Shortly after I first began my graduate student teaching, I started to have a particular kind of experience on a regular basis, one that I still struggle with: as I speak, I am assaulted by thoughts of intensely upsetting things to say, and I worry that I will say one of these things out loud. As far as I know, I have never said something inappropriate or offensive without meaning to or realizing it, as I fear, but that doesn't stop me from worrying. As I experience these thoughts, I try to force them out of my mind, but, naturally, such effort generally amplifies the thoughts. As a result of the struggle between my disturbing thoughts and my efforts to suppress them, I experience so much mental noise as I speak that I feel as though I can't actually hear myself. I sometimes even feel like my mouth operates quite apart from what is going on in my mind, since my mental energy is directed towards my thoughts and not towards what I am saying—a genuinely distressing feeling of a loss of control.
After one of these experiences, I often try to think back over every word that I said, but the more I try to replay what I said, the more I can't be absolutely certain that I didn't say something offensive. Eventually, I begin to go down a catastrophizing spiral: I imagine students scarred for life, myself as the subject of an Inside Higher Ed article, and my reputation and career prospects ruined. As my anxiety grows, I can start doing absurd things, like asking people who were not present (family members, friends, and trusted colleagues) what the chances were that I said something inappropriate without realizing it. My interlocutors and I talk about how students probably would have looked shocked, at least, if I had done something shocking, but this reassurance only comforts me for a short time.
After a few years of enduring this anxiety, I wrote a post on social media about my experience—but since I was ashamed of what I was going through, I changed the details so that my readers would not know the actual nature of my situation. A friend who is a psychiatrist told me in a private message that I was having intrusive thoughts, and I began to research. 1 I quickly found that intrusive thoughts are a common symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I read about common things that sufferers endure, a number of which I have endured my whole life: reassurance seeking and reading difficulties (repeatedly reading the same passage, for example), in addition to commonly known symptoms like checking (repeatedly observing the same object) and hand-washing. Nonetheless, I initially resisted the notion that I could have OCD. Perhaps I have something more ordinary, I reasoned—anxiety, for sure, and maybe depression, but probably not a "real" mental illness like OCD. (Little did I know that according to some estimates as much as 2.3% of the population suffer from OCD. 2 )
As I continued teaching, however, my anxiety only worsened. It affected my work, of course, but also my sleep, my relationships, my appetite, and my self-esteem. Because of the intensity of my anxiety and the moral nature of my intrusive thoughts, I fantasized about and even seriously considered taking my own life, another symptom that researchers are learning is common for OCD sufferers. 3 One Fall semester, I gave in and went to see a therapist who specializes in OCD. The therapist's office was closer to where I taught than to where I lived, so I decided to go straight there after class, even though I would arrive an hour early. I brought a book with me to pass the time.
By complete coincidence, the book that I chose to bring with me to therapy was the spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding (first edition 1666) by the English author John Bunyan (b. 1628 – d. 1688). I first read this book in the blur of the final weeks of a semester, and I had been meaning to revisit it to give it a proper reading. As I began rereading that day in the waiting room, I found to my astonishment that Bunyan describes precisely the same symptoms that led me to go to therapy for OCD. One of Bunyan's experiences that is like my own, which I may well have read that day in the waiting room, is his temptation to sin against the Holy Ghost. For context, "the sin against the Holy Ghost" or "the unpardonable sin" is notoriously difficult to define, but it certainly entails apostasy. People guilty of this sin are taken to be irredeemably damned. Bunyan writes:
[I]f it [the sin against the Holy Ghost] were to be committed by speaking of such a word, then I have been as if my mouth would have spoken that word whether I would or no; and in so strong a measure was this temptation upon me, that often I have been ready to clap my hand under my chin, to hold my mouth from opening; and to that end also I have had thoughts at other times to leap with my head downward into some Muckhil-hole or other, to keep my mouth from speaking. 4
When I first read this book in graduate school, I concluded that Calvinism's doctrines of total depravity and unconditional election were the cause of Bunyan's distress. The book is cyclical: Bunyan describes a doubt or temptation that he wrestled with for an extended period (sometimes months or years), and then he describes a temporary period of relief, often owing to reflection on a particular passage of scripture—only to find himself weighed down by a new doubt or temptation shortly thereafter. I originally assumed that Bunyan could only experience his sinfulness and felt powerless to address his spiritual condition. I now deeply regret this interpretation. It attributes symptoms of what I believe to be an actual pathology to a Calvinist expression of the Christian faith—in effect, pathologizing religion. In my current view, reading Bunyan's suffering through OCD patterns of thought and behavior is much more convincing and compassionate. In fact, I argue in this essay that Bunyan's devotion offered him avenues for managing his symptoms, and these avenues were available to him in the commentary on Galatians (first edition 1535) by the German Reformation theologian Martin Luther (b. 1483 – d. 1546), a book that Bunyan says was deeply meaningful to him.
Bunyan's mental wellbeing has long been a subject of scholarly inquiry, attracting the attention of Josiah Royce and William James more than a century ago. 5 This critical discourse is particularly complicated because of the religious content of Bunyan's affliction and probably also Bunyan's continued reception by contemporary Christianity. Considering Bunyan's health requires also considering the relationship between his faith, his symptoms, and his recovery, and aligning his faith primarily with either his symptoms or his recovery will obviously and unavoidably resonate within this fraught ideological context. It is therefore important to address this critical discourse directly.
