Comparing Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God And Upon The Burning Of Our House

Within his speech, Edwards says, "there is a dreadful pit of glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open... you have nothing to stand upon, nor...take a hold of. " This statement gives a clear description of God's agitation, and that his anger is much like the fiery depths of hell. With this visualization, the sinners are able to imagine God's rage, which would scare them when thinking of what their punishment may be in return of their sinning.

Compare and contrast the meaning and style of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and “The Minister’s Black Veil.” How does each author convey his meaning to the reader? Which author’s style is more effective and why? Puritan religion is adequately portrayed in both Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story, “The Minister’s Black Veil”.

This interpretation of God becomes the reference point for the rest of the sermon. All of the commands and accusations in the sermon rely on Edwards' portrait of God as an angry, all-powerful being that has no obligation to have mercy upon his creations. By convincing his congregation of God's wrathful character, Edwards is then able to convince the congregation that they are in danger of damnation and severe punishment at the hand of this wrathful God. Edwards characterizes God as a being that "abhors" mortal men and "looks upon [them] as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire" (200). Edwards then uses scriptural references to support his claims about the nature of God.

We are all flawed from O’Connor’s view. The essence of humanity is sin, everyone is a sinner. Apart from that, the moments of grace that O’Connor was referring to was the moment when her characters are stirred. According to Bible, “Until we see ourselves as sinners, we won’t recognize Christ as Savior” (Luke 5:31), I think this message is what O’Connor wanted to deliver through her stories; the moments of grace are when the characters realize they need grace, meaning that when the characters discern that they are also wrongdoer like the others who need to be forgiven. All should concede that they are smutty, rotten heathens who require grace before they can accept grace.

It is explained that God is the only one who is able to save people from going to Hell. Edwards wants people to imagine how evil and distressed life would be without Gods love and mercy. He explains that to not burn in Hell people need to ask for forgiveness from God, experience Gods mercy, and continuously practice the Lords word. Edwards really lets the message of “Gods wrath” sink into our minds to show how mighty, powerful, and capable the Lord is. The Lord gives us many opportunities to rely on Him and when we need his love and mercy the most.

A lot of Edwards writing is meant for a more mature audience and mostly Puritans. Edwards uses fear to persuade the audience into being a servant of God. He was very strict in his morals and if you did not obey God you would go to hell, and if you were a good servant you would go to heaven. As a pastor he believed everyone should go to heaven and he would do anything to make sure of that, in one of Edwards writings “From Sinners in the Hands of God” he would use words like “his wrath in hell” (Edwards 79).

To fail, in faith, we must first succeed in doubt and fear. For Wormwood and Screwtape to succeed in their victim falling from faith they must first feed him full of fear and doubt. Throughout the Screwtape Letters, both demons try to bring their subject to worship their father by practicing tactics that lead and misdirect their human to fall from his faith in Christianity. Fear, doubt, and insecurity are the first and foremost tools of misdirection that Screwtape tries to employ Wormwood to exploit. “The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers”.

“So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hands of God, over the pit of hell,” (Edwards 79) Edwards’ motive in his sermon is to scare the less devoted Puritans into being “born again” and dedicating their life to the Father. “The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconnected persons in this congregation.” (Edwards 80) Edwards believes man to all be self-righteous, unfaithful, and dubiously sinful creatures in desperate need of a savior. The only way that they can be spared being dropped into the pits of hell and graciously given eternal life is to repent of their transgressions and bow their knees to God in

Johnson states that the two halves can be understood as the first being the factual, proven part, and the second in the interpretation that what had occurred was done by God because the people were sinners (Johnson). The beginning chapter of Laminations describes the events surrounding destruction of

The story also compares hell to a furnace which is pretty much the same thing as a pit. “The pit is prepared; ready to receive them; hell is ready to burn them” Edwards appeal for this quote is pathos. He wants to make people see that you will burn and be in excruciating pain forever.

Moreover, Edwards had a powerful impact on his puritan audience of his puritan audience because of his use of a complex figurative language in the passage. In paragraph 2, it states that “They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God, which is expressed in the torments of hell”. It also states that “Is not at present very angry with them as he is with many miserable creatures now tormented in hell”. Theses quotes reveal that God power is fear so that it can shut the sinners down and destroy sinners who made him angry.

The third appeal described in the NMSI paper is logos. Logos is the appeal to the “audience’s logic by constructing a well-reasoned argument” (“Using” 13). In “Sinners”, Edwards uses the audience’s appeal to logic by stating facts or common sense. He appeals to the unconverted’s sense of intelligence in saying “it would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer to it all eternity” if they do not choose to follow God (Edwards 43). Edwards also says “all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin. .

He also said that God is so angry at us that he is the only thing keeping us from falling into hell, and God will just drop us in hell (103).

In Jonathan Edwards’ excerpt from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Edwards uses a variety of different figurative language techniques and impeccable word choice to make the church goers truly believe that they have sinned God and are damned to Hell, as well as enforcing them to change their ways

Through the analyzation of this figurative language it is apparent to see what his attitudes towards both sinners and God were. He saw sinners as despicable beings who were less than human in both his and God’s eyes and God as almighty and justifiably angry. This sermon swept across the colonies and completely changed people 's’ perspectives on religion and he arguably started the revival of religion known as the Great