Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Rhetorical Analysis

661 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Reflection on persuasion

Persuasion, what exactly is it? Most people think that when you persuade, you try to change someone’s mind, but that is not it. Persuasion is more on the lines of trying to challenge someone's thought process. Once we have that in mind we now can move on to Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Edwards’ sermon is a strong call to repentance, if we do not repent, we will be thrust down to Hell. The way he convinces us of that if very interesting. There are many Persuasive techniques that Edward utilizes, but the most prominent ones are fear, urgency, and Exaggeration. Edwards starts out his sermon with very descriptive language about what Hell is like, striking the fear of it into most everybody that hears it. Fear, what is fear? Is it an emotion, a feeling, or just a defense mechanism for your body. Fear works very well if everyone is scared of that one thing you are trying to scare people with. In those times, everyone believed in Hell, it was crazy if someone …show more content…

In reality, Edwards has no idea what Hell is actually like, but using the common image of it and some fancy words, he is able to enhance it a little. If he would have just said Hell is like oasis, people would not have repented. If he said it was like living in the wilderness, people would not have listened. Even if he said it was like prison, some people still might think it won’t be that bad. He had to go for the sure way of making people repent, which was telling the people that it is more extreme than any other person at that time described it, “When God Beholds the ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to you strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed, and sinks down as it were, into an infinite gloom; He will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the execution of his wrath, or in the least lighten his

Show More
Related

  • Comparing Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Patrick Henry's Speech in the Virginia Convention: Who Made the Best Argument?

    737 Words  | 2 Pages

    Foreboding and dreadful describe the tone of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. Edwards makes the tone very clear by saying “The God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire” (154). He tries to convey the wrath of god that will come upon them if they do not devoted themselves to Christ by saying “Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon souls, all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God.” (154).

    Read More

  • Comparing and Contrasting the Beliefs of Jonathon Edward and Anne Bradstreet

    660 Words  | 2 Pages

    Edwards, who also had Puritan beliefs, was a philosopher and theologian and his way of thinking was more in-depth and complex. He used repetition to drive his sermons home and convinced his congregations of the evils and wickedness of hell through the use of intense analogies. His “fire and brimstone” way of preaching frightened people and made them feel a deep need for salvation. Edwards believed that all humans were natural sinners and God was eagerly awaiting to judge them. He wrote "their foot shall slide in due time" meaning that mankind was full of inevitable sinners.

    Read More

  • An Angry God Figurative Language

    597 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fear is one of the most powerful emotions, therefore by using fear as a rhetorical strategy it makes Edwards’s argument more memorable and more likely to be taken to heart due to the audience’s dreading eternity in a “lake of burning brimstone,” (2) and a “pit of glowing flames of the wrath of god” (2). Fear turns the imagined into something tangible and because the audience has no way of actually discovering heaven or hell until they die, they are more likely to accept his argument and accept god into their lives in order to avoid hell.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis On Salvation

    540 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Langston Hughes’s narrative essay “Salvation”, Langston talks about how his experience at church caused him to crack under pressure and pretend to be saved from Jesus, which leads him to not believing Jesus is real anymore. I personally felt like he relates to real-world problems when it comes to Salvation. How you're expecting to feel this tidal wave of emotions to flourish and have these signs of repent to show up but doesn't happen. Another thing is, I like how he explains how tense the room felt when it was just him alone on the mourning bench and how the pressure to be “Saved” makes him lie to everyone. Within the essay, Hughes touches on many different types of ideas and feelings that most people can relate too.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Sinners In The Hands

    1179 Words  | 3 Pages

    In everyday life, we apply rhetorical devices for many situations. We apply them most when trying to persuade others, such as advertisements on television. Rhetorical devices have been used for a really long time. Rhetorical devices go as far back as the Great Awakening. Unconverted men were persuaded through rhetorical devices. Unconverted men are people who have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. In 1741, the unconverted were persuaded to accept God and to live a holy life. They were always told about the effects of sinning and were told what would happen after their life ended. Around that time, a pastor—Jonathan Edwards—gave a sermon about what would happen if they did not convert into a child of God. In “Sinners in the Hands

    Read More

  • Patriotism and Fear in The Scarlet Letter

    759 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...d unholy people. The fear and horror created by Edwards' sermon convinces the audience into doing anything for salvation from the fiery pits of hell. Although the rhetoric that Edwards and Henry use are different, they both satisfy the authors' purposes.

