Rapid change, and a thirst that is not quenched

The notes stay with John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress — the name they give him is the one usually written Bunyan. They begin with people living through rapid change, and with faith as one of the things many lean on. Success is set ever higher, study and competition do not stop with age, and policies weigh on people, they write; in that unease, something to hold onto may be what leads a person toward faith.

They also set down older questions: where one comes from, where one is going, whether one is living rightly, a thirst that is not quenched even when much has been gained.

Not leaving the world, but leaving its powers

Faith, they write, has served modern people as a shelter, and that shelter has become belief, helping them endure hard conditions and, in their account, even feeding social development. From a modern vantage, it can be a comfort.

Better than treating the world as lasting and clinging to it, they write, is the believer’s proper attitude of trying to escape — not by leaving the world itself, but by leaving the world’s powers, and by going out into the world to show God’s holy rule. Bunyan’s holding of this view of the end, they suggest, may come from a long imprisonment.

Faith is martyred; Love does not appear

For that reason, they write, he brings on the figures of Faith and Hope. Faith is martyred; Hope encourages Christian and goes with him to the Celestial City. What they want noticed is that a figure of Love does not appear. A woman named Mercy does appear, in a beautiful city that stands for the church, but only in part. The notes stop at that observation.

The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes, a student reading of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress: modern unease and faith, a long imprisonment, Faith martyred and Hope walking with Christian to the Celestial City, the absence of Love, and Mercy appearing only in part in a city that stands for the church.

Last updated: 15 November 2026