Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Summary

After reading “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards and “The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine, I will discuss the relationship between religious faith and logical reason. Do we need to make people have a fear of God to prepare them for salvation like Edwards wrote? Should we give them a chance to use their reason to discover their faith like Paine discussed? Can we combine religion with reason?
Jonathan Edwards believed in the punishment of an angry God on his wicked Israelites. The expression “Their foot shall slide in due time” (Edwards, 430) is a proof of destruction that the people are exposed to. The Great Awakening and its influence during that period was his main purpose of the sermon. He wanted to preach the people

He was a deist. He believed in one God, “I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life’ (Paine, 653), but denied any miraculous connections with the universe. He claimed that the bible’s mystical incidents were nothing but legends and scientifically impossible. He also attacked the church as being dishonest and too traditional.
God, according to Thomas, made the universe but fixed it in motion according to the principles of natural law. Reason could explain God’s revelation in his opinion. He criticized the institutions of churches of being invented by humans to terrorize mankind” All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind…” (Paine, 654).
Paine took the idea of “revelation” and delivered it as a message from God to his people “No one will deny or dispute the power of Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases” (Paine, 655). He insisted on finding something in the scripture that is not made by human mind but he said it is impossible. He used Moses as an example “When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tablets of the commandments from the hand of God…” (Paine,

I was raised as a Christian all my life. In religion, you just have to trust God and his words. The bible was a message from God written by his apostles. You cannot explain all the miracles that happened because they came from above, but you need reason to understand God’s word. Our conscious is the voice of God. The bible informs us that faith is the thing we wish for. We do not need a good reason to believe in something we cannot see.
Reason is an essential tool that God provides us with to make conclusions and readings from his word. It is an important to defend our faith. When God raised people from the dead, they were saved. You have to use your logical reason to get to this conclusion. Reason alone is not enough to lead us to Christ and salvation. Religion and reason can be used to complete each other to a certain point.
Nowadays, our church’s beliefs have changed a lot. They emphasize more on individual conscience instead of rules and preventions. In the old days, the churches were more strict and demanding. Today, churches are more lenient and they provide moral motivations and self-understanding. The twentieth century perceived many challenges to reconcile religious belief with new features of philosophical thinking and new ideas in