John Bunyan was an English writer and Puritan preacher. He is best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, which also became an influential literary model. In addition to The Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan wrote nearly sixty titles, many of them expanded sermons.
Justificatio sola fide, meaning justification by faith alone, is a soteriological doctrine in Christian theology commonly held to distinguish the Lutheran and Reformed traditions of Protestantism, among others, from the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian and Anabaptist churches. The doctrine asserts that it is on the basis of faith alone that believers are made right of sin ; and not on the basis of what Paul the Apostle calls "works of the law", which sola fide proponents interpret as including not only moral, legal or ceremonial requirements but any good works or "works of charity."
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come is a 1678 Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and a progenitor of the narrative aspect of Christian media. It has been translated into more than 200 languages and has never been out of print. It appeared in Dutch in 1681, in German in 1703 and in Swedish in 1727. The first North American edition was issued in 1681. It has also been cited as the first novel written in English. According to literary editor Robert McCrum, "there's no book in English, apart from the Bible, to equal Bunyan's masterpiece for the range of its readership, or its influence on writers as diverse as William Hogarth, C. S. Lewis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, George Bernard Shaw, William Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Enid Blyton." The words on which the hymn "To be a Pilgrim" is based come from the novel.
The Ranters were one of a number of dissenting groups that emerged about the time of the Commonwealth of England (1649–1660). They were largely common people, and the movement was widespread throughout England, though they were not organised and had no leader.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1666.
In Christian theology, justification is the event or process by which sinners are made or declared to be righteous in the sight of God.
Reprobation, in Christian theology, is a doctrine which teaches that a person can reject the gospel to a point where God in turn rejects them and curses their conscience. The English word reprobate is from the Latin root probare, which gives the Latin participle reprobatus, the opposite of approbatus. The doctrine is first found in Jeremiah 6:30, but also found in many passages of scripture such as Romans 1:20-28, 2 Corinthians 13:5-6, Proverbs 1:23-33, John 12:37-41, and Hebrews 6:4-8.
The First Epistle to Timothy is one of three letters in the New Testament of the Bible often grouped together as the pastoral epistles, along with Second Timothy and Titus. The letter, traditionally attributed to the Apostle Paul, consists mainly of counsels to his younger colleague and delegate Timothy regarding his ministry in Ephesus (1:3). These counsels include instructions on the organization of the Church and the responsibilities resting on certain groups of leaders therein as well as exhortations to faithfulness in maintaining the truth amid surrounding errors.
The Epistle of the Apostles is a work of New Testament apocrypha. Despite its name, it is more a gospel or an apocalypse than an epistle. The work takes the form of an open letter purportedly from the remaining eleven apostles describing key events of the life of Jesus, followed by a dialogue between the resurrected Jesus and the apostles where Jesus reveals apocalyptic secrets of reality and the future. It is 51 chapters long. The epistle was likely written in the 2nd century CE in Koine Greek, but was lost for many centuries. A partial Coptic language manuscript was discovered in 1895, a more complete Ethiopic language manuscript was published in 1913, and a full Coptic-Ethiopic-German edition was published in 1919.
Imputed righteousness is a concept in Christian theology proposing that the "righteousness of Christ...is imputed to [believers]—that is, treated as if it were theirs—through faith." It is on the basis of Jesus' righteousness that God accepts humans. This acceptance is also referred to as justification.
Demas was a man mentioned by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament of the Bible, and appears to have been involved for a time in his ministry.
The parable of the Pharisee & the Publican is a parable of Jesus that appears in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 18:9–14, a self-righteous Pharisee, obsessed by his own virtue, is contrasted with a tax collector who humbly asks God for mercy.
Matthew 10:3 is the third verse in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament.
The biblical apocrypha denotes the collection of apocryphal ancient books thought to have been written some time between 200 BCE and 100 CE.
Regeneration, while sometimes perceived to be a step in the ordo salutis, is generally understood in Christian theology to be the objective work of God in a believer's life. Spiritually, it means that God brings a person to new life from a previous state of separation from God and subjection to the decay of death. Thus, in Lutheran and Roman Catholic theology, it generally means that which takes place during baptism. In Calvinism and Arminian theology, baptism is recognized as an outward sign of an inward reality which is to follow regeneration as a sign of obedience to the New Testament; as such, the Methodist Churches teach that regeneration occurs during the new birth.
Spiritual autobiography is a genre of non-fiction prose that dominated Protestant writing during the seventeenth century, particularly in England, particularly that of Dissenters. The narrative generally follows the believer from a state of damnation to a state of grace; the most famous example is perhaps John Bunyan's Grace Abounding (1666). The first known spiritual autobiography is Confessions by Augustine of Hippo, or St. Augustine, which stands to this day as a classic when studying this genre.
Romans 6 is the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is authored by Paul the Apostle, while he was in Corinth in the mid-50s AD, with the help of an amanuensis (secretary), Tertius, who adds his own greeting in Romans 16:22. In this chapter, it is shown that the Christian, in baptism, dies to sin.
1 Timothy 1 is the first chapter of the First Epistle to Timothy in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The author has been traditionally identified as Paul the Apostle since as early as AD 180, although most modern scholars consider the letter pseudepigraphical, perhaps written as late as the first half of the second century AD.
Agnes Beaumont was an English religious autobiographer, who was accused of having a sexual relationship with the Puritan preacher John Bunyan and conspiring with him to murder her father. She wrote an autobiography that declared her innocence of these charges.
