John Bunyan

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John Bunyan; Painting by Thomas Sadler, 1684.

John Bunyan (born November 28, 1628 in Elstow near Bedford , † August 31, 1688 in London ) was an English Baptist preacher and writer.

life and work

Bunyan was the son of tinker Thomas Bunyan and his wife Margaret and had two younger siblings. He received a simple school education and then learned his father's trade. 1644 he was in the English Civil War soldier of the parliamentary army , and was during the two and a half years of his service, especially in Newport Pagnell stationed. It was then that he probably took up the influence of radical Puritan preachers. After he returned in 1647 to Elstow, where he again worked as a tinker, he went through a profound spiritual crisis and conversion, which he in his published in 1666 autobiographical work Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (dt .: erstrecket The grace of God Which to the greatest sinners , 1698) should portray. Around 1653 he joined the Bedford Separatist Church , a Baptist congregation in Bedford, through the baptism of believers in the River Ouse , and soon afterwards appeared as a preacher himself.

He had married in 1648 and had two daughters (Mary and Elizabeth) and two sons (John and Thomas). The family name of his first wife is unknown; her first name was probably Mary and she lived from about 1625 to 1656. Her piety had a decisive influence on her husband's religious development. About three years after her death, Bunyan married his second wife Elisabeth (approx. 1630–1691) in 1659, who bore him two children, Sarah and Joseph.

Model representation of Bunyan in his prison cell, John Bunyan Museum , Bedford

Since Bunyan did not submit to the Anglican state church and disregarded the ban on preaching for nonconformists issued after the restoration of the Stuart monarchy , he was arrested in 1660 at Harlington during a church service. He spent the next twelve years in prison. The imprisonment was apparently carried out in a comparatively liberal manner, since Bunyan was not only able to write various theological writings during his imprisonment, but also earn a small amount of money to support his family and sometimes even take part in meetings of his congregation. During his prison time he wove stockings and shoelaces and also wrote several literary works, including his autobiographical book Grace Abounding .

Bunyan viewed this long period of separation from his wife and four children, including a blind daughter, as the hardest part of a trial he believed he would face for Christ's sake. He describes his previous conversion as a struggle with Satan , which he temporarily perceives in the form of animals or objects. Often he feels defenseless against temptations and throws himself into the dirt in order to prevent himself from ungodly utterances . In doing so, the dogma of predestination almost becomes a mental and spiritual trap for him, since it provides Satan with the argument that Bunyan cannot do anything for his salvation or does not have to do anything.

He finds salvation when his belief in divine grace is greater than the threatening spiritual resignation. Formally, in his conversion report, Bunyan addresses his family, but in fact his edification is directed at the community public, which is also reflected in the very effective combination of personal, visual and factual documentary style.

John Bunyan: A Christian's Journey to Blessed Eternity , title page of the Zurich translation of 1765

The Bishop of Lincoln released him from custody in 1672, but in 1675 Bunyan was again imprisoned for another six months for disregarding the preaching ban. During this time he probably wrote a large part of his main work Pilgerreise zur blessed Ewigkeit, which was translated into German in 1685 (orig. The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come ), an allegorical representation of the Christian path of faith, which after its first publication in 1678 became one of the most famous books in world literature .

Compared to Grace Abounding , The Pilgrim's Progress has a significantly higher degree of literary and poetizing; the frame of an allegorical dream is connected with a travel motif, so that the inner and temporal process of man's turning to God appears as an outer process of movement towards a spatial destination. While the conversion report can only reflect an interim result that the protagonist has achieved, the hero in the pilgrimage to blessed eternity arrives at a happy ending, which can only be found in death.

In addition to the use of fairy tale and romances motifs, The Pilgrim's Progress also changes the pictorial portrayal of the devil, who no longer appears as a broom or bush, but now as an imposing dragon , whom the protagonist Christian defeats in direct duel with the help of God. Although the depiction of such physical confrontations pushes the idea of ​​predestination more into the background, here too Bunyan emphasizes the danger of despair promoted by this puritanical dogma . At the center of the pilgrimage to blessed eternity is the allegorical portrayal of the earthly as a vanity fair , which the diabolical demons Beelzebub , Apollyon and Legion have set up in the city with the symbolic name Vanity and which not only threatens the soul of man, but can even cost faithful Christians their lives.