One might suppose that Bunyan's social and religious context was the cause of his painful ruminations. The Protestant order of salvation, one that would be familiar within the Church of England as well as Calvinist and Lutheran congregations, teaches that first a person must be condemned by the law and then redeemed by the gospel. "The law" here refers to the Hebrew scriptures and to the Torah in particular. In his exposition of the law in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus says that the law places demands not merely on actions—not murdering and not committing adultery, to name two of his examples—but on the mental, spiritual, and emotional: anger is the moral equivalent of murder and lust is the moral equivalent of adultery. 6 According to Protestants, original sin means it is impossible for a person to follow the law to the letter either in actions, thoughts, movements of spirit, or emotions. This realization condemns a person, revealing their inadequacy and their unworthiness for eternal life, inspiring guilt. After the law comes the gospel, a word that is broadly synonymous with "good news" for Christians. The good news is that Christ's sacrifice has paid the price for sin, making salvation and eternal life a free gift. All a person needs to do to have access to this gift is to have faith in Christ. Good works are, for Protestants, the product of divine inspiration for which human agents can take no credit. These works contribute nothing to the state of a person's soul (since the goodness isn't theirs to begin with); the works only reflect a state of beatitude.
Bunyan certainly felt condemnation and guilt. If his feelings were prescribed by religious belief and practice, then Bunyan's turmoil would not be pathological at all. Indeed, Michelle D. Brock has shown that early modern life writing includes other examples of the kind of rumination that Bunyan describes: "In both English and Scottish spiritual diaries, disturbing thoughts of atheism often appeared in the minds of the godly in the midst of demonic experiences—including the unpardonable sin—leading them to obsess about grace and the threat of damnation." 7 As Paul Cefalu notes, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) measures pathological symptoms against expected behavior and experiences. Cefalu, considering the Protestant order of salvation, concludes that affective anguish like Bunyan's may well have been expected in early modern Protestant communities. In fact, he conjectures that Bunyan would have been thankful for his obsessiveness because of its role in his salvation. 8
However, Bunyan says that his experience was not a productive stage in his spiritual development. "I could have been exceeding glad," Bunyan writes, "that this thought [consenting to sell and part with Christ] had never befallen, for then I thought I could with more ease and freedom abundance have leaned upon his grace…" 9 Bunyan did not see this obsessiveness as part of the faith; he saw it as an obstacle to the faith. Moreover, Bunyan's persistent feelings of guilt could easily be a reason that he would be excluded from religious community. According to the Protestant order of salvation, guilt should be one stage on the road to salvation; if a person is stuck in the stage of guilt, they may feel or be informed that they are not among God's elect. Indeed, Bunyan records one episode describing how he was excluded from Christian communion because of his intrusive thoughts. While fearing that he had committed the unpardonable sin, he shared his fear with "an Antient [sic] Christian," and the man told him that he believed Bunyan had committed the unpardonable sin. 10 This experience offers more support for approaching Bunyan's experience as abnormal and unexpected. In fact, Bunyan even acknowledges that his experience was abnormal: "These things may seem ridiculous to others, even as ridiculous as they were in themselves, but to me they were most tormenting cogitations." 11 Certainly, as Brock shows, Bunyan's experience was not unprecedented, but that does not mean his experience was normal. In fact, non-sufferers can experience something like OCD symptoms on a bad day. (Who hasn't had an intrusive thought?) What separates an OCD sufferer's symptoms from a non-sufferer's bad day is the intensity, persistence, and development of the symptoms. 12
Since Bunyan suggests that his ruminations were both unwanted and extraordinary, it is worth considering Bunyan's spiritual biography through the lens of diagnostic tools and therapeutic approaches to OCD. John Sneep and Arlette Zinck have taken this approach, ultimately arguing that Grace Abounding suggests that Bunyan experienced OCD symptoms. According to their reading, Bunyan obsessed about committing sins and the state of his soul, and he read scripture compulsively to try to alleviate these anxieties. 13
If we approach Bunyan's ruminations as symptoms of a pathology, we should set aside the religious and ideological content of Bunyan's ruminations. No one would argue that modern hygiene causes contamination OCD (fear of contaminants like germs or chemicals, such as bleach). Likewise, religion does not cause religious scrupulosity (OCD centered on fears of irreligious thoughts or actions) but rather supplies sufferers with potential dangers. Therapeutic approaches to OCD do not recommend devaluing hygiene, of course, and similarly they are careful to explain that sufferers need not devalue their religious beliefs or practices. Christine Purdon recommends that therapists help clients with OCD track how their values and goals are or are not supported by their compulsions, so that they can "be assured that in order to overcome OCD, they do not have to give up the very values and goals that define them (e.g. they do not have to compromise their religious traditions, they do not have to care less about their families)." 14 Jonathan Grayson is also sensitive to the religions of sufferers. OCD therapy often uses scripts, short texts that sufferers read or say repeatedly to manage their symptoms. In a model script for religious scrupulosity, he writes:
I'm going to turn to my real faith and ask God for the determination to stay with my recovery program. Even though I may be wrong, I'm going to believe God is nice and forgiving, and going through this treatment that seems so blasphemous is actually an act of faith on my part. If I'm wrong in what I'm doing, then so be it. I trust God's will, even if it means I'm to be punished by Him. 15
These psychologists recognize the reality that religion can help people live fruitful, well-rounded lives and promote human flourishing. In fact, religion can be a vital tool for helping people manage symptoms of a mental illness.
