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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

by Jonathan Edwards

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Powerful Imagery in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

Summary:

Jonathan Edwards's sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" uses powerful imagery to instill fear and encourage repentance. Key images include God holding sinners over a fiery pit by a slender thread, akin to a loathsome insect over a fire, symbolizing imminent damnation. Edwards also depicts God's wrath as a bow with an arrow ready to strike, and as a flood held back by a dam. These vivid images emphasize the precariousness of sinners' fates and the urgency to seek salvation.

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What key image does Jonathan Edwards use to frighten his audience in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?"

The previous post lucidly addresses a critical component of the fear that Edwards invokes.  I would like to suggest that Edwards utilizes the imagery of the "now" moment as part of his motivation.  He is quite intent on suggesting that part of his rationale in the explanation of God's anger refers to the timing of Colonial sentiments.  At a particular moment in time when the colonists are driven by economic prosperity and material wealth, the belief in spirituality is on the decline in colonial life.  It is this precise moment that galvanizes Edwards to speak his notion of the spiritual truth relating to the notion of salvation and damnation.  It is at this particular moment in Colonial life where God's bow and arrow are set on the Colonists and the sooner they change their ways from the secular to the spiritual, the greater the chance that God's punishment will lessen.

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of the "now" moment as part of his motivation.  He is quite intent on suggesting that part of his rationale in the explanation of God's anger refers to the timing of Colonial sentiments.  At a particular moment in time when the colonists are driven by economic prosperity and material wealth, the belief in spirituality is on the decline in colonial life.  It is this precise moment that galvanizes Edwards to speak his notion of the spiritual truth relating to the notion of salvation and damnation.  It is at this particular moment in Colonial life where God's bow and arrow are set on the Colonists and the sooner they change their ways from the secular to the spiritual, the greater the chance that God's punishment will lessen.

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In the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards uses many images to frighten his audience in hopes of persuading them to reform their ways.  He believes that they all deserve to be damned and that they will be unless they reform.

Edwards spends a great deal of the sermon emphasizing how angry God is at all the sinners of the world, and especially those in the congregation.  However, if one must choose a "key" image, it would probably be that in which Edwards talks about God holding human souls by "a slender thread" over the fires of hell, ready to cut the thread and let them go into eternal damnation.

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

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The primary image that Jonathan Edwards utilizes is that of walking along a steep path and slipping or sliding off the slope. This image is mentioned in the Bible, as he notes: "Their foot shall slide in due time" (Deuteronomy 32:35). Edwards develops it along four different lines: emphasizing the exposure to falling, the suddenness of destruction, the individual capability of falling, and God's role in keeping people from falling. In all those explanations, he brings up some aspect of the image of the physical act of falling, not just the metaphorical aspect of damnation.

He also uses military imagery, speaking of a prince as the defender of a realm who has many followers and fortifications. In contrast to such a fortress, he brings up images of the vulnerability of humans, comparing them to chaff, stubble, or worms. The soul hangs as if by a thread, he says, that God can easily sever. These images also relate to the physical location of hell, as a pit into which God can throw people (as earthquakes tumble rocks).

Edwards returns to the central conceit, or extended metaphor, of the title. He evokes literal images of God's hands: holding human souls over the "fiery pit" where the devil awaits them—"thus it is, that natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell." He reiterates images of flames that will consume men but also states that this fire matches the fire already inside their hearts:

the flames gather and flash about them; . . . the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out.

Ultimately, he reinforces this image with a warning about the danger people are in: "'tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God."

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In general, Jonathan Edwards uses very angry imagery in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

The most famous image used is that of a "loathsome insect."  He says that God looks at people as if they were loathsome insects and in fact hates us more than we would hate such an insect.

A related image that Edwards uses is the idea that God is holding us by a thread over the pit of hell, liable at any moment to cut the thread and let us drop because we are evil and deserve to be punished.

These are the most famous images from the sermon and both are rather angry and scary images.