In contrast , the continuation of The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come: The Second Part , published in 1684, remains comparatively uneventful on the level of external action that results from the spiritual transformation; evidently the heroine Christiana should be spared similar physical confrontations to which the protagonist Christian was exposed in the first part.

Ironically, the Quakers secured Bunyan's release from prison. Years earlier he had violently attacked them in pamphlets for their conviction that the "Inner Light" (or "Inner Christ") would be placed above the Bible by them - in his eyes. The King asked the Quakers to make a list of the names of prisoners who were to be pardoned. The Quakers then added the name of John Bunyan to the names of their brothers and sisters in faith, who was then also pardoned. The exchange of blows between John Bunyan and the Quakers took place in the years 1656-1657. John Bunyan wrote the writings Some Gospel-Truths Opened and A Vindication of Some Gospel-Truths Opened , in which he attacked the beliefs of the Quakers. On the Quaker side, Edward Burrough replied with The True Faith of the Gospel of Peace and Truth (the Strongest of All) Witnessed Forth . The Quaker George Fox later went back to the dispute with The Great Mystery of the Great Whore Unfolded .

The fictional criminal biography The Life and Death of Mr. Badman from 1680 is one of the more well-known of the around 60 works by Bunyan , in which various Levels of representation are interconnected: The description of the life of a godless person is supplemented by further examples of reprehensible behavior and embedded in a moralizing dialogue between the narrator and his listener; the reader is offered such a daunting example, but at the same time an entertaining spectrum of crimes, misdeeds and vices.

The grave of John Bunyan in Bunhill Fields , London

In A Book for Boys and Girls (1686) with a collection of 74 emblematic didactic poems , Bunyan addresses children; It is preceded by brief instructions from the author to improve reading skills.

Even as a preacher, Bunyan exerted an almost magnetic attraction on his audience; As a writer, he gained popularity well into the 20th century, largely due to the fact that his most famous work, The Pilgrim's Progress, is regarded in literary studies and criticism as one of the most representative literary forms of the Puritan worldview, which is decisive for English culture has helped shape.

In his late work The Holy War of 1682 (German: The holy war for the city of human soul , first translated in 1685), which is based on the tradition of medieval morality games in its plot , Bunyan takes up the image of the Christian who As a soldier, the devil wrests a piece of his empire or his power - an idea that proved to be influential not least during the imperial period of Great Britain .

For many years of his life, Bunyan was discriminated against and persecuted because of his beliefs; the end of the persecution came only in the last year before his death with the Declaration of Indulgence of 1687 by James II , which returned a number of fundamental freedoms to the previously oppressed religious communities. After his death, Bunyan was buried in Bunhill Fields , a dissenter's cemetery in London , where a memorial stone still commemorates him.

Most important works

  • 1656: Some Gospel Truths Opened
  • 1659: The Doctrine of the Law and Grace Unfolded
  • 1666: Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners (autobiography); German:
    • The grace of God / Which extends to the greatest sinners (1698);
    • Give grace for the greatest of sinners , trans. u. barely ext. v. Emanuel Hirsch, 1966;
    • Present Grace: John Bunyan's Autobiography . 3L Verlag, 2011. ISBN 978-3-941988-34-7 u. a.
  • 1680: Life and Death of Mr. Badman , 1680; German: Mr. Quaats life and death (1694 ff.)
  • 1682: The Holy War ; German:
    • The Holy War: How it is waged by Christ Jesus ... Umb and about the human soul (1694 ff.);
    • The holy war for the city human soul (1928);
    • The holy war . Johannis, 2005. ISBN 3-501-01509-7 u. a.

Memorial days

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ RGG, III. Volume, Article Baptists, I, 2 (column 863)
  2. ↑ Eberhard Späth: Bunyan, John . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 , p. 80
  3. ↑ Eberhard Späth: Bunyan, John . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 , p. 80
  4. ↑ Eberhard Späth: Bunyan, John . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 , p. 81
  5. ↑ Eberhard Späth: Bunyan, John . In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning , Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 , p. 81
  6. ^ John Bunyan in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints

literature

Web links

Commons : John Bunyan  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: John Bunyan  - Quotes
Wikisource: John Bunyan  - Sources and full texts

ENGLISH AUTHOR

personal data
SURNAME Bunyan, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English Baptist minister and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 28, 1628
PLACE OF BIRTH Elstow at Bedford
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1688
Place of death London