Moses in Pilgrim's Progress

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MarieP

Puritan Board Senior
I thought this had been asked here before, but I can't seem to find it.

Does Bunyan's portrait of Moses strike you (no pun intended) as contra to a belief in the third use of the law?
 
It definitely could seem that way upon reading it. However, I tend to presuppose that he believes in the republication of the Covenant of Works within the Decalogue. Notice what he says is true of Moses: "[he has a] secret inclining to Adam the first."

To this end, his portrayal of Moses is not be taken as a pejorative statement on the use of the law as a rule of life (3rd use of the law), but rather a sweeping indictment on the Covenant of Works within the Decalogue.

Even if he didn't hold to republication, many often affirm that within the hands of the fallen sinner, the Decalogue can be misused and treated as if it were effectively a Covenant of Works, even though the giving of the law is entirely gracious.
 
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It definitely could seem that way upon reading it. However, I tend to presuppose that he believes in the republication of the Covenant of Works within the Decalogue. Notice what he says is true of Moses: "[he has a] secret inclining to Adam the first."

To this end, his portrayal of Moses is not be taken as a pejorative statement on the use of the law as a rule of life (3rd use of the law), but rather a sweeping indictment on the Covenant of Works within the Decalogue.

Even if he didn't hold to republication, many often affirm that within the hands of the fallen sinner, the Decalogue can be misused and treated as if it were effectively a Covenant of Works, even though the giving of the law is entirely gracious.

Thanks- that was helpful! A sister from church and I are listening to a series on Pilgrim's Progress by Jim Gables. I was a bit surprised that Gables excluded the third use of the law in his commentary- "the law can only condemn" was his contention.

You are right to point out the phrase "[he has a] secret inclining to Adam the first."
 
No, for more than one reason. For convenience, I'll quote the section from Bunyan. Faithful has been describing the various people he encountered before he and Christian met. After determining to reject the old man, Faithful says:

...So I went on my way up the hill.
Now, when I had got above half-way up, I looked behind me, and saw one coming after me, swift as the wind; so he overtook me just about the place where the settle stands.
Christian: Just there, said Christian, did I sit down to rest me; but being overcome with sleep, I there lost this roll out of my bosom.
Faithful: But, good brother, hear me out. So soon as the man overtook me, it was but a word and a blow; for down he knocked me, and laid me for dead. But when I was a little come to myself again I asked him wherefore he served me so. He said because of my secret inclining to Adam the First. And with that he struck me another deadly blow on the breast, and beat me down backward; so I lay at his foot as dead as before. So when I came to myself again I cried him mercy: but he said, I know not how to show mercy; and with that he knocked me down again. He had doubtless made an end of me, but that one came by and bid him forbear.
Christian: Who was that that bid him forbear?
Faithful: I did not know him at first: but as he went by, I perceived the holes in his hands and in his side: Then I concluded that he was our Lord. So I went up the hill.
Christian: That man that overtook you was Moses. He spareth none; neither knoweth he how to shew mercy to those that transgress the law.
Faithful: I know it very well; it was not the first time that he has met with me. ‘Twas he that came to me when I dwelt securely at home, and that told me he would burn my house over my head if I stayed there.
Christian: But did you not see the house that stood there on the top of the hill, on the side of which Moses met you?
Faithful: Yes, and the lions too, before I came at it. But, for the lions, I think they were asleep, for it was about noon; and because I had so much of the day before me, I passed by the Porter, and came down the hill.
Christian: He told me, indeed, that he saw you go by; but I wish you had called at the house, for they would have showed you so many rarities that you would scarce have forgot them to the day of your death.

First, an allegory is not a systematic treatise. The point of this section isn't to expound the relationship of the law of Moses to the covenant of grace, but to show how it functioned in Faithful's experience. C.S. Lewis has some wise words on how to read allegory appropriately:

A page later comes the supreme example. You remember how the text 'the wages of sin is death' is transformed? Asked by Apollyon why he is deserting him, Christian replies: 'Your wages [were] such as a man could not live on.' You would hardly believe it, but I have read a critic who objected to that. He thought the motive attributed to Christian was too low. But that is to misunderstand the very nature of all allegory or parable or even metaphor. The lowness is the whole point. Allegory depends on giving you one thing in terms of another. All depends on respecting the rights of the vehicle, in refusing to allow the least confusion between the vehicle and its freight. The Foolish Virgins, within the parable, do not miss beatitude; they miss a wedding party. The Prodigal Son, when he comes home, is not given spiritual consolations; he is given new clothes and the best dinner his father can put up. It is extraordinary how often this principle is disregarded. The imbecile, wisely anonymous, who illustrated my old nursery copy of The Pilgrim's Progress makes a similar blunder at the end of the Part II. Bunyan has been telling how a post came for Christiana to say that she was to cross the river and appear in the City within ten days. She made her farewells to all her friends and 'entered the River with a Beck'n' (that is a wave) 'of Fare well, to those that followed her to the River side'. The artist has seen fit to illustrate this with a picture of an old lady on her death-bed, surrounded by weeping relatives in the approved Victorian manner. But if Bunyan had wanted a literal death-bed scene he would have written one.
This stupidity perhaps comes from the pernicious habit of reading allegory as if it were a cryptogram to be translated; as if, having grasped what an image (as we say) 'means', we threw the image away and thought of the ingredient in real life which it represents. But that method leads you continually out of the book back into the conception you started from and would have had without reading it. The right process is the exact reverse. We ought not to be thinking 'This green valley, where the shepherd boy is singing, represents humility'; we ought to be discovering, as we read, that humility is like that green valley. That way, moving always into the book, not out of it, from the concept to the image, enriches the concept. And that is what allegory is for.

Second, this imagery of Moses is not at all inconsistent with Paul's remarks about the law.

Third, why is Faithful treated so severely by Moses? It is because Faithful himself has a secret inclining to Adam the First. At this point he is not receiving the law from the hand of a Mediator. Until we are free from the law as a means of righteousness, it will only beat us up until it kills us. Although the law is holy, and just, and good in itself, it is death to us, until we have died to it and been married to another. Thus it is through Christ that mercy comes, and it is only Christ who can tell Moses to stop the attack.
 
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