How does Edwards's sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" reflect Puritan beliefs?

Jonathan Edwards had been steeped in the Calvinist theology of the Puritans from an early age. As time went on, however, it became clear to him, as for many brought up in the same tradition, that something of the original spirit of Puritanism had been lost.

Like most denominations, Calvinism had become ossified into a system of formal observances, to which many adherents paid lip-service without feeling any kind of emotional attachment to their creed. Belief had become a matter for the head, not for the heart. What preachers such as Edwards sought to do, then, was to urge people to look inside themselves and reconnect with their deepest emotions. Only there would they find that inner light which would guide them in their daily lives.

In that sense, one could describe Edwards as a Puritan of the spirit, in that he sought in his various sermons—most notably, "Sinners in the hand of an Angry God"—to drive home the message that true religion lies in the emotions, not the reason. Its was this emotional aspect of Puritanism which had largely fallen by the wayside by the time Edwards came to give his famous sermon. Hence the necessity of a "Great Awakening" that, among other things, would revive the emotional spirit that had once animated Puritans in the profession of their faith.

For a correct statement of fact, Jonathan Edwards is hardly Puritan, in fact it is perhaps the perfect antithesis of Puritan belief. Puritans, as strict Calvinists, believed that God determined before the beginning of the world who would be saved. Those who had received some indication that they were the recipient of God's undeserved merit were known as the "elect," but it was determined long ago. There was no free will involved.

Edwards was a product of the first Great Awakening which rejected Puritan ideas. He once commented that the people of New England needed

not so much to have their heads stored as their hearts touched. It is a reasonable thing to right persons away from hell.

His sermons reject the idea of predestination; rather he preached that all persons could be recipients of God's salvation, and that justification came from faith in Christ. All persons in Edwards' view could be saved; but all persons also could burn in hell if they did not repent. His most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God illustrates this point:

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.

It is interesting to note that Edwards did not appeal to the emotions of his hearers as did his contemporary George Whitefield; his sermons were read calmly and dispassionately; yet when he was finished, several minutes were required to calm the congregation who often shrieked and howled in terror of hell. One would never see such in a Puritan service.

What Puritan values are evident in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"?

One Puritan value is the hatred of sin and belief in God's judgment. Much of Edwards's sermon deals with Hell and God's hate of it. Edwards describes a burning Hell of torment in order to urge his congregation to repent right away. Edwards uses metaphors, likening God's wrath to a strung bow and life's fragility to a spiderweb being held over an eternal flame.

Another Puritan value is the faith in God's grace. By turning away from sin and accepting Christ, man can be saved from damnation. Edwards urges his listeners to accept the purity of Christ in order to be saved from sin's inevitable result.

The Puritan experiment in the New World was to be the "city upon a hill" where the church and society could be purified. The Puritans simplified the Christian message down to repentance and faith in Christ is the only way to be saved from damnation. The Puritans, in their attempt to be godly, used rhetoric and local statutes to punish and shun sinners. In this respect, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" demonstrates Puritan values because the Puritans viewed God as the ultimate judge of mankind. The only way to avoid an eternal sentence in Hell was repentance.

Why did the Puritans respond strongly to "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"?

Jonathan Edwards's theology was rooted in Calvinism, which contains the belief that God chooses some for salvation (the elect) and others for damnation. There is also the belief in a literal hell. He preached this sermon during the period of the First Great Awakening as a warning to those who were unconverted.

Edwards's basis for this sermon was a passage from the Old Testament Deuteronomy 32:35, which states,

Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand,
And the things to come hasten upon them.

The Puritan audience would have been well aware of this passage because their reading materials were primarily the Bible and other religious writings. Edwards explicates this passage, which speaks of unrepentant Israel, to elaborate what God will do to those in his congregation who are unrepentant. The figurative language that he uses is incredibly vivid, and the sermon is said to have caused moaning, groaning, and fainting in his listeners. Using intense imagery, Edwards tells his congregation of the horrors that await them in hell if they do not repent, and that they have been kept out of hell and granted time to repent only by God's gracious pleasure.

Your Wickedness makes you as it were heavy as Lead, and to tend downwards with great Weight and Pressure towards Hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless Gulf, and 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, than a Spider’s Web would have to stop a falling Rock.

In the first simile, Edwards says that their sins are so great that they make them heavy like a piece of lead, and that if it were not for God holding them out of hell, they would plunge to its depths. And in the following metaphor, Edwards points out that although they may think that they have committed many righteous deeds, which they might believe would keep them from hell, these good deeds are as flimsy as a spider's web would be if a giant rock were to hit it.

Edwards goes on to compare God's wrath against them as a huge black storm cloud waiting to burst upon them in a deluge, and the only thing that prevents this from happening is God's restraint. If it were not for this restraint, they would be destroyed in a flood of His fury.

When one is able to understand the paradigm of the Puritan mindset and understand the fierce imagery and figurative language that Edwards uses in his sermon, the reaction of his congregation is more easily understood.