When I was reading Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, I honestly thought I was misunderstanding the sermon . The sermon is over the top, and I’ll admit I found it pretty funny at the end when he said most people at the church were going to hell. The way that Jonathan Edwards portrays God made me think of William Bradford’s portrayal of God in Of Plymouth Plantation. Bradford portrays God as vengeful and terrifying, and I’m thinking about the young man on the boat that was headed to Cape Cod. The young man was full of pride, greedy and did not want to help those that were sick, so God gave him a terminal disease. Bradford makes it seem that the young man’s undoing is his own fault; he didn’t respect God’s wishes and that is the reason that God smote him. I remember reading that the first time and thinking that was pretty outrageous. In comparison to Edwards, Bradford portrays God as vengeful but fair. In classical myth, the Gods are sadistic teenagers that inflict suffering on humans just because they can, and I do not think that that is too different from what Edwards conveys. While Bradford’s God is vengeful and just, Edwards’ God is just vengeful. The passage that reminded me of this the most was, “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked” (696). While the passage alone does not illustrate God as unjust I think if we couple the passage with the belief of unconditional election. People are either born saved or damned and God is the one that picks. Essentially, God handpicks who he is going to throw into hell. I wasn’t raised with a religious background so I could be completely off; and if I am please tell me. I think that today if a person finds God or prays for forgiveness, that God will extend mercy to the individual. I believe that in modern religion God loves everyone and is always willing to forgive. This is radically different from what Edwards preaches. I believe when Edwards says, “God will not hold them up in these slippery places any longer, but will let them go” (691) he is saying that God will not tolerate any sin and believes in a "one strike and you're out" penalty system. Whether this was Edwards’ intention or not, he portrays God as deserting sinners.
Overall, I had a hard time believing what I was reading because what Edwards wrote was that outrageous. To sum up the sermon, he talks about hell not as a means of scaring people into behaving, but rather to prepare the majority of population, because most people will be going there.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree. I think that Edwards, as well as Wigglesworth were over the top in their writings. Basically what I feel the puritans are trying to say is that if you do not follow the Christian way of God you are automatically going to hell. I'm trying to wrap my head around all of these ideas, as a person whose very opent other cultures and religious beliefs, reading this material makes me almost pity the puritans. They were definately over the top in their viewing of God. It seems as if any small imperfection would cause them to descend to hell. In Edwards writings he basically states that the "unbelieving" are automatically going to hell. He also lists four elements to their ascension into the underworld. He basically states that "they were always exposed to destruction....the destruction is unexpected....that they are falling due to their own will....and that basically God will not save them".
ReplyDeleteEdwards finishes up by saying that Gods wrath is present and that he never promised to help those who sin. This is an extreme case, one that is justifiable but at the same time the puritans seem to take their viewing of God as over the top. Basically the puritans are exhibiting that they will be saved if they work hard enough at beliving in God, and as for the rest of the people they're all going to hell.
Dan, in response to your question about religion today, I think that Edwards was talking to Presbyterians who are still around, and still believe in the same theology as they did then. However, praying for forgiveness and doing good things for forgiveness is a covenant of works, which as Edwards explains, was given by God to Adam. With the covenant of Grace, which Edwards says, was given through Jesus Christ, one has to truly believe in Jesus to be saved. Edwards doesn't seem to leave too much room for free will in determining whether one truly believes in Jesus and the covenant of grace. I also think it's pretty interesting that Edwards was saying most of the congregation was damned. However, being raised Catholic, which seems to be very different from Presbyterianism, we believed in a covenant of works where God loves everyone and we're supposed to pray to him for forgiveness and go to confession, etc., so maybe that's where you are getting your ideas of modern religion from.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comparison of Edwards’ God to the classical Gods. I picture someone lying around and smirking, while every so often cutting a support line. When I was reading this sermon about such a vengeful God, I kept finding myself saying, “That’s not true” or “God doesn’t do that“. I was raised a catholic so the idea of a God that doesnt want to help you is strange. That said, this piece is valuable because it showed me how the religions differ rather than just told me.
ReplyDeleteEdwards wrote, “We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so it is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that any thing hangs by: thus is it God, when he pleases to cast His enemies down to hell” (691). This is Edwards’ puppeteer God and there is no reason for you to try to get in his good favor. He may have favored you at times but all along, he was going to make you fall. If God makes some people fall, he then must also save some people. The Puritans believed they had a relationship with God and were chosen. However, as the sermon said, so did the Israelites. This sermon seems to go point by point through the five tenets of Calvinism. People who read this back then must have thought they needed to do whatever they could just in case they were among the chosen.
I agree with you a 100% that this was over the top but i think he did it for a specific reason. He uses incredibly graphic imagery and words to try and scare the public into not wanting to go to hell. Everything he says may not be true, but it is effective on his audience. Edwards uses metaphors through the entire sermon and i think this is to make sure he paints a horrible picture for everybody that is listening. He figures that if the last sentence didnt make you scared, the nine other ones right after it hopefully will. He is very clever in his placement of hope in the sermon though. He places it at points where the listener would feel the most vulnerable, and so would be most likely to follow what he says.
ReplyDeleteMroohan, I picked up on the strong visual imagery, too. The metaphors and visual imagery Edwards uses are really simple but strong and startling at the same time. The passage that Nicki cited is an example of one metaphor that is easily pictured. I think it was the strong visual imagery of Hell and eternal damnation puts off the idea of hope. I did not pick up on it. I was too focused on the image of God dangling humans over a pit of fire. I think most people that heard the sermon responded the same way I did. The sermon was more about the state of the covenant and how most people were damned. If hope was evident in the sermon it was overlooked.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God truly did intrigue me, I really enjoyed the excerpt from the Images of Divine Things a lot by Edwards. I thought it was extremely interesting how Edwards claimed that almost everything that God created for the Earth and everything that is true, real, and visible is just a shadow of all the holy things that exist in the great beyond. Everything that was made on Earth represents a higher power through God. One thing that I did not understand however with this reading was how Edwards claimed that there are certain animals on Earth who are attracted by "serpents" or defensive animals. They are attracted into their mouths and then swallowed by them. He explains however the process by which this happens. Animals tend to get curious and they go back and forth between wanting to know more about this "serpent" and eventually they end up in the mouths of the "serpents" and are killed. Edwards claims that the same thing happens with sinners as well. He says that sinners constantly are attracted to sinning and doing something bad, they go back and forth and get closer to the sin until finally it is too late and they are destroyed by the devil. I don't think I agree with what Edwards is saying because I feel that if someone wants to sin, they will automatically do it and not think about the consequences in their heads. They will just commit the sin and then look for ways to redeem themselves from ending up in hell through confessing their sins to a religious figure, or indulgences. Although I'm not sure that I agree with everything Edwards is saying in this reading, I really enjoyed his thorough explanations of the thoughts of sinners. I think the overall message of this writing is that everything around us has been placed here by God and everything that happens on this Earth is a result of God's intentions for the people of the Earth and his main goal is to keep people from sinning.
ReplyDeleteI think what Edwards was trying to do was scare people straight. Basically he believed in a covenant of Grace, and thought that without a belief in Jesus they have no guarantee of redemption. He did seem to believe, however, that a belief in Jesus would save them. On page 699 he says "this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again". This line is his plea for the people to have their conversion experience. It may have been a way for him to give the importance of converting, and to increase the number of conversion narratives to a level found around 1735.
ReplyDelete