Church
During his journey between the City of Destruction and the Heavenly Jerusalem, Christian ‘lifted up his eyes, and behold, there was a very stately palace before him, the name whereof was Beautiful, and it stood just by the highway side. So . . . he made haste and went forward, that if possible he might get lodging there . . . Then said Christian to the Porter: Sir, what house is this? and may I lodge here tonight? The Porter answered: ‘This house was built by the Lord of the hill, and he built it for the relief and security of pilgrims’. In these allegorical terms, Bunyan introduces us to the Independent congregation, the society of the godly he knew. His concept of the Church was that of a ‘particular congregation of professing Christians’, visibly expressing that universal Church of Christ which ‘comprehendeth all the parts of it, even from Adam to the very world’s end, whether in heaven or earth’. It was beautiful to Bunyan as ‘the place in which God doth beget all those that are the children of His’ and then build them up in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation. Should a spiritual pilgrim be in favour of ‘separating from the unconverted and open profane’, he would be introduced to ‘one of the virgins of this place, who’, if she liked his talk, would bring him ‘in to the rest of the family, according to the rules of the house. So Watchful the porter rang a bell, at the sound of which came out at the door of the house a grave and beautiful damsel, named Discretion’. The congregation itself was thus ‘to judge of persons by their words and lives . . . and . . . if in word and life a man be as he ought, he is to be accounted a visible saint, and orderly ought to be received of the Church as such’.
This principle of visible separation from the world Bunyan accepted wholesale from the Bedford congregation to which he first joined himself and later ministered. On admission into the Separatist Church, members ‘determined to walk together in the fellowship of the Gospel’ and ‘after prayer and seeking God as before, with one consent they jointly first gave themselves to the Lord, and one to another by the will of God’. No coercion was ever to be used, but the two rules to be applied to all prospective members were: (i) ‘faith in Christ and holiness of life, without respect to this or that circumstance or opinion in outward and circumstantial things’, and (ii) willingness ‘to be gathered into their body and fellowship’.
Since strict holiness, or ‘the word of faith, and . . . good works, moral duties Gospelised’ was required of every member, discipline was enforced to ensure its maintenance. Spiritualising the snuffers by the candlesticks in Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 7:50), Bunyan remarks: ‘If our snuffs are our superfluities of naughtiness, our snuffers then are those righteous reproofs, rebukes and admonitions which Christ has ordained to be in His house for good’. Should these fail to reclaim the erring, the congregationally-administered ban was solemnly pronounced, and the offender excommunicated ‘by the holy compulsion of the Church . . . and by the judicial judgment of God’. Only thus can the honour of Christ and the purity of His Church be preserved.
(b) The Ministry
‘When God ordained a word of grace to save us’, writes Bunyan, ‘He also in His decree provided ministers to preach it to us to that end’. Accordingly, when Christian stood still, because he knew not which way to go, Evangelist came to his aid, and ‘pointing with his finger over a very wide field’, said: Do you see yonder wicket gate? The man said: No . . . Do you see yonder shining light? He said: I think I do. Then said Evangelist: Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly thereto, so shalt thou see the gate; at which when thou knockest, it shall be told thee what thou shalt do’. Ever since Pastor John Gifford played the role of Evangelist in his own conversion, Bunyan held the Christian ministry in the highest esteem. The Lord’s messenger in the Lord’s message would therefore be fitted with certain necessary qualifications: he would be sound in doctrine, exemplary in faith and holiness, apt to teach, reprove, and exhort, and be capable of conducting public worship acceptably. Indeed, the minister in Bunyan’s eyes was no less than a co-worker with God in the awful business of admitting souls to, and excluding them from, His kingdom — he ministerially, the Lord efficaciously. It was therefore with a deep and solemn sense of his accountability for souls that, when called in 1672 ‘to the pastoral office or eldership’ in Bedford, he gave up himself ‘to serve Christ, and His Church in that charge’.
While utterly opposed to the priestly ideals of Archbishop Laud and his Restoration successors, Bunyan was equally antagonistic to the anticlericalism of the sects. We notice also that he found a place in the Church for the Scriptural office of ruling elder. The Independent pastor was the congregation’s sole teacher, and with him, the elders were overseers. Hence it was unnecessary for pastor and people to keep a fine balance between clerical tyranny and congregational anarchy, as in much present-day Independency.
(c) The Sacraments
‘Two sacraments I do believe there be,
Baptism and the Supper of the Lord:
Both mysteries divine, which do to me,
By God’s appointment, benefit afford:
But shall they be my God? or shall I have
Of them so foul and impious a thought,
To think that from the curse they can me save?
Bread, wine, nor water me no ransom bought.’