This research in the field of psychology shows a path forward for fresh engagement with Bunyan's spiritual autobiography within the field of literary studies. It is particularly urgent for literary studies to explore this path because of the influence of the secularization thesis on our discipline. The secularization thesis posits that reason and progress render religion increasingly untenable, and therefore it holds that religion ought to be relegated to the realm of private belief. Secularism may also lead people to associate religion with backwards, deleterious ideas and trends, and it may cause the positive effects of religion to go unrecognized. Discussing literary criticism, Lori Peterson Branch writes:
[A]s long as the relationship between religion and secularism is an arm-wrestling match and religion is slowly forced to the table, as long as one implicates religion in something problematic or seems to imply its decline or (alas) imbecility, or is sufficiently alarmist when it does not decline, all shall be well. Problems are more likely to arise whenever the discussion of religion is nonindicting, references its resilience or ongoing transformation, or explores mixed, even positive, creative, religious developments as though they were worthy of humanistic attention on their own, without being cashed out in terms of other meanings or outcomes. One senses that this is why the word postsecular sometimes sticks in the craw: as though the word itself, in implying a perhaps positive persistence of something akin to religion, were irritatingly threatening to a secular status quo, triumphalist even. 16
Following scholars like Branch, I am indirectly pursuing the argument that the narrative secularism tells itself about itself is untrue: religion is not nearly as primitive as secularism assumes it is, and secularism is not nearly as advanced as it assumes it is. To be clear, this indirect argument speaks to our modern context and our engagement with religion in academic discourse; it does not speak to 17th-century England, where private and public faith would not have been distinguished in the way that secularism distinguishes them.
I take, then, a more-or-less medical account of disability as my point of departure, but my objective is not a medical diagnosis. I might call my approach humanistic. Allow me to illustrate what I mean. One of my therapists is trained in the discipline of humanistic psychology, which is still active both clinically and critically. 17 Drawing on the work of psychologists and psychiatrists like Carl Rogers and Irvin Yalom, this discipline holds that although there are givens in life, people have the freedom and responsibility to build the architecture of their own lives within that given context. 18 During sessions with this therapist, I have learned not to use phrases like "I should…" or "I probably will…" Instead, I use phrases like "I choose…" and "I value…" Through this shift in vocabulary, my therapist is helping me to be intentional in building the architecture of my daily life and my private mental life. Similarly, in a session with another therapist, I said that something made me feel frightened. She asked me why I didn't just not feel fear. I initially thought this was a ridiculous question. After attending therapy and doing my homework, however, I learned that it is absolutely possible to decide how you want to feel about something and to take steps toward achieving that goal. Humanistic psychology draws explicitly on Existentialism, and my mental health has (a bit to my surprise) benefitted enormously from reading Existentialist philosophy. 19 Through therapy and Existentialism, I have learned that I have the freedom and responsibility to decide what is good, to feel what is good, to do what is good, and to cultivate this freedom for those around me. When I call my approach humanistic, I have in mind the human freedom and responsibility to pursue the good. In this essay, I explore how Bunyan and Luther describe the process of deciding what is good and then intentionally choosing to pursue that good, and I find that their descriptions resonate with my own experience.
My approach is not unique or unprecedented within the discipline of disability studies. Like Brendan Gleeson, I am "taking up the task of acknowledging subjectivity and human experience without abandoning social explanation." 20 I also disclose my own symptoms and experience, a practice analyzed by Jen Rinaldi. I am grateful to Rinaldi for validating the practice of sharing personal experience as a way of making the invisible visible, and I am also thankful to her for critiquing the practice as one that can make research navel-gazing and that can be difficult on the researcher. 21 I choose to share my personal experience because humanistic inquiry has made a dramatic difference in how I live my day-to-day life and in how I think about myself and the world. These are effects that the humanities have always had, and I feel that researchers should leverage this strength of our discipline. Finally, I find precedent for my approach in historicist work that has striven to recover the voices of the disabled. This is a task undertaken in Recovering Disability in Early Modern England, although, as with Cefalu's argument, the use of the term "disability" in historical context is contentious. 22 This volume has inspired me to use both historicism and presentism, searching for evidence that could speak to the lived experience of those with disabilities in the early modern period and considering how this evidence might speak to lived experience in our time. 23 I am interested in Bunyan's voice as a voice of a person with a disability because he records in painstaking detail how he experienced his symptoms and how he learned to cope with them using the resources available to him at the time. I hope that his story can be a source of hope and solidarity for other sufferers and that OCD can be a topic of discussion in literature classrooms, so that those with mental illnesses (diagnosed or undiagnosed, as mine was when I first encountered this book) may be inspired to choose the good for themselves.
In what follows, I give a brief account of OCD, and I read one episode from Grace Abounding in light of diagnostic criteria for OCD. Finally, I pursue the thesis that Luther's commentary on Galatians contains habits of mind that anticipate modern diagnostic tools and therapeutic approaches to OCD, and I argue that some of these habits of mind appear in Bunyan's spiritual autobiography. While this discussion draws on medical and psychological research, my exploration regularly comes back to Bunyan's social and religious context. I have found in Luther's commentary validation, compassion, and understanding for a troubled soul like Bunyan. Therefore, it is my goal to document this beneficial current within Bunyan's social and religious context.
