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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Pilgrim’s Progress, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Burden of Sin and Salvation through Christ
The World vs. Christianity
Obstacles on the Journey
The Centrality of the Bible
Women as Pilgrims
Summary
Analysis
Christian and Hopeful continue discussing Ignorance, speculating that many people persist in a similar condition of ignorance regarding their souls. Such people might feel fear occasionally, but they stifle it. Christian explains that “right” fear is a good thing. It is caused by a sense of guilt over sin and should drive a soul to trust in Christ. Then fear should cause a person to continue walking in God’s ways, avoiding anything that would dishonor God.
The point about fear is that, for a person who is trusting in their own goodness instead of in Christ’s sacrifice, Bunyan considers fear to be a good thing. For someone who is not yet a Christian, fear should cause them to seek Christ. For a Christian, “fear” is not meant in the sense of a cowering dread; it’s similar to a deep reverence.
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Though Christian and Hopeful are well past the Enchanted Ground by this time, they continue their discussion. Christian explains that ignorant people stifle "right fear” by assuming such fear comes from the devil, not from God. Thus they harden their hearts against it. Because they assume they shouldn’t fear, such people become overconfident and stifle right fear even more.
The hardening of the heart refers to when a person becomes resistant to spiritual truth after engaging in ongoing sinful behavior or refusing to heed spiritual promptings. This is the condition of many who remain unconverted, in the pilgrims’ view.
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Christian changes the subject, asking Hopeful if he remembers a fellow named Temporary from the town of Graceless. Hopeful remembers that Temporary once seemed to feel conviction for his sins and had resolved to go on pilgrimage. But then Temporary met a man named Saveself and began to backslide. Hopeful says that this happens to people for a few reasons: though people’s consciences are pricked, their minds aren’t truly changed, so when guilt fades, so do their religious feelings; they want to avoid the trouble and embarrassment that religion brings with it; and they simply hate to dwell on their guilt. All these things can cause a seemingly repentant person to revert to worldly ways.
This passage stresses that people face constant temptation from the world. Even those who, like Temporary, might appear to be “saved” can “backslide,” or revert to a worldly state, proving that they weren’t saved to begin with. This is common because people can experience strong religious emotions without truly being converted in their hearts; or they simply discover that practicing religion is more trouble than they’d bargained for.
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Christian agrees and then talks about how such backsliding occurs. People refuse to think about the coming judgment, they gradually stop praying and engaging in other religious habits, and they begin criticizing their Christian friends and associating with worldly people instead. Annd then they begin, little by little, tolerating sins in their own lives. Such people will die without hope, Christian concludes, unless miraculous grace intervenes.
Backsliding—something Bunyan clearly saw as a lurking threat for pilgrims—can happen in a number of ways, all of which stem from the pressures of the surrounding world. Again, a true Christian can backslide (in which case, by Bunyan’s theology, the person will eventually return to active faith), or backsliding can reveal that a person wasn’t truly converted to begin with.
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