"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Post

       In the mid Seventeen hundreds Jonathan Edwards struck the fear of god into New England.  Nothing scares a good  puritan more than the threat of stripping them of their salvation.  Ignorance is bliss, and to Jonathan Edwards ignorance  is the belief that denying eternal salvation is Gods last resort.  Edward argues that God would not 'loose any sleep at night' over casting thou into hell.  if someone were to ask you for a dollar (the dollar in this scenario representing eternal salvation) you would weigh your decision on how close you are to this person, do they deserve this dollar or have they simply not expressed dire will to please you and work for the dollar.  Either way the decision is not one that you will ponder for weeks after.  Edwards proposes that this is the same for how God feels regarding the hurtling of sinners into eternal damnation.


       Italy read open mouthed as the terrors of hell, spelled out like never before, poured from Dante Aleghiri’s  Inferno in the fourteenth centenary.  I imagine their terror was akin to that felt by the colonists when Jonathon Edward’s warned New England of the wrath of an angry God.  Dante tells us of rivers of boiling blood, those who were not baptized in life now wander aimlessly through Limbo in death.  Those who partook in lust in life are forever joined with another,  and those who threw away ‘
God’s gift of life’ reside as harpies in the forest of suicides.  I presume that Jonathon’s speech run parallel to the words of Dante. I believe what had the colonist scrambling for salvation was Jonathans’ descriptions of hell.