OCD is much misunderstood. 24 Obsessions often manifest as intrusive thoughts, which are disturbing or fear-provoking feelings, ideas, or images that pop into a person's head. These intrusive thoughts are generally persistent and ego-dystonic (conflicting with a person's values and identity). For example, they may be violent, catastrophic, or blasphemous. However, the thoughts may not always be distressing in content; rather, it may simply be their persistence and recurrence that is distressing—say, having the same bar of a song stuck in your head for an extended period.
Compulsions are responses to obsessions. Simply put, people try to do things to relieve their anxiety. While these efforts might help in the short term, in the long run they end up intensifying the anxiety. 25 For instance, if I worry that the stove is on and venting gas into the house, I might feel compelled to check it. This action reinforces my initial worry and can cause it to escalate. The initial check becomes a check every night, which grows to two, three, four, five, six checks a night, which becomes sleeping downstairs on the couch to be closer to the stove. Moreover, what started out as a worry about the stove can become a worry about the oven, and the furnace, and the water heater, and the dryer, and the gas meter, and the pipe fittings. Before long, I would find myself worrying about any petroleum product: plastic, adhesive remover, petroleum jelly, anything having to do with a car. In this way, a sufferer's life becomes overwhelmed simply by accepting one little improbable thing as possible.
Still, OCD sufferers often have insight: we know on some level that what we're doing is probably strange and unnecessary, but we are compelled to perform our compulsions nonetheless. 26 Bunyan demonstrates this insight when he acknowledges that others will find his fears ridiculous. 27
Typically, treatment for OCD involves medication and therapeutic approaches like exposure and response prevention (ERP) 28 and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). 29 During ERP, a sufferer exposes themself to the thing that makes them anxious without allowing themself to perform the compulsion until they become habituated to the anxiety-provoking stimulus. Instead of performing a compulsion, the sufferer has to "sit with" the anxiety, waiting for it to subside. It is sometimes acceptable for the sufferer simply to delay performing the compulsion until after a set amount of time has passed. In my own course of ERP, I had to do the very end of my evening routine a few times a day imagining that a knob on the stove was on (along with all the catastrophic consequences), without allowing myself to go downstairs to check. A person with contamination OCD might have to stand close to a trash can, then touch the trash can, then take a piece of trash out of the trash can, and as the final step, they might have to wipe the inside of the trash can with a tissue and wipe that tissue over everything in their home, including things like linens and dishes. 30 In my experience, ERP seriously sucks, but it also works.
CBT focuses on identifying harmful thought patterns called cognitive distortions, forming healthy thoughts, and changing emotions and behaviors associated with cognitive distortions. 31 In my case, I learned to challenge my belief that I am uniquely responsible for preventing catastrophes. One common CBT strategy is naming the patient's OCD voice—literally giving it a name like "Roger"—to help patients separate their intrusive thoughts from the thoughts they want to consciously endorse. 32
Several features of Bunyan's mental and spiritual turmoil are consistent with OCD symptoms. 33 First, he describes intrusive thoughts that were distressing and persistent. Second, he describes his incredible efforts to respond to these thoughts and to cope with them, and these efforts are consistent with compulsions: he attempted to respond consciously to each occurrence of an intrusive thought; he reports searching the scriptures for prolonged periods of time; and he reports seeking reassurance from those around him. Importantly, these efforts often appear to have exacerbated the anxiety rather than relieve it, and if Bunyan addressed an anxiety primarily with compulsions, an anxiety of equal or greater intensity arose shortly after the previous anxiety subsided. Third, the distress from this cycle disturbed his normal functioning and manifested in physical symptoms. The distress produced by the symptoms and their lengthy duration make it reasonable to conjecture that Bunyan's experience amounts to a pathology.
Bunyan's account of being tormented by the intrusive thought "Sell Christ for this, or sell Christ for that" may suggest that he suffered from OCD. 34 In his lovely three-part essay on Bunyan, Royce memorably describes Bunyan's intrusive thoughts as "whatever […] conscientious inhibition and irritably weak speech functions had prepared him to find peculiarly fascinating and horrible." 35 Details from the beginning of Bunyan's account of this temptation suggest that it disrupted his normal functioning. He describes several somatic responses to his anxiety: he had "a very great trembling"; he could feel "[his] body as well as [his] minde to shake and totter"; "[he] felt also such a clogging and heat at [his] stomach"; and he felt "as if [his] breast-bone would have split in sunder." 36 He says he was continuously assaulted by his temptation: "it did alwayes in almost whatever I thought, intermix it self therewith, in such sort that I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast my eye to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come, Sell Christ for this [food, pin, or stick], or sell Christ for that." 37 In other words, whenever Bunyan attempted to interact with any object, he was assaulted by the intrusive thought to sell Christ for that object. The more objects he noticed, the more objects there were for which he could potentially sell Christ. He could not control this thought; he wished it wouldn't keep appearing in his mind; and he found it disturbing.
