Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Sinners is the most famous document of the Great Awakening and widely regarded as the greatest sermon in American literature. Its historical and literary significance derives from several sources: the circumstances of its reception in Enfield, Connecticut, in the midst of the spiritual revivals galvanizing the region at the time; the logical precision and rhetorical power of its argument coupled with the novelty and variety of its vivid imagery; and its exemplification of a style of Puritan thought and preaching that was already being threatened, and would eventually be displaced, by the competing cultural forces of secularism and individualism in the nascent American experience.

Sinners is an “awakening” sermon, intended to move the listener to reject sin and accept Christ. During the preceding years of Edwards’s ministry, and partly as a result of the impression made on him by George Whitefield, the itinerant evangelist who had recently toured Massachusetts and Connecticut in the summer and fall of 1740, Edwards had come to realize the motivating power of fear in persuading the diffident to seek, or return, to Christ. Edwards chose to deliver this sermon at Enfield at the invitation of the town’s minister, who hoped to awaken his congregants to the religious inspiration affecting the surrounding townships but that had not yet penetrated Enfield’s residents. Edwards lacked the oratorical charisma of other revivalist preachers, and his speaking demeanor was sedate, his delivery solemn and quiet, his eyes fixed on the bell rope hanging in the back of the church. Though an unremarkable orator, Edwards was a masterful rhetorician, and the power of Sinners derives from its controlled orchestration of literary effects directed toward the single goal of motivating his listener by arousing terror at the awesomeness of God’s wrath and the horror of eternal damnation.

The sermon employs the typical Puritan structure of text, doctrine, proofs, and application, and it exemplifies the iron-clad logic of Puritan argument. After announcing his theme with a verse from Deuteronomy, “their foot shall slide in due time,” Edwards methodically develops the theological case against the sinner that his reading of this verse, consistent with Calvinist doctrine, implies. It is essentially a legal case, tightly argued and supported by scriptural citations, intended to be conclusive and overpowering. Edwards begins by equating the wickedness of the ancient Israelites, the subject of the Deuteronomic text, with the unconverted in his congregation through an unexpected shift of verb tense in the second and third implications of the biblical verse: “they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction”; “they are liable to fall of themselves” (625). This subtle modulation immediately extends Edwards’s reference from the ancient Israelites who angered God to the universal condition of the sinner who refuses God’s covenant. Edwards’s interpretation of the verse yields the doctrine that nothing keeps the wicked out of hell for a single moment but the mere pleasure of God. Theologically, the sermon’s doctrine emphasizes two Calvinist tenets: Human beings are inherently sinful, and they cannot merit salvation by any effort of their own. Only the grace of God, freely given to the sinner through the Holy Spirit, can effect the necessary change in the hearts of men and women that brings them to Christ as redeemer.

While Edwards’s aim is to lead the unconverted to God’s mercy through Christ, his means of achieving this aim involves chastening and terrifying the listener with the fierceness of God’s wrath, the helplessness of the sinner, and the misery of eternal torment. Accordingly, Edwards emphasizes the absolute sovereignty and vengeance of God, citing Isaiah, Ezekiel, Proverbs, Genesis, and other books of the Hebrew Bible, rather than the consoling message of the Christian gospels. Without the merciful intervention of Christ the Redeemer, God is a sublime Other, a divine Executioner of the wicked, who have no means to mollify His wrath. Edwards arouses fear, shame, guilt, and mortification to emotionally awaken his auditors from the spiritual blindness and vanity that inure them to the necessity of conversion.

Intensification is the primary rhetorical strategy of Sinners, and Edwards achieves this effect by using amplification, repetition, vivid imagery, and supple syntax, among other literary devices. The rhetorical focus of the sermon moves from the ancient Israelites to sinners in general to the unconverted in the Enfield pews in a tightening vise of implication. Edwards’s verbal choices display this shift; “they” becomes “you” and “then” becomes “now” as the argument proceeds from implications to proofs to application. Edwards anticipates the psychological defenses of his listeners and methodically deconstructs them with cogent argument. Step by step, the plight of the unconverted is revealed to be more damning than he imagined, his sin more dreadful and hateful than he realized, and the wrath of God fiercer and more merciless than he could ever have imagined. The final sentences of the proof section concisely summarize the evidence Edwards has brought forth in an overwhelmingly conclusive fashion, indicting the wicked and justifying the righteous punishment reserved for him.

In the Application, Edwards turns from the legal case against the sinner to its relevance for his audience, directly inculpating them as sharing this very fate. Through graphic imagery and compelling argument, Edwards’s method continues to be intensification—his unconverted listeners should marvel that they are not already suffering in hell, considering the severity of their sin compared with those already consigned to eternal damnation—but his rhetorical focus shifts to urgent exhortation rather than legal proof. Edwards transports his listeners into a terrifying present of psychological suspension, exposed and naked in their sin before the pure eyes of God, hanging by a thread in His hand over the fiery pit, disgusting in their sinfulness:

’Tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffer’d to wake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep: and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up (634).

The passionate intensity of Edwards’s rhetoric in the Application is conveyed by the many exclamations and rhetorical questions, the verbal repetitions, the rapid juxtaposition and abundance of scriptural citations, and the imprecatory tone. By turns cajoling, imploring, shaming, urging, and condemning, Edwards employs a multitude of arguments to move his listener.

Though the sermon focuses on the righteous wrath of God and the punishment awaiting the sinner, Edwards’s message is ultimately that of Christ’s mercy. In the sermon’s conclusion, Edwards entices his auditors with the joy they will experience in Christ and the glory of being saved through Him, substituting carrot for stick. Theologically, Edwards enrolls his listeners in the grand historical drama of humankind’s redemption, and the sermon establishes an unbroken continuity between the ancient Israelites and New England’s Christians, while looking forward to the completion of God’s work of redemption on earth, of which the current awakening is a sign. Edwards’s cultivation of a sense of uniquely special historical identity and shared participation in a cosmic, sacred narrative is a key element of his attempt to inspire his audience. For Edwards, true Christian experience is not primarily rational, but sensible and emotional, involving the heart and the senses. Sinners’ graphic appeal to the imagination through its tactile imagery and affective rhetoric complements the logical precision of Edwards’s argument, and the combination of the two demonstrates Edwards’s peculiar literary genius.