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Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Analysis

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In his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards describes a wrathful God who detests the humans he created. Edwards uses fear, imagery, faulty logic and his own authority to sway listeners to follow his word. The image selected presents a blend of both the setting of the sermon and much of the imagery used within it. The image effectively draws out this imagery and portrays the sermon with both vibrance and tension. The audience, as depicted in the image, is composed of puritan congregation members who attended the sermon. The audience of the image itself is the peers of the artist. The mood and tone of the image appear to be severe, miserable, and tense. This can be seen in the image with the storm clouds, fire, flood, …show more content…

The crying churchgoers is one of the appeals to emotion used in the image. This conveys the fear they feel from God, which Edwards preys on in his sermon. The fire and flood just below their feet is another appeal to pathos. In the sermon, Edwards makes the point that God is the only thing that can prevent you from suffering. He also makes the point that everyone in the audience is guilty, corrupt, and wicked. For this reason, each of the congregation members is touched by the fire. Edwards, however, has no fire or flood below him. This plays into ethos. In the sermon, Edwards establishes ethos by using second person and, as a result, separating himself from his audience. This gives the impression that he is set apart from the sinners he is addressing. In the image, his ethos is depicted in multiple ways. One of these is thought the flood and fire. As mentioned above, the flooding and fire rest at the feet of everyone in the church—except the preacher. He instead stands slightly above the congregation, and appears to be standing on the hand of God. Additionally, he is made larger than everyone else in the room. All of these seem to represent the idea that Edwards is better and loftier that the people he is addressing, which effectively establishes his ethos. The logos is represented through the quotes on the pews. In his sermon, Edwards establishes a logical appeal by stating the sins that the audience must have committed, and explaining that because they are such wicked, sinful creatures, God must hate them, and as such is required to punish them. The image uses the quotes from the sermon to illustrate

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At this point Edwards has grasped the attention of his listeners by using pathos to pertain to their emotions and feelings. Towards the end of the sermon his tone switches to one of reason in terms of not neglecting his words. He asks a series of rhetorical questions such as those who are unconverted and do not teach their children of Christ that they too will have to witness the wrath of God. As for literary devices such as metaphors, similes, and allegories, Edwards does not disappoint for his use of them most likely whipped a lot of Puritans back into their faith.

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At the very beginning of the sermon, Edwards explains, “there is nothing between you and Hell but the air; it is only the mere pleasure of G-d that holds you up.” Edwards personifies power to make a point that G-d is above everyone, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. This is the opening to the sermon, where the audience feels their inferiority to G-d right away, realizing that G-d is the only form of salvation they cam possibly receive. Additionally, “if your strength were ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in Hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.” This time, Edwards personifies strength in relation to Hell, working up his audience mid-way through the sermon to get them to fight back against their guilt and petty attempts at ‘spirituality’; and therefore be in G0d’s good graces.

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In order to emphasize God’s contempt for the audience, Jonathan Edwards utilizes inflammatory diction and comparisons of God’s anger to a bow and arrow and “black clouds” to instill fear in the audience so that they will accept God as their savior, provoking a religious revival. Throughout the sermon, Edwards utilizes “fiery” phrases such as “furnace of wrath”, “wrath…burns like fire”, and “glowing flames of the wrath of God” in order to establish a connection between God’s fury and a burning fire, reaffirming the reality of going to hell, as hell is commonly associated with fire. Because fires are also very devastating and unpredictable, Edwards emphasizes the power and degree of God’s disdain and his ability to cause drastic change at unexpected times, making God’s patience seem fragile.

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Braylen Murth Mrs. Martin English 3 - Period 2 18 January 2023 Rhetoric in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” In 1741, in Connecticut, Johnathan Edwards delivered a powerful and terrifying, yet effective sermon directed at those that are “…out of Christ,” (87). Edwards’ sermon lasted nearly 6 hours and persisted the idea that God is all powerful and wrathful. In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Edwards uses repetition, imagery, and personification in order to scare and threaten people to conform to a life with Christ.

