Summary of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards

About the Author

• Jonathan Edwards was a child prodigy born in Connecticut who entered what is now Yale University at age 12.
• While studying, he experienced a spiritual crisis that led to "religious joy."
• He became a Puritan minister, like his father and grandfather.
• He took over his grandfather's church when he died.
• His sermons resulted in a great number of conversions, as people thought they felt God's grace and were "born again" when they accepted Jesus.
• He helped trigger the Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept through New England from 1734 to 1750.
• Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is his most famous sermon, out of his nearly 1200, and it was delivered at the height of the Great Awakening.
• His church dismissed him in 1750 because he wanted to limit membership to those who had undergone conversion, so he became a missionary in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
• In 1757, he became president of what is now Princeton University.
• He died in 1758, by this time the extremism of the Great Awakening was rejected but his visions still maintained an emotional impact.

Summary

• In this sermon, Jonathan Edwards presents fiery descriptions of hell and eternal damnation. People listened to what he preached and were moved by it.
• He's often regarded as America's greatest religious thinker.
• The imagery with which he writes is essential to the sermon.
• Some words in the sermon are written in italics, indicating emphasis.
• This sermon was first delivered at Enfield, Connecticut, in 1741.
• He read the sermon, as he usually did.
• Some of the people who listened wept and moaned.
• The Puritan religion affected every aspect of life (how they dressed, acted, and governed themselves), and they didn't portray God as a loving father, but as angry and supreme.
• God is just as angry with the people on hell than people on Earth.
• He begins by comparing how we find it easy to crush a worm to how God finds it easy to condemn us to hell.
• He says people don't go to hell and feel God's anger and wrath because God has them in his hand, but can drop him whenever He pleases. He holds us by his grace.
• It speaks of the furnace of hell, that is ready and hot to receive humans.
• He says unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and that the covering is so rotten in some places that if they walk over them they'd fall. All this happens while arrows of death, that can't be seen, fly above.
• "Natural men," or men who have not been born again (unconverted), are "held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell."
• They don't even hace access to the Mediator (Jesus), but don't because they're unconverted.
• People who keep up a religion in their families and closets, or another in the house of God, are still at God's mercy and in his hand, as what they practice has no effect.
• He presents an image of God holding one over the pit of hell like a spider. A human is 10,000 times more abominable in God's eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.
• The only reason why we wake up and are not in hell is because of God's hand holding us up.
• We hand by a slender thread, and the flames of divine wrath surround it, ready to singe it at any moment.
• Hell is like a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit full of fire.
• God's wrath is everlasting.
• He uses the phrase: "For who knows the power of God's anger?" in allusion to Psalm 90:11 in the Bible.
• He says this is the story of every soul that hadn't been converted.
• He speaks of how many people are converting and how it would be a shame to be left behind, thus inciting conversion by means of fear.
• The author has good intentions, but he tries to get people to convert from fear.
• His word choice makes this clear, with words like 'abhor' and 'abominable.'
• His position is basically that you're only saved by God's grace, and your acts can't really influenced whether God chooses you to be saved or not; however, the first step towards salvation is conversion to the Puritan religion, as those who are non-converts walk over hell and may fall at any moment.

Images

• Line 17-18: "The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them."
• A sharpened sword is held over them, and the pit opens up below them.
• Lines 19-21: "Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are 20 innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at noonday; the sharpest sight cannot discern them."
• Unconverted people walk over the pit of hell with a rotten covering, with spots that cannot support them and through which they would fall; however, these cannot be seen. There are also arrows of death flying above, which can't be seen either.
• Lines 27-31: "Natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell; and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger"
• God holds us in his hand, a metaphor for God's power and anger. All he has to do is tilt his hand, and one would fall to the pits of hell.
• Line 31-37: "God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of."
• The Devil awaits in the pit full of fire. Unconverted men cannot access Jesus, the Mediator.
• Line 38-42: "The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood."
• God's wrath is like a bow and arrow. The bow is bent, and the arrow can kill you at any time.
• Line 69-74: "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. . . ."
• We hang by a thin thread that can be singed by the fire.
• Diction and word choice are other important tools of effective writing.