The God That Abhors You

How should one persuade another to repentance? Hellfire and damnation, proclaims Jonathan Edwards. In his sermon, “Sinner in the Hands an Angry God,” Edwards, an influential preacher of the Great Awakening (1741 C.E.), has a simple goal: crush the theological apathy from his audience’s mind and, as a replacement, inject an awful fear of God’s anger! Edwards makes his intentions crystal clear through his eloquent use of rhetorical devices, each device portraying his beliefs in a “retribution theology.”

Edward’s rhetorical argument builds off the concept of hell as well as the sinners who will occupy it, and he builds this argument within one consistent mode: dispraise. Edward repeatedly returns to his fiery depiction of these two concepts between his intermittent manipulations of pronouns. Every sentence and every phrase has “you” resting on the veritable chopping-block of condemnation. This preacher designed this language to engage every single audience member as a guilty perpetrator. His audience, whether they heard the sermon or read it, knows, inescapably, that Edwards is heaping his points against them. This isn’t a description of some figurative far off “sinner,” it’s clearly you.

He pricks our attention, in an inescapable way.

Then Edwards’ real work begins: abasing his attentive audience. He proceeds to persuade us to repentance by helping us see, by vivid imagery, the awfulness of our state. By dehumanizing metaphors, by exaggerated hyperbole, and by anaphoric evocations, this preacher ravages our emotions, pummels our pride, attacks our apathy, and blasts our beliefs with an exaggerated and sadistic God. Edwards’ God is depicted, quite elaborately, with an unmatched fury and a plan to devastate our heavenly tenements unless we “flee” to him with the humble outstretched hands of the supplicant.