Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Rhetorical Analysis

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

did not, so Edwards capitalizes on that, “The fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater that it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in Hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.”
In Sinners, there is this sense of urgency; many people have lived horrible lives, died, and went to Hell, and so will you if you do not repent quickly. Edwards wants people to act now, there is no better way than to say if you don’t do it now, you will burn in Hell forever. He says that if we don’t repent know, it will cost us forever, “It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration”. We don’t know when we are going to die, it could be whenever, so if we need to be prepared for that by repenting now.
What is a speech without a little exaggeration, Edwards uses countless hyperboles to pound his point farther in.

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

hand”.

Fear, urgency, and exaggeration are the most easily seen of the many persuasion techniques that Edwards uses. Those are very interesting ways. Sinners calls everyone to repentance. Challenging people’s thoughts and not changing their minds is persuasion. Edwards is very talented with the techniques that he uses and makes them very effective in his sermon. Many people at that time believed in Hell, and because of that Edwards used those three ways of persuasion. He is successful in persuading countless people in 1741 with his sermon.