‘There you shall enjoy your friends again’: Bunyan’s Depiction of Heaven

Owens, W. R. (2024). ‘There you shall enjoy your friends again’: Bunyan’s Depiction of Heaven. In: Harris, J and Searle, A eds. The Puritan Literary Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 180–195.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191874840.003.0011

Abstract

In the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1684), Bunyan includes a conversation between Great-heart and Mr Valiant-for-Truth about whether pilgrims would meet their friends in heaven. It is not the first time that Bunyan describes heaven as a place of social interaction as well as of eternal worship of God. This chapter argues that Bunyan’s concept of heaven is very much in line with earlier Puritan discussions of the nature of heaven, which had come to stress that we would recognize and be reunited with friends and family members there. One of the most influential Puritan treatments was Richard Baxter’s The Saints Everlasting Rest, in which Baxter writes with emotion of his expectation that he will meet earthly friends again in heaven. The endings of both parts of The Pilgrim’s Progress present an equally stirring depiction of heaven as a place of human fellowship, where pilgrims ‘will enjoy their friends again’.

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