Rhetorical Devices In Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards went back to get sinners and also just people in general to get back into the church so that they could continue to be with God. The intended audience for this passage is people who are doubting God and are going against his wishes. Jonathan wants to persuade the sinners to go back and reconnect with God. He uses the fear that they have to convince them to go back to church. By doing this he wants the sinners to know that they are only alive because of God and if they lose their connection with him then he won’t spare them. Jonathan Edward uses repetition, images, and analogies to create an emotional appeal in order to place fear into the sinners and convince them to continue worshipping …show more content…
“Nothing to lay hold onto to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can ever do to induce God to spare you.” This statement is saying that after you have sinned enough and have not tried to come back to God and ask him to forgive you that God will destroy you and not even consider to take pity upon you. This creates a pathos appeal and this was extremely necessary because this passage is meant to scare the sinners and make them feel that without God they had nothing. By adding the repetition into the very end of the story the sinners have already experienced a wide range of emotions from the rest of the passage that the ending is the tipping point. The sinners are all convinced that they are damned without God so telling them that they are nothing and that they have nothing is a perfect way to ensure that they continue worshipping …show more content…
A strong comparison that he made was when he compared human lives to a spider web. “All of your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.” This line is there to say that sinners who believe that they can avoid being damned to hell without God have no chance much like how a spider web would have no chance at catching a falling rock. This created a very logical appeal because in Jonathan’s mind, God was the only thing that could keep you from hell and humans were nowhere near capable of doing it themselves. “The wrath of God is like great waters that are damned for the present,” was another analogy that Edwards used to create an emotional appeal in his argument for God. He compared God’s wrath to a dangerous flood of water and if you continue to wait and not accept God then you are increasing his wrath and eventually you will be damned. This was used to place fear into the sinners and push their emotions far enough to where they feel like they have to believe in