Spiritual Experience and Spiritual Autobiography

Abstract

"I have three main aims in this paper: to discuss the language of spiritual experience in Grace Abounding, to see the ways in which the Post-Structuralist debate about 'the crisis of the subject' might relate to a Christian sense of the subject ('subject' as in 'subjective' rather than 'the subject of English'); and, in particular, to examine the category 'spiritual experience', as it was understood in Bunyan's time by those of a Puritan persuasion. Grace Abounding announces itself as the account of a spiritual experience, a 'relation of the merciful working of God upon my Soul'. (1) How useful is the category, and what are the criteria for assessing it?."