The Tinker Who Outshone the Theologians

In 1660, a traveling mender of pots and pans sat in a cold Bedford jail cell, convicted for preaching without a license. John Bunyan had no university degree, no ordination from any recognized body, no library of classical texts. The educated clergy of Restoration England regarded him as an embarrassment — a barely literate tradesman who dared to speak of holy things. Bishop Edward Fowler publicly mocked his grammar and lack of refinement.

Yet from that prison cell, over twelve long years, Bunyan wrote with a clarity that Cambridge-trained divines could not match. His pen moved not from rhetorical training but from a mind saturated in Scripture and a heart broken open by the Holy Spirit. When The Pilgrim's Progress finally reached the public in 1678, it swept through England like a fire through dry timber. Scholars who had dismissed him found their own congregations reading his words by candlelight. Within a decade, it was the most widely read book in the English language besides the Bible itself.

Paul told the Corinthians he came not with "persuasive words of human wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power." God has always delighted in bypassing the credentialed gatekeepers. The Spirit of the Almighty does not need our eloquence — He needs our surrender. What Bunyan lacked in polish, the Holy One supplied in power, proving again that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men.