A Man who would become Christian

The story of The Pilgrim's Progress centres on the journey of Christian, as he sets out—Book in hand and a burden on his back—from the home-comforts of The City of Destruction in search of the legendary Celestial City. Along the way he encounters several others on this same Pilgrimage, as well as many who attempt to thwart them on their path.

Perhaps you know this story. Perhaps, like me, you have read it many, many times. Perhaps you know the gist of it, or perhaps you know every step of Christian's story in intimate detail.

But what do we know of his life before his Pilgrimage began?

A great number of the details come to us in the Second Part, where his wife, Christiana, is given a name, as are his sons, Matthew, Samuel, Joseph and James. We are also introduced to several of the residents of the City of Destruction. But in the First Part, we are given a very interesting, blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail about Christian before he... well... became Christian.

When he arrives at House Beautiful he is met by the porter, Watchful, who asks Christian's name. Christian answers,

My name is now Christian, but my name at the first was Graceless...

Did you catch that? Prior to setting out on his Pilgrimage—or more correctly, prior to his conversion—Christian's name was actually Graceless! (And if you happened to miss it while reading this section of the story, you would miss it altogether—the only other time the word 'Graceless' is used in the original, it is the name of a Town.)

The beauty of this story is that it uses Puritan naming conventions, which require little explanation, and Character's attributes are closely determined (or rather, vice versa) by their name.

What a tragic name this is then. Graceless. Without God's Free and Unmerited Grace.

According to Calvinistic thinking (which I don't entirely adhere to), the only way for a sinner to be saved is for God, through Christ, to offer them this Grace. As wicked, fallen humans, our depraved souls could not possibly seek out God of their own volition, as they have given themselves over to—and even delight in—their sin. Without God's Grace, we are doomed to our own peril.

How wonderful it is, then, that when Graceless one day located a mysterious Book that warned of coming Judgment on the City of Destruction, he was offered the Grace to heed to the warning!

As I said, this was Christian's name until his conversion, and this is not the moment of his conversion. I imagine many had picked up this Book before him—perhaps it was in the back corner of some dusty bookshop, or (as I prefer to imagine) maybe there are churches scattered throughout the towns and cities of the Bunyanverse to evangelise to sinners. How else would there be Pilgrims?—but for one reason or another, the others had all chosen to ignore the Book's message. No, reading the book certainly was what caused Graceless to receive his burden, but it did not automatically qualify him as a Christian, just as many in this world can read the Book without wanting to become Christian. And even many can become convicted of their sin, but then seek other ways to rid themselves of their burdens (as we shall see when I write about the town of Morality).

Rather, it is not until Christian arrives at the Wicket Gate that he is converted, where he is greeted by the Gate's Keeper, Goodwill, who turns out to be none other than Spoiler Alert himself. More on that in another post.

But for the sake of this post, I believe it is James Baldwin's 1913 re-telling of Pilgrim's Progress that captures this whole idea of Graceless becoming Christian perfectly: in this version, the character is called Graceless for the entire start of the story, and it is in-fact Goodwill who gives him the name Christian before he sets off from the Wicket Gate. It's helped me to think of Christian as two distinct persons, the Old and the New Creation, each with their own story.

That being said, I would love to read some fan-fiction about more of Chris- Uh, Graceless's... story before he started his Pilgrimage!