A Literature Review of The Jonathan Edward's Sermon, Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God

A congregational minister who was influenced by strict Calvinist theology, Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” emphasizes the fragility and problematic situation that humans are in everyday as they struggle to create a division between them and “the pit of hell.” Edwards uses this subject in order to warn the readers/ audience of the risky future that they are leading, if they do not follow the beliefs of god. Jonathan uses fear, violence, as well as guilt and pity to appeal to the audience with an overwhelming tone.

Edwards, at the beginning of his speech, introduces the overall gist of how powerless humans are in their descent into hell and how God is their only answer and hope to escape the miserable fate that they all share. He uses statements that cast a feeling of fear toward the audience by implying that “natural men are held in the hand of God” over hell and that “hell is gaping for them” with “flames [gathered] and [flashed] about them.” Jonathan also warns the audience using personification that hell is ready to “swallow them up,” while the “fire… [struggles] to break out.” His use of personification to strike fear in the audience admonishes the general public about how God is the ultimate administrator of the future of every individual and that no mediator can stop God's decision. The excessive use of fear in the beginning of his sermon targets the audience's attention as he prepares to descend deeper into his belief on the “pits of hell.”

Jonathan then uses personification after personification as well as anaphora in order to create a conjugated idea, while at the same time, emphasizing his idea that God is the almighty controller of people´s future. He uses anaphora to impose an emphasis towards the fact that “it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.” The anaphora “There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of, there is nothing between you and hell but the air,” urges the audience to believe in God’s powers and that it is “the power and mere pleasure of God that hold you up.” Edward uses his passion and his use of personification and anaphora to exemplify to the audience that we must believe in God and his judgement. The passionate and fearful words that envelop the meaning of the section captures the attention of the audience, which in turn creates a strong persuasive environment for Edward’s arguments.

Afterwards, Jonathan makes use of the persuasive environment and involves the audience’s guilt and remorse into the sermon, by using relatable and violent diction in the next few sections. His appeals to the audience by stating that “if God should let you go” then “your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell,” showing to the audience the danger and risks of triggering “the wrath of god.” Connecting with the people on a personal level with fear prompts the audience to say take action towards their spiritual connection with God and creates an extremely powerful effect of persuasion that solidifies his previous claims. The audience’s overwhelmed reaction as well as personal connection with Jonathan Edwards conveys a persuasive tone that induced a reaction with the audience themselves.

As he proceeds with the rest of his sermons, Jonathan continues to create a mood of fear using ominous and dark diction, while the audience is still engaged with the powerful and violent diction that he proposed earlier. Edwards reiterates the importance of considering how “an angry God” can have a huge influence towards one’s “peace and safety,” which might become “nothing but thin air and empty shadows.” The continuous use of ominous diction, such as “shadows,” “empty,” “nothing,” and “but” strikes the audience as a whole in a personal level and persistently pushes the audience to believe that if they “reformed [their] life in many things, and had religious affections,... it is nothing but His mere pleasure that keeps [them] from being swallowed up in everlasting destruction” thus, avoiding the possibility of experiencing “the hands of an angry God,” and “falling into the fire… since [they] have sat [in this house of God], provoking his pure eyes by [their] sinful wicked manner.” This prompts the spectators to preemptively react to his words before they “[in] this very moment drop down in hell,” as well as “cast into the fire.”

Jonathan, to conclude his sermon, ends with imposing more fear and guilt towards the audience using clear and definitive words to make sure his ideas are taken into consideration. The fear within the audience as well as the conformed ideas that they may have are even more reinforced by clearly establishing that hell is “a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath” and that “[we] hang by a slender thread” that is fully controlled by God himself. This reinforcement of idea finalizes his thoughts on God and his influence on our future, but it also, again, prompts the audience to take action and consider Edwards's point of view. The use of fear within his sermon conveys a persuasive and influential tone towards the audience, which creates a conformity and connection within his ideas and his spectators.

Ultimately, Jonathan Edwards’s belief of the intensity and danger of living an unfaithful and unreligious life is expressed through his use of fear and guilt towards the audience. His use of fear and guilt or pity inspires his audience to take action and consider whether to believe in the validity of hell and God’s complete advantage over humans, as well as the overwhelming insecurity that must be contemplated upon.