At the moment of crisis in his account, Bunyan describes how he attempted to respond mentally every time the thought "sell Christ" crossed his mind:
[O]ne morning as I did lie in my Bed, I was, as at other times, most fiercely assaulted with this temptation, to sell and part with Christ; the wicked suggestion still running in my mind, sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, as fast as a man could speak; against which also in my mind, as at other times I answered, No, no, not for thousands, thousands, thousands, at least twenty times together; but at last, after much striving, even until I was almost out of breath, I felt this thought pass through my heart, Let him go if he will! and I thought also that I felt my heart consent thereto. 38
The thought "sell Christ" is plainly ego-dystonic for Bunyan. He initially had an inflated sense of how significant this thought is, an affective response consistent with OCD symptoms. The mental action of thinking "no" is consistent with the experience of compulsions: he made an incredible effort to assert his faith against each instance of this ego-dystonic thought. This effort led to somatic effects, possibly a panic attack ("until I was almost out of breath"). Bunyan's description of the setting might further indicate that this episode interrupted his normal functioning. He says that these thoughts troubled him in his bed one morning. It is possible, then, that his distress prevented him from getting out of bed or disrupted his sleep. 39
Following his account of consenting to sell and part with Christ, Bunyan describes how he spent a great deal of time and energy weighing passages of scripture against one another to determine if he was beyond hope. Was he like Esau, who sold his birthright for a meal, or Judas, who literally sold Christ? Were various passages describing those who will never be forgiven directed at him? Or was he like David or Peter, and were passages like "My Grace is sufficient for thee" directed at him? 40 Of this back-and-forth citation and counter-citation, he says, "Thus was I confounded, not knowing what to do nor how to be satisfied in this question, whether the Scriptures could agree in the salvation of my Soul?" 41 This activity is consistent with compulsions, and so, predictably, Bunyan's compulsive reading of scripture did not help him cope.
Fortunately, Bunyan developed two strategies for managing his anxiety, strategies that have a good deal in common with OCD therapy. These strategies worked hand-in-hand. First, he reevaluated the danger posed by his thought. Speaking in retrospect, he realized that he had been "misinformed of the nature of [his] sin." 42 This process has similarities with the CBT practice of interrogating cognitive distortions. Second, he exposed himself to the scriptures that he thought condemned him, as ERP recommends.
As part of his reevaluation of the danger posed by his sin, he observes that the thought "Let him go if he will!" occurred to him quite against his conscious efforts, and so he reasons that he is like a person described in Joshua 20 who goes to a City of Refuge after unintentionally killing someone. 43 Next, he exposed himself to "those most fearful and terrible Scriptures, with which all this while [he] had been so greatly affrighted…" 44 To his surprise, he "found their visage changed; for they looked not so grimly on [him] as before [he] thought they did…" 45 In his reading of Hebrews 6, 10, and 12, he finds that he does not meet all criteria for sinners who may not be restored: he did not deny his profession of faith, he did not shame Christ before others, he was able to repent, and he did not cultivate antagonism, as Esau did when he "DESPISED his Birth-right." 46 He writes that Esau's offense "was not a hasty thought against the continual labour of his mind; but a thought consented to, and put in practice likewise, and that too after some deliberation…" 47 Bunyan continues to interpret his thought as a sin, but he recognizes that the consequences are somewhat less severe than eternal damnation.
Once he confronted the scriptures that terrified him and reevaluated the danger of his thought, he was able to cope with his anxiety—but it wasn't entirely gone:
And now remained only the hinder part of the Tempest, for the thunder was gone beyond me, onely some drops did still remain, that now and then would fall upon me: but because my former frights and anguish were very sore and deep, therefore it did oft befall me still as it befalleth those that have been scared with fire, I thought every voice was fire, fire; every little touch would hurt my tender Conscience. 48
Bunyan's experience has much in common with my own as an OCD sufferer. I repeated OCD thoughts and behaviors over and over; all that learning causes them to resurface from time to time, even after I interrogate them and consciously find them unreasonable and harmful, as Bunyan did. Using the tools of interrogating obsessions and performing exposures is a lifelong practice.
As is to be expected, then, Bunyan did not cure himself of OCD. His temptations persisted into his time in ministry. He says that sometimes as he led Communion, he was tempted to blaspheme the sacrament and to wish harm on the communicants. He describes his response to these intrusive thoughts thus: "… lest I should at any time be guilty of consenting to these wicked and fearful thoughts, I was forced to bend my self all the while to pray to God to keep me from such blasphemies; and also to cry to God to bless the Bread and Cup to them, as it went from mouth to mouth." 49 Bunyan's statement that he was "forced" is certainly consistent with the experience of compulsions. When experiencing thoughts like these, I have felt compelled to whisper "no" or "forgive me" under my breath. Bunyan also describes intrusive thoughts that occurred to him as he was preaching:
Sometimes again, when I have been preaching, I have bin violently assaulted with thoughts of blasphemy, and strongly tempted to speak them with my mouth before the Congregation. I have also at some times, even when I have begun to speak the Word with much clearness, evidence, and liberty of speech, yet been before the ending of that Opportunity so blinded, and so estranged from the things I have been speaking, and have also bin so straitned in my speech, as to utterance before the people, that I have been as if I had not known or remembred what I have been about; or as if my head had been in a bag all the time of the exercise. 50
Naturally, these symptoms touch me deeply because they align so clearly with my own. Bunyan's obsessions (and mine) are examples of thought-action fusion: Bunyan responds to wishing harm on a communicant and to thinking a blasphemous word as if he had actually done harm or spoken the blasphemous word.
