ime Period The First Great Awakening.

7/8/1741

In his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards sought to convince his listeners -- and those who later read the sermon in pamphlet form -- that they were depraved sinners who would be condemned to hell unless they turned to Christ and trusted in his grace for salvation.
Jonathan Edwards once thought much the same of Calvinism, especially its assertion of the sovereignty of God over all human beings, both those destined for heaven and those headed to hell. Edwards was reared in a preacher's home in Connecticut, but while in school at Yale he began to doubt his family's theology. He later wrote, "From my childhood up, my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God’s sovereignty in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and rejecting whom He pleased; leaving them eternally to perish, and be everlastingly tormented in Hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me."
While still at Yale, Edwards had a conversion experience and became convinced of the opposite, that God's sovereignty "very often appeared exceedingly pleasant, bright and sweet." Edwards had become convinced of the Calvinist view of God and humanity. Human beings were fallen, totally depraved, and deserving of an eternity of punishment in hell. God graciously plucked some, the elect, from that fiery fate. Edwards's view of God transformed from that of a capricious, uncaring tyrant into a loving, gracious father.
. He believed that many New England Puritans were Christian in name only, that they had been infected by an "Arminian" theology that privileged free, human choice over God's sovereignty. Rationalists, whom Edwards classed as "Arminians," proposed a theology derived from reason and nature. They also argued that individuals were fundamentally moral beings with the ability to choose their faith, a belief that cut against the traditional Calvinist doctrine of human depravity.
By 1738, when celebrity English evangelist George Whitefield conducted his first preaching tour in the American colonies, those local revivals had grown into the mass religious movement that would later become known as the First Great Awakening. Whitefield, Edwards, and other preachers like Gilbert Tennent criticized American churches for their cold theological rationalism while proclaiming a revivified Calvinist gospel. It was in this environment that Edwards preached "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" while filling the pulpit in Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1741. Edwards wanted to convince the parishioners that their religious faith was dead, that they were sinners, and thus they faced the righteous judgment of God should they not repent and turn from their false religious security.
The sermon's text came from Deuteronomy chapter 32, a passage in which God warned the nation of Israel that judgment was coming. The Israelites had grown "heavy and sleek" (v. 15) while offering sacrifices to other gods. If they did not repent and turn, verse 35 warned, "To mebelongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste." Edwards's sermon, delivered in a restrained, yet earnest monotone voice, compared his listeners to those condemned Israelites. They too deserved God's condemnation and if they died in their sins they would go to hell. In one of the most famous portions of the sermon, Edwards compared them to a spider or "some loathsome insect" being dangled over a fire, their very existence "provoking his [God's] pure eyes" by their "sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship." When Edwards reached the sermon's climax with the words, "Oh sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in," the audience broke into such loud shrieks and wails that he could not finish.
For Edwards, the metaphor of a spider dangling above a fire was not meant merely to impress his listeners with how dire their position but also to drive them to thankfulness that God had preserved them from the fire thus far. God's hand was not ominous, but an undeserved act of preservation. It was proof, to him, of God's loving sovereignty that any should be saved from hell when all deserved precisely that. If Edwards had been able to finish his sermon, he would have told his audience of "an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners." Damnation may have been deserved, but salvation was freely offered.
Edwards's sermon was quickly printed in tract form and spread throughout the colonies. Critics of the First Great Awakening just as quickly seized on the sermon, accusing Edwards of preaching an "antinomian," or lawless, gospel that so over-emphasized human depravity that Christians would no longer feel compelled to do good works. Edwards countered that charge with a series of books, culminating with a biography of a Calvinist missionary to the Indians named David Brainerd meant to showcase the good works and piety that resulted from a Calvinist theology. The controversy even reached into the pews of Edwards's own church in Northampton, which dismissed him in 1750.