Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God

Background Information: Read this background information in preparation for reading the actual sermon (Click Here to access the reading assigned for Thursday). Remember, you'll need to prepare 3-4 questions or points to use in a Socratic Seminar for Friday. Watch for tone (attitude), style, metaphors!, and the information from the introduction. Use your Bloom's Taxonomy and Socratic Seminar handout to help you write the questions. (Reminder - you need to write questions using the top 3 levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, not the bottom three!)

The Puritans believed that the real power of a sermon was to be found in its words, rather than its delivery. Since the words were thought to be divinely inspired, it was believed that the words alone carried enough power to affect the congregation. As the preacher was simply a flawed agent of God’s work, his presentation of the sermon was expected to be as unadorned as possible, so that the delivery of the sermon would not distract listeners from the words. Preachers usually spoke their sermons in a deliberate monotone. Consider this effect as you read “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

Compiled by Chris Torino, information from www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/sermstru.htm


Jonathan Edwards’ infamous “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was first preached on July 8^th, 1741 at the height of New England’s first Great Awakening. Since that time, the sermon has been re-preached, published, and widely circulated. “Sinners” has become the very stuff of American legend; it is one of the most anthologized pieces of writing in America, and it has long been a part of American history and literature curricula. The popularity of the sermon is, however, a mixed blessing. While the sermon’s circulation has fortunately acquainted many Americans with the impressive legacy of Jonathan Edwards, the way in which the sermon is often read or taught has significantly skewed the popular understanding of Edwards and his Puritan heritage in an unfairly negative direction.

The subjects touched upon in the sermon – namely, human sinfulness, the uncertainty of existence, God’s ultimate power over salvation, the need for a Christian lifestyle, the chance of redemption, and the importance of conversion – were very familiar to New England churchgoers. When Edwards preached “Sinners,” the Great Awakening (The term is...used...to refer to American religious revivalism that the Protestant Reformation inspired during and after the 1500s, as well as to identify general religious trends within distinctly U.S. religious culture -- Wikipedia.org) was fully underway, and the doctrinal notion of “conversion” was a topic with which churchgoers were eminently familiar. According to Puritan doctrine, the process of conversion was more complicated than simply professing allegiance to a church; conversion involved the influence of divine grace, which could cause a person to be truly awakened to God and Christianity. Once converted, a person had a chance of salvation, but only God could induce conversion.

The message of “Sinners” was a familiar and important one for the Puritans. They couldn’t know whether they were truly converted, and they couldn’t make their conversion happen; the most they could do, as Edwards implied, was to make their conversion more likely by living a truly Christian life, characterized by both internal thought and external action. In order to foster the notion that humans could not merit their own conversion or salvation, Edwards emphasized in “Sinners” the fact that God had inexplicably chosen not to cast many sinners into hell. Through “Sinners,” Edwards attempted to demonstrate that God was omnipotent and beyond human understanding, an assertion that defied the tendency to anthropomorphize God and to impose human logic upon divine actions. Edwards emphasized the importance of the New Birth, which entailed living a Christian life, which would serve the dual purpose of bringing glory to God (which was an assumed purpose of human existence) and making one’s conversion more likely. To ignore the Christian tenets that God had outlined for the benefit of humanity would be, Edwards implied, an affront to God that would be deserving of God’s wrath. In order to awaken his audience to the power of God, Edwards evoked vivid images of God’s wrath, employing fierce metaphors drawn from the Bible and from his own work.

Upon reading “Sinners,” modern readers might assume that Edwards was a particularly angry or vengeful man, but it is important to remember that “Sinners” was simply a product of a genre – it was fire-and-brimstone, preaching at its most eloquent and effective. Readers may be shocked to learn that it was Edwards’ habit to preach his sermons in a measured monotone, which he did in the hopes that his own intonations would not distract from the divine messages being conveyed by the words of the sermon. We can, therefore, be fairly sure that “Sinners” was not screamed at the many audiences that it was preached to. It is also important to remember that only a fraction of Edwards’ sermons fall into the fire-and-brimstone category. This genre was, for Edwards, the exception rather than the rule. Other of Edwards’ sermons focused on topics such as the love of God, the wonder of Christ, and the glory of the natural world.

Upon reading “Sinners,” modern readers might also be inclined towards the belief that the sermon is simply a ‘holier than thou’ treatise of condemnation. However, one must remember that Edwards saw preaching as a form of prophesying, of doing God’s will and helping humanity by conveying God’s message to the world in an effective manner. The evocative images of hell and the fire-and-brimstone style, although unsavory, would have been a means to this end. And one has only to read Edwards autobiographical “Personal Narrative” to discover that he was vastly unsure of his own conversion and amply convinced of his exceptional sinfulness and unworthiness. In preaching “Sinners,” Edwards was attempting to help listeners and readers by awakening them to the horrible truths over which he had long agonized. And when Edwards speaks emphatically of the possibility of one parishioner being condemned to hell, readers can see Edwards’ own compassion and humanity on full display.

Questions:
1. Why would some people see Edwards' sermon as negative in tone?
2. After reading the background information, what personal reasons might have motivated Edwards to choose this topic?
3. What was surprising about the delivery of Puritan sermons?