Over the course of Grace Abounding, Bunyan's symptoms improve a great deal, and some of the strategies that helped him manage his symptoms were available to him through Luther's commentary on Galatians. Immediately before he describes his worry that he would sell Christ, Bunyan writes that he "did greatly long to see some ancient Godly man's Experience" and that "God … did cast into [his] hand (one day) a book of Martin Luther, his Comment on the Galathians, so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece." 51 This book made such an impression upon Bunyan that he says, "I do prefer this Book of Mr. Luther upon the Galathians, (excepting the Holy Bible) before all the Books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded Conscience." 52 It is possible that the edition Bunyan came upon was a 16th-century English translation, which, as its title page says, was set forth "to the joyfull comfort and confirmation of all true Christian believers especially such as inwardly being afflicted and greeved in conscience." 53 This book, clearly, was marketed for people with mental and spiritual afflictions. Why? What in this commentary could have offered someone like Bunyan relief from his intrusive thoughts? 54 I argue that this book has two general tools for readers struggling with spiritual and psychological turmoil: it advises them how to understand themselves in relation to that turmoil, and it offers them practical guidance about what to do (and not do) about that turmoil.
Bunyan briefly summarizes the commentary, and in so doing, he suggests that it helped him better understand the relationship between himself and his trials. Bunyan writes that Luther "doth most gravely … debate of the rise of these temptations, namely Blasphemy, Desperation, and the like, shewing that the Law of Moses, as well as the Devil, Death, and Hell, hath a very great hand therein; the which at first was very strange to me, but by considering and watching, I found it so indeed." 55 Bunyan understood Luther to be saying that these troubling thoughts and feelings originate outside of himself. While Bunyan appears to have initially seen the intrusive thoughts as legitimate, Luther's commentary enabled him to see the voice of his intrusive thoughts as unreliable and cruel.
Luther often describes troubling thoughts as coming from Satan. A particularly memorable example comes in his exposition of Galatians 3:1, "O foolish Galathians, Who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth[,] [to] whom Jesus Christ before was described in your sight and was among you crucified[?]" 56 Luther says that Paul does not condemn the Galatians themselves but the false teachers who have misled them, creating a distinction between speaker and audience. Luther applies the distinction to a person's spiritual life, aligning Satan with a person's misperceptions:
… the power of the devill is so greate, that he is able to make falshod so like to the truth. Moreover (which is yet much more horrible) … he can so cunningly and so lively chaunge himselfe into the likenes of Christ, that it is impossible for the poore tempted and afflicted soule to perceave it, wherby many simple and ignoraunt persons are deceaved and driven downe to desperation, and some also destroy themselves. 57
Luther then describes an actual person who died by suicide because of despair: "that miserable man Doctor Kraus of Hal, which said: I have denied Christ, and therfore he standeth: now before his father and accuseth me." 58 Luther says that Dr. Kraus could not be convinced that he had not denied Christ and that Christ does not accuse him, and so "he despaired and so miserably destroied himself." 59 Luther, lamenting, writes that Dr. Kraus's thoughts were "a meere lie, a bewitching of the devil, and a fantasticall definition of a wrong Christ whom, the scripture knoweth not. For the scripture setteth forth Christ not as a Judge, a temptour or accuser: but a reconciler, a mediator, a comforter and a throne of grace." 60 Luther's depiction of Christ is not (as Bunyan feared) a strict prosecutor who is intent upon winning every conviction and enforcing the maximum sentence. Rather, according to Luther, Christ is the source of mercy and grace and a person's thoughts to the contrary are temptations from Satan.
In his summary of Luther's commentary (quoted above), Bunyan lists the law first and therefore appears to give it priority as the agent of psychological distress (which is one of its legitimate functions in the Protestant order of salvation), but throughout the rest of Grace Abounding, he tends to name "the Tempter," "the Devil," or "Satan" as the agent of his doubts and fears. 61 This agent may use the law, death, and Hell as the material for creating doubts and fears in Bunyan, but there is no question in Bunyan's mind who is responsible. I would argue that just as I named my OCD voice "Roger" while undergoing CBT, Bunyan named his "Satan." It seems to me that "Satan" is as good a name as any for an OCD voice, at least as good as "Roger." In fact, in a discussion of religious scrupulosity, Grayson names the OCD voice the "OCDemon." 62
Peter J. Carlton has argued that when Bunyan attributes his temptations to someone else, he is making a "disclaiming locution": Bunyan talks about something he is doing (thinking blasphemous thoughts) as if it were happening to him. 63 Although Carlton gives an accurate description of Bunyan's reported symptoms, Bunyan's disclaiming locutions align with the modern clinical understanding of OCD. Simply put, intrusive thoughts typically are outside of a person's immediate, conscious control, and so Bunyan's thoughts are arguably better understood as happening to him rather than as something he is doing.
Importantly, Luther does not recommend that sufferers do something about their troubling thoughts. One of the more frustrating and counterintuitive features of OCD therapy is that the patient has to learn that the goal is to provoke a specific anxiety—and then sit with the anxiety and conscientiously avoid doing anything to cope. In the backwards world of OCD, doing something about anxiety makes a sufferer more anxious and more uncertain.