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What are five examples of imagery in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?

In this sermon given during the Great Awakening, Edwards employs a stern tone combined with vivid imagery to shock his congregation into repenting of their sinful lives and instead choosing to accept God's grace.

Edwards conveys the fragility of the sinful lives his congregation lives:

Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen.

This image of men teetering over a rotten covering which is just about to collapse over the depths of Hell provides a frightening glimpse of impending doom for congregational members.

Edwards later describes the anger of God toward people who continually disobey His will:

The devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them...

This image shows that at any moment, God can remove His hand of protection from each of the listeners, and there are powerful and evil forces waiting ton consume them all.

Edwards continues this frightening imagery in the next section:

That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you.

Again, the image of a lake of fire just below the surface of life, waiting to consume listeners, strengths Edwards's stern and confrontational tone.

God's disapproval is also portrayed with dark imagery:

There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder...

If a fiery Hell waits below, then the wrath of God is all around those on Earth who fail to confess and repent. This image of a "storm" of God's anger is a powerful one; storms are not within man's control and can inflict damage, particularly those "big with thunder."

The image of powerful water is used in the next section:

If God should only withdraw His hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and 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.

Here, Edwards portrays God as powerful enough to hold back the waters that can destroy them but notes that His patience will eventually give way to fury. This image of God's ability to remove His protective hand from their lives again furthers Edwards's purpose to sway his audience to immediate action.

The imagery was effective; it is reported that many people cried out, begging for salvation before the sermon was even over.

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Edwards describes the sinner with the image of a foot sliding. Sinners are never on solid ground; instead, they are always in slippery places where they could fall and be destroyed.

Edwards also shows that sinners do not fall, at least, not yet. He does this by evoking the image of God holding them up. He then uses the image of God letting them go at the appointed time, so that they, as if standing on the edgeof a pit on ground sloping downward, have no choice but to fall in and be destroyed.

At the end of the sermon, Edwards uses the image of a tree that does not bear good fruit to describe the sinner. God is depicted as the axe that will chop down this tree. Edwards continues by evoking the image of the tree being thrown into an everlasting fire.

With images like this, one might be motivated into good behavior—or so Edwards hoped. 

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In "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," what powerful image does Edwards use and its effect?

The most powerful image Edwards uses is a matter of opinion in a sermon filled with vivid imagery, but the most compelling to my mind is the following, for reasons I will explain:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

The idea that we are dangled by God like a spider over a fire is a frightening image, like others in the sermon, but it has added power in showing us how we might look to God. Other images—such as of human life as a walk in the dark over a rickety bridge with rotting and missing planks through which we might at any moment plunge into the fires of hell—are also powerful, but their emphasis is on the human experience.

The spider quote, in contrast, while focusing on the great and immediate peril we are in, also shows how loathsome we appear to God. Any idea that he might want to spare us from the flames because we are cute or cuddly is dispelled by imagining us as spiders. This helps us to visualize a main tenet of Edwards's Calvinism: that humans cannot be saved by their own merits.

The image is also powerful because we can put ourselves in God's place and think about how carelessly and without a second thought we might fling a spider into a fire.

The picture of us dangled like spiders over a fire impresses on us the need to seek salvation through Jesus Christ, as otherwise we are, according to Edwards, completely disgusting to God. Not all parts of Christianity hold to this theology, but Edwards nevertheless expresses it vividly.

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Can you provide an example of powerful sensory imagery in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"?

This single sentence contains a variety of imagery:

Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of God's enemies.

Imagery entails the use of any or all of the 5 senses. In the case of this sentence, readers can see sun and earth. Readers can feel lust and understand what it means to have their breath taken from them. Readers understand the capabilities of their bodies and feel the ability of a body to be "on fire" or alive. Had Edwards not chosen to envoke these vivid images, the entire piece would feel less convicting. Because his language is so persuasive, dramatic, and colorful, his audience is completely convicted by his words.

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