This poetic doggerel, the opening coupled excepted, conceals rather than expresses Bunyan’s sacramental views, which were decidedly Zwinglian in tone, quite confused, and very tenaciously held. In the first place, he rejected both sacraments as means of grace, holding that they were no more than two of a number of ordinances, each somehow useful to the Christian life. Similarly, he provoked the enmity of Baptists and Paedobaptists alike by denying that baptism is the form of our initiation into covenant with God and of our admission into the visible church, claiming that it is ‘no part of church-worship’ at all, and a matter for the individual conscience. This error sprang from several mistaken notions: (i) that ‘circumcision in the flesh was a type of circumcision in the heart’, so that, the type being fulfilled in the New Testament believer, baptism is rendered unnecessary. Circumcision, however, was not a type at all, but a sign and seal of the Covenant of Grace, as is baptism. Colossians 2:11 makes it abundantly clear that both circumcision and baptism signify regeneration; therefore baptism is to be retained in the Church as the New Testament counterpart of circumcision; (ii) that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is sufficient for Church membership, but Bunyan offers neither explanation nor warrant for this Enthusiastic notion; (iii) that men who lack ‘light’ on the subject should not be refused Church-membership, especially as baptism is merely an outward ceremony. Suffice to say that Bunyan was rightly rebuked by his Calvinistic contemporaries for making men’s ‘light’ the warrant of faith rather than God’s precepts. This is a distinctively Quaker principle and a denial of the sole authority of Scripture.
Bunyan’s confining of baptism to only adult ‘visible saints’ should not surprise us, since he denied both children and the sacrament any relation to the Covenant of Grace.
Bunyan’s views on the Lord’s Supper are quite as confused and unorthodox as those on baptism. What was designed as the great nourishing sacrament of the Church became for Bunyan simply an expression of believers’ ‘communion with their Head, and with one another as members of Him’, a communal commemorative meal ‘incumbent upon the Church, as a Church’. Inconsistently enough, Bunyan would admit ‘visible saints’ to church membership without ‘light’ on baptism, but not without ‘light’ on the Lord’s Supper. Candidates at Bedford underwent examination not only on their spiritual experience, but also on the nature of the Lord’s Supper, as Bunyan conceived it.
(d) The Christian Life
Bunyan saw the life of the Christian pilgrim, once he was visibly separated from the ungodly into the society of believers, as wholly sustained by divine grace. ‘As water is that element in which the fish liveth’, he writes, ‘so grace is that which is the life of the saint’. It is by grace that he seeks ‘to live by the grace of God’, ‘to do and suffer . . . according to the will of God’, and to finish his course to the glory of God. The Christian’s foremost duty, therefore, is to ‘get more grace’ — more faith, love, patience, zeal, humility, self-denial, reverence, righteousness. Two effects, he claimed, will always follow the possession of grace: ‘the more grace . . . the greater trials’, and the more ‘laborious for God in this world’. Grace is thus a sanctifying, active principle bestowed by the Lord upon His elect, to enable them to suffer their fore-ordained trials and to fulfil their predetermined tasks; and ‘a good improvement’ he concludes, ‘of what we have of the grace of God at present, pleases God, and engages Him to give us more’.
Conclusion
From the foregoing survey, it may be seen that John Bunyan’s theology is a colourful blend of distinctive ideas and tendencies gleaned from Scripture, Luther, Calvinism, and the founding principles of the Bedford Separatist Church, transformed by his own unique experience, and expressed in direct, colloquial Anglo-Saxon.
Bunyan himself saw his thought as wholly Biblical: ‘I have not writ at a venture’, he claims, ‘nor borrowed my doctrine from libraries. I depend upon the sayings of no man: I found it in the Scriptures of Truth, among the true sayings of God’.
Of uninspired writings, Luther’s Commentary on Galatians left the deepest imprint on his soul: ‘I found my condition’, he testified, ‘so largely and profoundly handled as if his book had been written out of my heart’, and consequently, he recommended it warmly as ‘most fit for a wounded conscience’. It was especially Luther’s view of God and salvation, expressed in terms of justice and mercy, wrath and grace, and justification by faith, which laid the foundation of his theological thinking.
Bunyan’s debt to Calvinism lay chiefly in the realm of the scheme of the covenants, of predestination and reprobation, and of the satisfaction and limited atonement of Christ. Dent’s ‘Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven’ and Bayly’s ‘Practice of Piety’, both of which, he says, ‘begat within me some desires to religion’, his ministerial association with men such as Dr John Owen, and the formative influence of John Gifford and John Burton, his pastoral predecessors in Bedford, all helped to form Bunyan, under the Holy Spirit, into a Calvinist of the strict, rather than moderate, kind.
Bunyan’s ecclesiology was almost entirely the heritage of the Bedford Independent Baptist tradition, with its voluntary and Separatist principles, and its low view of the sacraments.
While, therefore, no single theological label will fit Bunyan, one thing about him is certain. The centre of all his thinking was the free and sovereign grace of God revealed in His beloved Son, and it was his own personal experience of this grace, coupled with his wonderful gift for the imaginative, direct and colloquial expression of truth, which has given Bunyan his endeared place in the affections of all Christians who have read him.