Luther gives examples of people who try to do something about their spiritual uncertainty and become more uncertain thereby. A striking example comes in his exposition of Galatians 4:9: "But nowe seing ye know God, yea rather are known of God: how turne you againe unto impotent and beggerly rudiments, whereunto ye will be in bondage againe." 64 Luther says that Paul suggests that human beings cannot do anything to earn righteousness on their own, since God fully knows them and their imperfections. According to Luther, Paul's argument is that people who have forgotten this relationship between humans and the divine turn to the law to earn righteousness. According to Luther, the law serves the purpose of exposing wickedness, but it is "impotent and beggerly rudiments" for earning righteousness. Luther then describes the futility of trying to earn righteousness through the law:
Whosoever then seketh righteousnes by the law, what can he imagin else, but that god being angry, must nedes be pacified with works? Now, when he hath once conceived this fantasy, he beginneth to work. But he can never find so many good works as are able to quiet his conscience: but stil he desireth moe. Yea he findeth sinnes in those works that he hath don already. Therefore his conscience can never be certified, but must needes be alwayes in dout, and thus thinke with it selfe: Thou hast not sacrificed as thou shouldest doe: thou hast not prayed aright: this thou hast left undone: this or that sinne thou hast committed. Here the heart trembleth and feeleth itselfe oppressed with innumberable sinnes which still encrease without end, so that he swarveth from righteousnes more and more, untill at length he fall to desperation. Hereof it cometh that many being at the poynt of death, have uttered these desperate words: O wretch that I am: I have not kept mine order: Whether shall I flie from the wrath of Christ, that angry judge? would to God I had ben made a swinheard or the vilest wretch in the whole world. Thus the Monke in the ende of his life is more weake, more beggerly, more faithles and fearfull then he was at the beginning when he first entered into his order. 65
Luther's logic about how spiritual uncertainty grows parallels how obsessions grow in response to compulsions. Luther argues that the scrupulous monk (now who could that be, Martin?) 66 has the initial thought that he is unrighteous and so he does good works to try to rectify that state of affairs, but he learns from these efforts not that the problem is resolved but that the problem is a legitimate one that requires his response.
I conclude, therefore, that Luther gives a sufferer of religious scrupulosity good advice about what not to do about their condition; in addition, he gives the sufferer good advice about what to do. In short, to believe. He memorably expresses this piece of advice in his exposition of Galatians 4:6, "And because you are sonnes, God hath sent forth the spirite of his sonne into your hearts. Crying: Abba Father." 67 It is hard not to read this exposition in light of Erik H. Erikson's classic study Young Man Luther. Erikson argues that Luther's great theological insight is that God has a gracious and merciful orientation towards people, and Luther arrived at this idea, Erikson says, at least in part by disavowing his own father's disciplinarian parenting and by refusing to attribute a similar temperament to God: "[…] instead of being like an earthly father whose mood-swings are incomprehensible to his small son, God is given the attribute of ira misericordiae—a wrath which is really compassion. With this concept, Luther was at last able to forgive God for being a Father, and grant Him justification." 68 Luther says people inherently feel unworthy of God's love, and Satan intensifies this feeling by pointing out sins. "Abba Father" is therefore a great cry to God but only a "small and feeble groning" from the perspective of human beings, because of how intensely we experience the "great and horrible rorings of the law, of sinne, of death, of the devill, and of hell." 69 (Considering how similar this list is to the list in Bunyan's synopsis of Luther's commentary, in which he cites "the Law of Moses, as well as the Devil, Death, and Hell," Bunyan may well have had this very passage in mind. 70 ) Luther advises the sick soul thus:
We must not judge therefore according to the feeling of our owne heart, but according to the word of God, which teacheth us that the holy Ghost is geven to those that are afflicted, terrified, & ready to despaire, to raise them up & to comfort them, that they be not overcome in their tentations & afflictions, but may overcome them, and yet not without great terrors and troubles. 71
This advice might seem unsatisfying, but it makes perfect sense from the perspective of OCD therapy. Essentially, Luther says not to trust your feelings and not to do anything about your anxiety; just wait, sit with the anxiety, and believe scripture. Luther could see that the more a sufferer tries to achieve certainty the more they become worried about the problem, not the more they become certain that the problem is behind them. It is therefore better for a person to believe that Christ's sacrifice has secured their salvation and that any thoughts to the contrary are the fiery darts of the devil. 72
OCD therapy can actually recommend that a sufferer deny that a person can know for certain the state of their soul or their responsibility for a sinful thought; the skills recommended by OCD therapy are to choose to believe even though there is uncertainty and to continue with the recovery program. 73 In an especially thoughtful article on Royce and Bunyan, John Owen King makes philosophical and psychological use of the distinction between "works" and "work" so central to Protestant theology: "works" are an attempt to eradicate guilt, and "work" is "a sublimated activity" that is "valuable both for healing a severely damaged ego and for serving a community." 74 It follows from these definitions that works are an attempt to crystalize something (value, dignity, certainty) in time, and work is the ongoing activity of pursuing a goal through time. On this view, works and compulsions are acts of bad faith, attempts to turn human life into something that it isn't: certain and fixed. Work and therapy, on the other hand, require a more authentic understanding of human being: the conscious selection of an end and the continued pursuit of that end.