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511 Words | 3 Pages

Edwards also implements the rhetorical question, “who knows the power of Gods anger?” this presents the question of who will suffer the eternal dreadful misery. The answer of who is able to escape his anger is the ones who repent and are born again. The whole sermon is an entire repetitive restatement exemplifying Gods mighty wrath and our only chance of salvation is to be reborn, to develop a more personal intimate relationship with God. An only this way he pardons our sins and allows us to exult in

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The most important feature of a sermon is the application of a scripture text to the personal experience of the listener. Especially this last part is what reduced many of Edwards’s listeners to tears. In Edwards’s sermon the scripture text is “Their foot shall slide in due time”. This meant that eventually, all sinners would be punished by God, which could be at any time. Edwards speaks of a wrathfull God, a God who by Puritan standards is considered forgiving for not letting all of humanity fall into the deepest pits of hell.

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In “sinners in the hands of an angry God”, Jonathan Edwards uses different types of literary techniques, such as, imagery, metaphor, similes, repetition, and rhetorical questions to emphasize his point. His point is to scare the people and make them want to repent, which is the theme of the sermon. In the sermon “Sinners in the hands of an angry god,” Edwards uses different types of

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The Light Shines in the Darkness He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil. The Puritans understood that God could have a terrible wrath towards sinners and had to live in constant fear as a result. In his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Johnathon Edwards describes the horrors that come with damnation and makes the argument that God has no compassion for sinners. Through its utilization of appeal to emotion, appeal to authority, and profound symbolism, the painting “What I See…” serves as the best representation of Edward’s message about the wrath of God and of his condemnation of sinners.

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In crafting his highly effective sermon, Edwards utilizes his authority as a man of God and as an interpreter of the scriptures, a logical and direct organization of arguments, and violent imagery to convince his audience of the vengeance of God against man. Jonathan Edwards begins his sermon by quoting

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817 Words | 4 Pages

Jonathan Edwards, a preacher, wrote the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". In the sermon, Edwards argues that everyone was out of God's favor and they needed to return to a righteous path. The tone of the sermon is indignant and authoritative. Jonathan Edwards uses imagery, logos, and pathos to encourage the unconverted audience to turn to God in order to escape his wrath. Elemental imagery is used in the sermon to inspire fear in the audience.

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In 1741, Jonathan Edwards delivered a sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut. This sermon was so influential and poignant that today it has transformed into a piece of literature that many study in classes. This bit of literature is so utterly jam-packed with the use of rhetorical appeals, often referred to as ethos, pathos, and logos. These three appeals are derived from ancient Greece, or more precisely, the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Ethos appeals to the audience’s sense of trust, pathos, to their sense of emotion, and logos, to their sense of logic.

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Rhetorical Analysis of Jonathan edwards’s Sinners in the hand of an angry god: jeremiad Jonathan edwards, is known as one of the most important religious figures of the great awakening, edwards became known for his zealous sermon “sinners at the hand of an angry god”. During his sermon he implies that if his congregation does not repent to christ they are in “danger of great wrath and infinite misery”. Throughout this sermon edwards uses literary devices such as strong diction, powerful syntax and juxtaposition to save his congregation from eternal damnation. Throughout Edwards’s sermon the use of turgid diction is exceedingly prevalent.

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928 Words | 4 Pages

Figurative language can be a compelling factor in literary works ranging from romantic poetry to political speeches. It forces the reader, or listener, to visualize and understand what the author is trying to say. Jonathan Edwards utilized this writing technique in his powerful sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Edwards used imagery, metaphors, and personification to express his differentiating attitudes towards both sinners and God which consisted of complete disgust in regards to the former and unwavering respect for the latter. Jonathan Edwards relied more on the composition of his writing rather than the execution of it which is why figurative language is found so often in this sermon.

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1508 Words | 7 Pages

He illustrated that the servant girls who, on the way to the market place, stop and conversed with all the associates they meet. Preachers who wander too far from their subject are doing the same thing. They intend to say everything at once but this is impossible.

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Jonathan Edwards speech "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." is a speech that uses techniques to attract the puritans attention I found him using Personification, Metaphors and also Imagery. Jonathan Edwards incorporates personification in his speech. "And the world would spew you out." This gives the world personification by allowing the world to spew as a human would. This pursuades the puritans that they will be forgotten an be taken out from the world.

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