Rhetorical Devices In Sinners

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is a sermon written by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), a theologian and philosopher in the British Colonies of America. He was raised as a puritan in Connecticut and grew up to be one of America’s most influential protestant revivalists of that time. He delivered many sermons, the most well-known being “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Edwards gave this sermon on July 8, 1741 in Northampton, Massachusetts. The main purpose of this sermon was to convey to the audience the reality of hell, the need to change their wicked lives, and, ultimately, that they should fear the wrath of God. Edwards does this to motivate the audience to live their lives as perfectly as they can in order to not anger God and to avoid Hell.

The rhetorical strategies that Jonathan Edwards exploits in this sermon offers an emotional response from his audience. The audience is forced to face the reality of the circumstance through Edward's carefully crafted argument. The use of the various techniques that Jonathan Edwards uses contributes to the rhetorical effectiveness of the piece and persuades the audience to repent and turn towards God.

Respected Puritan minister, Jonathan Edwards in his Sermon, “Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God (1781), Elaborates on the negatives of being a repentant sinner. Edward’s goal is to inform people that sinning can be dangerous. He adopts a serious tone in order to establish a constant fear within Sinners and Non Sinners reading. Using the heavy caution within his readers let him establish a successful Sermon with the help of examples.

Jonathan Edwards write a famous sermon titles “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. In this sermon, sinners all over the world are targeted. They are being warned that god will stand sternly judging their actions. It is also seen in the sermon that the sinners’ punishments will be much harsher than they would think. In order to deliver these messages, Edwards uses three different tones; threatening, cautionary, and unsympathetic. These tones are formed when he uses specific words and phrases that represent those tones.

Imagery is one of the components that were used by Edwards to make his story more persuasive. As the short story begins, the first sentence was an example of imagery. Edwards wrote when men are on God’s hands and they could fall to hell. “…natural men are held in the hands of God, over the pit of hell…” Knowing that you might fall into hell at any moment should scare you. God decided to save you until he wants to let you fall into an eternity of burning

The persuasive techniques that Edwards used were very effective in the way he presented them to the Puritans. When the Puritans listened to Edwards’ sermon they were either screaming or crying because of the effect the techniques that he used. Furthermore, Edwards’ speaking tone was monotone, but he used impactful words to successfully get his point across without raising or lowering his tone of voice. This represented how effective his speaking techniques were. For instance, “there is Hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon,” (Edwards 87) which was all

Jonathan Edwards’ passionate sermon, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” creates a state of fear to make “sinners” aware of their sinful state and the wrath of God that they will face sooner or later. In order to warn “sinners” of their future involving God, he approaches fear as a motivator by using metaphors to emphasize God’s disgust towards man, imagery to for the imagination to dwell upon and repetition to build guilt into his readers which helps him enforce his condemning tone.

The fear of eternal damnation turns people against one another when in life-threatening trials. God’s wrath is being contained upon them as these test occur. In “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God” and “The Crucible”, Edwards and Miller use metaphors, imagery, symbolism, and allegory to display how they unveil their message with fear and persuasion.

During the sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, it is said that Jonathan Edwards had to stop several times throughout it and ask people to stop crying. How was he able to scare his listeners to the point of breaking down in tears? It is because Jonathan Edwards uses several persuasive techniques in his sermon that are extremely effective.

Throughout Edwards’ sermon, he used an amount of metaphorical imagery to persuade his listeners to confess their

Jonathan Edwards, the author of “from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, uses syntactic techniques to accomplish his purpose of his intended audience, the “unconverted”. Edwards informs his “unconverted” audience that God is “angry” (Page 1 Line 8) with them, as it is repeated numerous times throughout the sermon. He also informs his audience on how to be unconverted and change to converted. Along with informing, Edwards also persuades his unconverted audience to become converted.

This sermon was preached to warn people to convert to faith or face the danger of the Afterlife, which was the gave logic to the church audience. "Edwards image of god's hand holding 'Natural Man' by a thin thread out of the path of his wrath is a wonderful accounting of God's grace." According to Authors Dens, "God does not want to let go of that thread". This is a logos statement because Edwards is stating the logical fact. In Edwards sermon, as well as Authors Dens analysis of the speech, Edward mentions that " Only God’s own desire to keep us from falling into

b. Thesis – Jonathan Edwards’s sermon portrayed Puritans as sinners of their religion through the use of rhetorical strategies such as ethos, pathos, and logos.

Jonathan in his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (July 8, 1741), claims that the unconverted are hanging from the hands of God, and can be dropped off to the eternity of hell, his sermon is used to make the sinners be afraid and understand how the power of God is saving them, but it is only for his pleasure, unless if they return to Christianity. Edwards strengths his argument by using metaphors and imagery of a wrathful God to make the unconverted people afraid of being sinners and encourage them to have a relationship with Christ to be fully saved from falling to an eternity in the flames of hell. Edwards purpose is to start his sermon with such powerful use of visualization to provide fear to the sinners and give them a

In Johnathan Edward's, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Edwards has a particular style of writing that conveys an underlying purpose when delivering the sermon. Throughout the sermon, he uses multiple writing techniques and tools to engage the listener more, and to assure the listeners believe and trust him. Edwards purpose of writing and delivering the sermon, is to warn his people and to whomever else wants to agree, that they all must show their remorse of their sins to God before it is too late. Every sentence in the sermon, is based around scarring the people even more and more. Edwards accomplishes this by using certain diction and structure, a certain tone, and persuasive figurative language.