EE=MD² ™ Ponderings: PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Minister of the Gospel, John Bunyon was imprisoned for preaching without proper credentials. During his imprisonment, he authored THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, in two parts, as an analogy of the journey of the human spirit to reach that Celestial City of GOD.
Foresighted Fairness
Ahead of his time, Mr. Bunyon offered the following words in pronouncement of Respect for women in declaration of release of women from any Reproach. The following is a refreshing discourse of Mr. Bunyon.
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS1 by John Bunyon, Page 269
“. . . I will now speak on the behalf of Women, to take away their Reproach. For as Death and the Curse came into the World by a Woman, so also did Life and Health: GOD sent forth His2 Son, Made of a Woman. Yea, to shew how much those that came after did abhor the act of their Mother, this sex in the Old Testament coveted Children, if happily this or that Woman might be the Mother of the Saviour of the World.
“I will say again, that when the Saviour was come, Women rejoiced in Him before either Man or Angel. I read not, that ever any Man did give unto Christ so much as a Groat, but th3e Women followed Him and ministered to Him of their Substance. ,Twas a Woman that washed His Feet with Tears, and a Woman that anointed His Body to the Burial. They were Women that wept when He was going to the Cross, and that sat by His Sepulchre when He was buried. They were Women that was first with Him at His Resurrection -morn, and Women that brought tiding first to His Disciples that He was risen from the dead. Women therefore are highly favoured, and show by these things that they are sharers with us in the Grace of Life.“
What a remarkable contrast to the low and negated state of women in other religions and cultures!
One might ponder this: Wasn’t Jesus the first One to Liberate Women?
A Treatise?
A classic tale of the pilgrimage of Christian toward the Celestial City in the First Part presents the later pilgrimage of his wife Christiana with their children in the Second Part. THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS offers an insightful adventure through the mental gymnastics to which human beings are prone to suffer along the journey of Life. While one cannot fully understand the reasons, for example, that one person is beset by fear while another is beset by despair, the reading of this famous book provides examples of the various woes that can torment or stymie individuals. Not a textbook of psychiatry per se, one could argue that this interesting novel ought to be elevated to a treatise4 on mental conditions found to aggravate, impede, hinder, divert, or overwhelm the progress of an individual in living a productive and Joy-filled life.
From the obvious viewpoint of the spirit of man, Wisdom asks us to consider that our lives are lived on this earth in a temporal (time-trapped) existence within the veiled reality of the waging war of the kingdom of hell against the Kingdom of Heaven. The eternal destiny of each human being is the historical booty of these series of battles. Spiritual Insight Tells us the enemy of GOD’s Created human beings is satan. It determines to afflict each individual person with a diversion of mental conditioning that shifts one’s spirit awareness away from GOD in favor of carnal and human devotion of the mind.
- Bunyon, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress (originally published in 1678). 2003. Dover Publications, Inc. ↩︎
- Inserted GOD as that spelling and capitalized pronouns referring to Jesus or GOD. Other capitalization follows the printed text. ↩︎
- “Groat” is an old Scottish word that referred specifically to oats, but now the term can be applied to any whole kernel of grain that has been minimally processed to remove its outer husk or hull, sometimes called chaff. TheSpruceEats Retrieved 2026June30. ↩︎
- Searched prompt: has PILGRIM”S PROGRESS been considered to be a treatise. Google AI response states, “While The Pilgrim’s Progress is primarily celebrated as an allegorical novel rather than a formal instructional treatise, its profound theological grounding has led many readers and critics to view it as a practical, narrative treatise on the Christian life.” The offered references fail to use the word “treatise.” Retrieved 2026June23. GoogleSearchAI-Overview-Treatise. Conclusion: This is the type of inference or confabulation that AI makes without reference to any documented conclusion on the part of human beings. ↩︎