    Read More

  • Edwards Essay

    619 Words  | 2 Pages

    “How awful it is for that person which suffers this great wrath and infinite misery!”(Edwards 89-90). This is the best example of Edwards doing what he does best in his sermons; using literary devices to scare people. Why would anyone do this? Well, he uses fear for persuasion. How he does this is carefully and delicately layered in his words. Edwards uses loaded language, vivid imagery, and specific types of sentences in order to scare his audience into becoming better Puritans.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Pathos In Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

    1023 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1741, Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan preacher of that time, had one thing on his mind: to convert sinners, on the road to hell, to salvation. It just so happened to be, that his way of doing that was to preach the reality to them and scare them to the point of conversion. Sermons of this time were preached to persuade people to be converted and to me it seemed that Edwards just had a special way of doing it. Just as people are being influenced by rhetoric appeals today Edwards used the same method on his congregation. In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Jonathan Edwards positively affected his readers using pathos, logos, and ethos, while trying to convince the unconverted members of his sermon to be born again.

    Read More

  • Jonathan Edwards Persuasive Techniques

    208 Words  | 1 Pages

    Jonathan Edwards expertly uses persuasive appeal in his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Some persuasive techniques include repetition, biblical allusion, and the use of pathos and ethos. His main reason to use these techniques was to emphasize the necessity for people to cease their sinful actions.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of I Have Sinned

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    On September 11, 1998, former president Bill Clinton delivered the infamously self-proclaimed speech entitled “I Have Sinned.” In an attempt to convert the public suspicion and hatred back to trust and loyalty, Clinton finally confessed to the inappropriate relations with Monica Lewinsky. By deeply expressing his sorrow through his foreboding and apologetic tone, Clinton constructs various examples of ethos, uses stiff body language and blank facial expressions, direct eye contact, and crafts the majority of his speech on short and choppy sentences. The overall purpose of this speech was for Clinton to ultimately express his remorse for the regretful acts he committed, and also to ensure the American people that he will remain trustworthy throughout

    Read More

  • Age Of Reason Analysis

    703 Words  | 2 Pages

    As Edwards explains things like: “There is nothing between you and hell but the air: it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up” we see the emotional drive this had on the colonies. Normality would have proclaimed: “yes there is a heaven and a hell”, but would never exemplify the emotional realness of hell like Jonathan Edwards does. The reality of these emotional feelings drove the people to begin to think they could think outside of the “traditional box”. This speech was not the specific thing that sparked the changing of people’s minds back then, but it created a different mindset.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Rhetorical Analysis “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards uses imagery and symbolism to persuade the audience to become more devout Christians by channeling fear and emphasizing religious values. Jonathan Edwards was a Puritan minister who preached during the time of the Great Awakening in America. During this period of religious revival, Edwards wanted people to return to the devout ways of the early Puritans in America. The spirit of the revival led Edwards to believe that sinners would enter hell. Edwards’ sermon was primarily addressed to sinners for the purpose of alerting them about their sins and inspiring them to take action to become more devoted to God.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of The Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

    1184 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edwards starts his sermon stating his claim and intentionally scaring people by saying, “There is nothing that keeps wicked Men at any one Moment, out of Hell, but the meer Pleasure of GOD”(5) Edwards says that there is nothing that is keeping a person that does not believe in God out of Hell, but the feeling of God at that moment. He is trying to scare the audience and say that at any moment God could change His mind and throw you into Hell and would not have a second thought about it. The tone of the piece can be easily seen through this quote as very dedicated and devoted to God, while the mood for the audience

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Jonathan Edwards 'Great Awakening'

    731 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the sermon, he attempts to incite religious fervor among the people living in New England by telling them all that they had sinned, which he may have believed would cause them to repent and turn back to God. He consistently evokes images of pain and suffering in the reader, as demonstrated when Edwards argues that “The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you…,” he later adds “…and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.” He makes an endeavor to diminish skepticism in the reader earlier in the verse, expressing

    Read More

  • Analysis of Dante's Inferno

    758 Words  | 2 Pages

    He gives reason to fear and respect the law of God, lest eternal punishment be your only promise in the afterlife. These punishments are as relevant as can be, so he offers a very vivid picture of hell. The men that he puts in hell give it a realistic twist, enhancing the fear that is felt upon reading this work.

    Read More

More about Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Rhetorical Analysis

Open Document