The Unruly Text: Scribal Authority, Scriptural Fragmentation, and Hermeneutical Crisis in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

This paper presents John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
(1666) as a paradigmatic case study of early modern hermeneutical anxiety, arguing
that the stages of Bunyan ’s spiritual autobiography function as scripture–both an
authoritative and unstable phenomenon, simultaneously salvific and threatening. By
examining Bunyan’s obsessive scriptural activities, including his desperate attempts
to recover lost passages, his absorption of biblical phrases as intrusive mental
intrusions, and his distress at apparent contradictions within his narrative, I establish
how sola scriptura ideology among Protestants induced a characteristic crisis of
interpretation. The situation wherein salvation is solely based on the proper reading
of the Bible and lacks ecclesiastical authority to ensure correct interpretation
generates various voices attacking the reader’s psyche. The story of Bunyan
demonstrates scripture not as something constant, but as a battlefield in which verses
fasten themselves into minds uninvited, are misremembered over a lifetime, and
simultaneously serve as a source of grace and damnation. Such hermeneutical
instability, I maintain, is precisely the process of Bunyan’s spiritual formation--his
subjectivity is manifested through his struggle with the unruliness of scripture. This
article contributes to the literature on religious subjectivity during the early modern
period, exploring material textuality and the psychological impacts of Reformation
hermeneutics.