One episode from Grace Abounding in particular suggests that Bunyan developed the skills to manage his OCD anxiety. He describes how he was walking in a field wrestling with his conscience, "fearing lest yet all was not right," when "suddenly this sentence fell upon [his] Soul, Thy righteousness is in Heaven." 75 He then had a spiritual experience where he saw in an almost sensory way Christ as his righteousness. This insight suggests that he was able to choose dignity and worth for himself. When he got home and searched the scripture for the sentence, "Thy righteousness is in Heaven," however, he was not able to find it. On an earlier occasion, something similar happened to him. He was startled and comforted by the thought, "Look at the generations of old, and see, did ever any trust in God and were confounded?" 76 Unfortunately, he was not able to find this sentence in the scriptures on this first occasion either. He asked others if they knew where to find the verse, and he reports looking for it for more than a year. 77 Ultimately, he read Ecclesiasticus 2:10, and he decided that this verse expresses the meaning of the sentence that popped into his head. It is arguably compulsive to read the whole Bible from "the beginning of Genesis … to the end of the Revelations" in search of one single verse, as if only finding that verse would validate his relief. 78 However, in the later instance, he does not report searching the scriptures compulsively. When he could not find the verse immediately, his "Heart began to sink again, onely that was brought to [his] remembrance, He is made unto us of God, Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption; by this word [he] saw the other sentence true." 79 He was not constrained to buoy his sinking heart and achieve absolute certainty by searching the scriptures until he found the exact words that popped into his head. He was able to hold his anxiety at bay by choosing to believe that the thought agrees with articles of his faith.
One of the more mystifying features of Bunyan's interaction with Luther is why Bunyan felt that he must see "some ancient Godly man's Experience." 80 In explanation of what his contemporaries were lacking, he writes: "[F]or those who had writ in our days, I thought (but I desire them now to pardon me) that they had Writ only that which others felt, or else had, thorow the strength of their Wits and Parts, studied to answer such Objections as they perceived others were perplexed with, without going down themselves into the deep." 81 Of Luther's book, he writes: "I found my condition in his experience, so largely and profoundly handled, as if his Book had been written out of my heart; this made me marvel: for thus thought I, this man could not know any thing of the state of Christians now, but must needs write and speak the Experience of former days." 82 The current literature was for Bunyan secondhand reporting at best and at worst people-pleasing fiction, but he doesn't explain why he thought that people in his own time were more susceptible to these vices than people from the past.
It's hard to say why, but reaching out across history clearly had a salutary effect on Bunyan. In addition to acting as a comforting historical precedent, Luther's commentary, I have argued, offers guidance for helping people understand themselves in relation to their spiritual and mental turmoil and for helping them understand what to do about it. Bunyan came to understand that his turmoil was not under his control and for that reason he shouldn't try to control it.
This understanding anticipates modern therapeutic approaches to OCD, and it explains the anticlimactic ending of his struggle with the fear that he would sell or had sold Christ. Vera Camden has written, "Neil Keeble remarked to me in conversation that the resolution of his obsession is not fully registered and perhaps cannot be fully explained; it simply happens. This is because the work of resolution has, I contend, already occurred in the tedious reiterations which have, precisely, eddied out into the whole of his narrative." 83 If Bunyan suffered from OCD, repetition would have been harmful to him, not part of his recovery. Based on my experience, healing does not come with ecstasy and relief proportional to the anxiety provoked by OCD. A sufferer chooses to take the odds that their worries are unfounded, to resist acting on those worries, and to live with uncertainty. Grayson says that living with uncertainty is perhaps the fundamental step towards recovery for OCD sufferers. 84 Although the anxiety subsists for a time, it eventually kind of peters out, often without the sufferer's conscious awareness, although it will resurface on occasion. There is no satisfying end to the narrative, other than a life that is lived forwards in time.
Ironically, the thing from Luther's commentary that genuinely may have helped Bunyan is not the thing that Luther thought would help his readers. Naturally, Luther being Luther, he assumes that the certainty of the scriptures will solve the uncertainty of works. 85 Bunyan's painful experience shows that Luther dramatically underestimated the extent to which the scriptures can be material for spiritual turmoil and uncertainty. In fact, as I suggest at the end of the previous section, part of Bunyan's recovery was probably learning to stop searching the scriptures. Even so, it would be a serious mistake to suggest that some religions lend themselves more naturally to OCD suffering than others. 86 OCD will work on whatever is at hand in a person's life. If Bunyan wasn't worrying about the state of his soul, his tempter probably would have found something else in his relationships or his daily tasks for him to worry about.
Although Luther was wrong to assume that the scriptures can solve the problem of spiritual uncertainty, his commentary still offers advice that will help someone suffering from OCD, specifically religious scrupulosity. I would summarize Luther's guidance for someone in Bunyan's position thus, stripped of the doctrinal language: your suffering is genuine suffering; you don't need to pretend that your suffering isn't real or pretend it's all for the best; just have faith that the universe outside of your bubble of suffering has goodness and benevolence in store for the human spirit. 87 Bunyan could only experience relentless, cyclical self-scrutiny and interpretation as a pathological ending of life, not a healthy end. When he cut off the cycle of tragic defeat to his trauma, followed by glorious victory, followed by tragic defeat, he was able to choose the projects that made his life so productive.