Monday, January 26, 2015

In Hell by Tomorrow Morning

Imagine going into church one day and hearing someone give a talk in which they compare you to a spider being held over a fire. Then they tell you that the person holding you over the fire is intensely offended by your sins, and there is no reason that they are still holding on to you.

This is the way Jonathan Edwards was able to grab the attention of his congregation, and make Hell feel like a real place to them. 
His rhetoric relies heavily on the imagery in his words.  He paints a picture of an imminent Hell and the helpless people that he knew were going to be thrown into it. He also plays quite a bit on the image of sleep, and how any sleep could be the last that these people have.  This image plays into his argument that Hell and death are coming quickly.

You can further see that it is his intention to make Hell feel very close when he brings it directly  to the actual congregation around him, and he says, “O sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in.” This direct address in second person makes his tone very personal, even though it isn’t directed to a specific person. It would do a powerful job of reaching his audience, because they would feel that he was now talking to them specifically.

Now that they think he is talking to them personally, he can really bring in his arguments of pathos and get an emotional response from his audience.  He starts by saying that some in the congregation will be in Hell before the year is out, and you can just see him pausing as that sinks into his listeners—then he says that he wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were in Hell by the next morning. This would emotionally impact the audience as they imagined themselves going to Hell that night.


Finally, after he has scared his audience, he can change to a tone of welcome.  He holds out his hand to the scared people and asks them to run from the fire and Hell, and follow him and Christ away from sin and death.

2 comments:

  1. I really liked your post, because you emulated the very things that you highlighted from Edwards sermon. Your first paragraph really did paint a clear picture for me of what it might have been like to be in the audience/congregation when a talk like this one might have been given. With the points you emphasis I wonder what attempts Edwards made to increase or secure his ethos. I feel that this would be the only weakness to his methods as in order for his approach to be successful a great deal of ethos would have needed to have been present in order for people to believe the pictures he was painting with his words.

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  2. Edwards seems to play with his tone to guide the crowd where he wants them, which is quite brilliant. I think this probably built his ethos rather than needing it previously, because he had the audience feeling dependent by the end. He appears to have the same boldness and directness shown by Luther and Calvin that would give security to followers.

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