David H J Gay

John Bunyan David H J Gay

Richard Baxter said John Bunyan was an antinomian. Was he? Again: Was Bunyan a proto new-covenant theologian on the covenants and the law? David Gay, having examined these claims, here sets out his conclusions with the evidence for them. While Bunyan said many good things on both these topics, by no stretch of the imagination can he be described as a fully-fledged new-covenant theologian. But neither did he toe the Reformed line in these matters. He did not tick all the orthodox boxes. He was his own man. But as Gay writes: 'Why bother about what John Bunyan thought and wrote, or did not think and write on the law?... Does it matter? In a very real sense, no, of course it does not. I am not desperately interested in John Bunyan for John Bunyan's sake... But what I am interested in is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Interested in the gospel? I am consumed by it! So, in the end, it does not matter a great deal what John Bunyan said or thought... What does Scripture say? That is the question!' As a result, Gay hopes his book, though not an easy read, will make a valuable contribution to the contemporary debate on the believer and the law. George Platt: 'I commend to you this work from David Gay, and trust that you will find it as profitable as I did. It will demonstrate the many ways in which Bunyan's theology was strong, and has much to say to us today, whilst also revealing the ways in which Bunyan was a theologian of his time who wasn't always able to break away from the dominant system of his day. Let this be a lesson to us all today to ask ourselves what our own "blind spots" might be and where we might be slaves of our own system instead of letting the Bible shape our thoughts however it will'.